#wyay

Today in Radio History - Y106 Atlanta's morning show. Country formatted WYAY (Gainsville)

Listen to this great morning show! They really knew how to do Country right… but hey, this IS the south.

Included in this aircheck: two full newscasts, traffic and weather. All the full service elements you’d expect from a great station. Full length commercials included also.

Now, remember, this is 1987. Its a few days before Christmas, and these guys manage to be really funny without…

WSB is the oldest news radio station in Atlanta, but, as of April 2012, it is certainly not the only one.

All-News 106.7 is the new game in town when it comes to all-news radio. Up until 2012, Atlanta never had an all-news station. 

But, as of this past week, All-News 106.7 is starting to lean more towards talk radio like its competitor, WSB, 

Atlanta is one of the only cities without a full-fledged all-news radio station. 

When All News 106.7 first went on the air back in 2012, I wrote an article about it for the hyper-local site, Examiner.com. Click here  to read my article. Needless to say, this is how it was originally envisioned. But, as you will see in the rest of my post today, all good things must come to an end.

All-News 106.7 is a station owned by a company that is trying really hard to make a footprint in the all-news world. That company is Cumulus Media, an Atlanta-based company that is notorious for cutting costs every which way, even when it means infringing on programming their audiences love. This is what surprised me about the desire on their part to get in to all-news. All-News radio is perhaps the most expensive format to run continuously. It involves hiring local reporters and anchors and paying them. All-News radio is not a format that can be thrown in to automation and get forgotten about. There is only one station I'm familiar with that ran an automated all-news format courtesy of CNN Radio, but that station, KQNA out of Arizona, is now a political talk station. It just goes to show how unsuccessful automated all news stations are. This might be one of the reasons CNN Radio ended distribution last year.

This is probably the reason Cumulus is moving its station to a talk format complete with some syndicated hosts and some local hosts. Its cheaper to run a talk station than an all-news station, because, after all, it doesn't call for a live and local feel like all-news does. All it requires is a subscription to a radio network that will provide the station with out of state syndicated hosts to fill the time. Who knows? The radio network the station chooses to subscribe to may also provide top of the hour news, saving the station itself money in the process by saving them from having to hire and pay local reporters and anchors. 

It will be harder for Cumulus to switch WYAY to talk radio because WSB Radio already has the rights to air many of the popular talk show hosts during their weekday lineup.

I guess we'll see how it goes.