Your Media Tuesday Two-fer

Item 1: The kids in the WOWO News room have been left unsupervised, again. 

Grin and bear/bare it?

Item 2: Not to be out done, Fort Wayne Newspapers Readers Choice Awards . As noted below, The nominations has been compiled!

Oh, it gets better. The Local Radio Personality selection grid contains people who are no longer on the radio (a few are noted, there are more), and the folks as FWN apparently haven't caught on that WXKE now lives at 96.3 and not at 103.9 as their grid indicates. They must not read their own newspapers.....

The Maven also has been told that on some of the other grids contain the name  of at least one individual who is deceased (and has been for a few years). FWN must also not read their own obituaries. 

The truth be told, the Reader's Choice contest is nothing more than an advertising generator for the papers. The way it works is, nominees will be pressured to purchase ads (at a "special" rate) in the papers to "enhance" their showing in the contest results. Then, the top vote-getters are approached again to buy even more ads (at an even more "special" rate) to tout their ranking in the contest. 

Helpful hint: If your FWN ad rep ever uses the word "gang page", run far, run fast. You are welcome. 

Hey, they've got to pay for that out-of-proportion, over-sized building at Main and Van Buren and that $30 million dollar printing press somehow.....

Radio On TV - Watching Paint Dry

Federated Media, doing what Federated Media does best, over promise and under deliver. The concept of simulcasting a radio show on TV has been around since the 1950's, but the PR machine at Federated Media would have us believe they invented the concept. Don Imus, Howard Stern and a few hundred others might want to argue the point. All semantics and puffery aside, beginning September 23rd, WISE TV 33 will simulcast an hour of "Fort Wayne's number one morning radio show" weekdays from 6am to 7am. Why only an hour? If this is really the number one rated morning show in the city, why not the whole thing? Your guess is as good as the Maven's. 

The pitfalls of this arrangement are obvious. Do the performers play to the camera at the expense of the radio listeners, or do they just 'do radio' and provide little visual stimulation? Given that Mr. Butcher has a great face for radio....that answer may be obvious.