Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Media The future of Eight Forty-Eight?
Posted by Sam Worley on 11.02.11 at 02:00 PM
- cogdogblog
The Crain's report was alarming, and Robinson's piece was both irked and irksome—c'mon: comparing Vocalo to the Red Eye is not entirely fair—but Robert Feder reported this morning that the goal at WBEZ is actually to gain more, not fewer, locally made shows. Feder’s following up on something that he wrote about back in August—that Malatia wants to boost local programming in consideration of two new WBEZ competitors, Merlin Media on WWWN FM 101.1 and CBS News on WCFS FM 105.9, both of which operate an all-news format. Via Feder:
“The idea here is to add hours — not to take away hours,” Malatia said Tuesday. “We have two hours now [Eight Forty-Eight and Worldview] that we do Monday through Friday. We’d like to add one more before the summertime, and we’d like to add one or maybe two next fiscal year, which is from July 2012 through June 2013. Over a period of time, we want to add hours and do more live, original talk during the day. It’s not in our interest to go backwards. It’s in our interest to add.”
Comments (11)
Showing 1-11 of 11
like
dislike
Allison Cuddy and crew are/have been doing a really good job with the show. I can't see any reason to stop supporting it. Current, effective, and relevant - Cuddy gets the job done. The new format on 101.1? It's like a bad morning show.. but all day long. Bleh.
See if you can find one negative thing Robert Feder has ever written about Torey Malatia. Has Malatia been hitting nothing but net for all these years? Don't be a sap, Worley.
No one who has worked around Malatia for any length of time, and has watched his self-serving behavior up close, believes a word that comes out of his mouth.
I worked "around" Torey for many years and found him to be brilliant, inspiring, honest, and loyal.
And for every one person like you, there are handfuls of others who've been tossed under the bus, trashed, lied to, etc. It's amazing the guy has hung onto his job this long.
Then explain to me why Malatia has such a good reputation within the public radio system as an idea man, a risk-taker (mostly off of Vocalo, which seems to me to be in do-or-die mode now with its new ad campaign and its promotion of the Vocalo smartphone app) and a supporter of bright young talent. Is he benefitting from being Ira Glass' boss?
It does seem to me that "dump on the big guy" seems to be a common theme among groups of listenters at most public radio stations, particuarly when big blocks of music programming get replaced by network news/talk and the (usually aging) hardcore fans of the particular musical genre get bent out of shape. In fact, if the boss is well-loved by all of the station's listeners, I'm suspecting that there's something wrong. (Of course, public radio has the blessing or curse of a more avid listenership than your typical purveyor of lite rock favorites of the 80s, 90s and today.)
Puh-LEASE! Robert Feder is a pro with a long track record of honest, pristine reporting.I highly doubt he'd let ANY personal or professional relationship (real or imagined) compromise his integrity.Not his style at all.
