Cumulus Media’s Conservative Talk “Talk 106.7” WYAY Gainesville/Atlanta GA has removed the last vestiges of its former News format as it fills out its weekday lineup.
Joining for mornings is Shelley Winter. Winter hosted mornings at CBS Radio’s 1380 WAOK in the mid 2000s. Shannon Burke remains in place from 9am-12pm, while former CNN/HLN Law Enforcement Analyst Mike Brooks joins the station for 12-3pm. Kim ‘Kimmer’ Peterson moves from 12-3 to 3-6pm with Brian Joyce leaving the station. Joyce had been pulling double duty in addition at WYAY in addition to his midday slot at 102.3 WGOW-FM Chattanooga which he will continue to host.
Westwood One’s Mark Levin, replays of Burke and Kimmer, Red Eye Radio, and Ben Shapiro’s new hour-long show at 5am will round out the schedule.
Cumulus is bafflingly bad at programming talk. Removing Joyce from the lineup keeps the station in an ideological rut at a time when talk radio needs to be expanding its palate. WYAY choosing to be a safe space for a particular party, more specifically a figure within that party and his supporters, is not going to grow their audience or the reach of the format.
No use in complaining about these moves when most of Cumulus’ spoken-word stations are Right-Wing to begin with.
Talk 106.7 will continue to carry the Atlanta Braves, not insignificant as the ballclub’s key station doesn’t cover all of metro Atlanta.
Charles – then in your case, there is “no use” complaining about rhythmic oldies or any number of the nitpicking complaints you’ve raised on this very website either. You need to stop lecturing others. Talk 106.7 will continue to be a ratings loser because of their myopic approach to the format.
WYAY is a very boring station now run on the cheap, in a market that WSB has dominated in that format since the Clinton Administration. And carrying the Braves games is negligible when WYAY is itself a rimshot that doesn’t cover all of metro Atlanta and offers no real compatible programming whatsoever.
That being said, the talk format as a whole is now almost entirely myopic. The format’s biggest personalities are Rush, Hannity, Beck and Levin, and I could have said that in 2008. Blahness to the nth degree, with zero chance for growing their audience beyond the demos that will slowly die off, you know, those demos who still think and act like it’s 1996. WYAY isn’t the problem, it’s a mere symptom.
If 106.7 is “very boring” that’s on Cumulus Media, a company that’s completely mismanaged at all levels.
And spoken-word radio in Atlanta is hardly “myopic” when News 95.5, WSB Radio, carries Rush Limbaugh and is #1 overall. Ask anyone in Cobb County.
No, it’s on Cumulus, iHeart, Entercom, every major group owner. They all run boring talk stations in multiple markets. iHeart has WGST but no one knows that boring station even exists anymore.
WSB could throw a literal ham sandwich on the air from 12p-3p and that ham sandwich would beat anything WGST and WYAY offer, and it wouldn’t be close. Clark Howard dominated Rush in the ratings throughout the 2000s even when WGST last tried to put out a competitive product, many times by double-digit shares.
WSB is number one not because of Limbaugh, but because of the morning drive news block, which has been around long enough that it’s become a habit for a lot of people in Atlanta. If Cox tried to put in a regulation right-wing talk host in morning drive (and they won’t, because they know better), it would be everything WABE and GPB would ever want–and perhaps WRAS would finally take off in the ratings and actually be competitive with WABE, and then perhaps GPB could buy the station from Georgia State.
THIS. People tune into WSB primarily for news every half hour and traffic reports four times an hour in a city where the traffic almost always sucks. The white noise from Rush’s tired, boring old act is almost entirely incidental.