Rip whoi

[BU_EMT128]

Yes, they installed their live Dopplar radar in 1993. During severe weather situations, they will oftentimes have not one, but 2 members of their weather team involved in the coverage. With the live Doppler radar, you can actually see tornadoes form right before your eyes! Not to knock the NWS nextrad, but they are much bigger, older, and they keep track of much more than just the weather hence it takes 7 minutes for them to make a complete scan. Than add another 2+ minutes for Accuweather, WSI, WX Central, etc to capture, compress and send the results to the stations for a total of about 10 minutes. Tornadoes will often form and dissipate in this amount of time. A true live dopplar radar will update every 30 seconds. And since it's hooked directly to the station's equipment, I believe the delivery time is almost instant? When they see a tornado, I've heard of them alerting a local NWS.

Yes, In addition to this, I am a member of a county fire department. The County pages us out to storm spot. One of the members of the meteorological team actually monitors the scanner while ON THE AIR. I have seen multiple times we, or any other storm spotters on the ESDA frequency, call in a certain weather condition (Large hail, developing tornado, etc), only to hear Lee Davis (meteorologist for WAND) repeat the same news seconds later to the over the air audience. It is odd sometimes hearing him say, "storm spotters have sighted a funnel cloud in the Oreana area, take cover immediately" before the NWS has issued a warning for the cell. I am extremely comfortable with the weather coverage in the Decatur/Macon county area as the storm spotters rely on the local media, and the media then uses information from the storm spotters. Ultimately, this keeps everyone safe. Now if Peoria could just get the hint...

[BradleyWX]

A big reason why Granite Braodcasting started to bleed it's better stations was to make up for a debt of something like $400-million from misfortunes it suffered between NBC, San Francisco & Detroit. As many of you know, they were forced into bankruptcy a couple years back and have traded privately ever since. But now, they say they're set to "rock & roll". This is why I'm so critical of them for continuing to provide as they are. And this "dream sports team" even has potential to fail miserably.

New retransmission fees charged by stations are helping Granite, Barrington & Nexstar profit once again.

Nexstar seems to be the strongest right now, and they're showing it by putting stuff back into their stations, after practically ruining WMBD for a few years after purchasing them. I do believe they are the ones responsible for changing the dynamic and charging for retransmission fees.

Barrintgon posted a 4% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year, when most other owners were loosing money. However, they do have a huge debt for buying too many stations at one time. Some of these same people were responsible for running the former Benedek broadcasting into the ground for doing the same thing. It seems that many of these owners like to buy as many stations as possible, make a maximum profit from them by running them into the ground, and sell them before the market goes south. Unfortunately, WHOI was bought passed through several ownerships. Each time you buy a station, you have to pay off the debt of it's purchase before you can make any revenue. Many companies never like to keep them for the long term.

When I asked a WHOI receptionist a decade ago about their future HD conversion plans, she said that their particular building cramped and that it would be extremely difficult to make all the remodels to run all the new wires, etc. She described the building as a "old house that has been added onto and added onto again and again". At the time, they were voting on a new studios. I suppose it was these issues that were to blame for their ongoing bad local audio it would have still presented a problem when it came to digitization of the studios. With a money and shell-operation-hungary corporation like Granite, I suppose they were quick to send them a lifeline.

Barrington did give sister station, KHQA in Quincy, a totally new studio. Now they run neck-and-neck with WGEM in ratings. Both stations are 100% local. How is it that a market with a fraction of the people in this market are able to have 2 fully-local newscasts instead of 1 %1/2?? That's right. WMBD/WYZZ are one choice with one team. WHOI/WAOE/WEEK are 1/2 stations with one on-air job and most of their controls operated in a neighboring state. I think that most of the WHOI fans would rather have seen WMBD engulf WHOI if it had to be done.

And lastly, Like Granite, Young Broadcasting, who owns KWQC, the NBC affiliate in Davenport, also fell victim to NBC and the San Fran Market. Back in 1999 or 2000 they bought KRON, an NBC affiliate for a record price of over 800 million dollars. At the time, networks compensated the local stations for choosing to be affiliated with them. However, NBC turned around and demanded reverse-compensation from Young and young refused, causing them to loose affiliation with NBC. They were forced to pick up the MyNetwork affiliation almost immediately and could not generate the ratings to pay off their debt, nor could they find a buyer. This lead to them filing bankruptcy a couple months back.

Granite DID give into NBC's request for reverse-compensation in San Franciso and snagged the NBC affiliate for that area - at least for a limited time. The last I knew, the station was on the coast and was not powerful enough to send the signal to their entire metro area. It seems to me that Granite was going to fix it soon, and never did? I can't really comment on this for sure. But I do know that they did have a WB station in San Francisco as well as another in Detroit, both of which they expected to sale for $180 million before that deal fell apart after the last-minute with the demise of the WB in 2005. This was one of the biggest woes that led to their bankruptcy.

So with Young & Granite both filing for bankruptcy, why is it that KWQC continues to look so much better than WEEK? I know they're in a SLIGHTLY bigger market, but not that much bigger to make THIS much of a difference!

There's just too many reasons why I can't buy the notion the WHOI/WEEK merger was needed NOW. And there's too many reasons why I can't buy WEEK being too financially strapped to be putting out the quasi-news product they're so producing.

I do, however, give WEEK credit for producing the most local programming and holding their people longer than the others. That is one reason why they're #1. I wish WMBD would do the same. Maybe now, they will.

[jasonpeoria911]

I just monitor the radar/weather forecasts at http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ilx/ . The doppler base reflectivity and forecasts are top notch. That and tune into the local spotter frequencies during storms. Generally I check both noaa.gov and weather.com and NOAA beats weather.com 9 times out of 10 for weather accuracy. I can't recall the last time i've watched a local weather man on TV LOL.

Jason

[BradleyWX]

I know that the WMBD weather team wants their own Live Dopplar radar. And I'm sure that Lee Ranson would appreciate one too. He would be just as capable of reading that data every bit as much as Bob Murray was. It's the powers that be that need to be convinced. (Nexstar & Granite).

WEEK's WX+ is a waste of a sub carrier. Once, I actually saw them screw up and broadcast Almanac information from Ft. Wayne! This is why I'm so against outsourcing weather! If only WMBD would launch a 24-hour substation of their own, WX+ would be in dire trouble! And for those who think that weather+ is the only weather substation, many stations have launched their own such as ABC WQAD & KHQA in the QC. KHQA rejected the Weather + format citing it was not good enough. Of course, our WEEK isn't even good enough to properly run a WeatherPlus station.

Yes, In addition to this, I am a member of a county fire department. The County pages us out to storm spot. One of the members of the meteorological team actually monitors the scanner while ON THE AIR. I have seen multiple times we, or any other storm spotters on the ESDA frequency, call in a certain weather condition (Large hail, developing tornado, etc), only to hear Lee Davis (meteorologist for WAND) repeat the same news seconds later to the over the air audience. It is odd sometimes hearing him say, "storm spotters have sighted a funnel cloud in the Oreana area, take cover immediately" before the NWS has issued a warning for the cell. I am extremely comfortable with the weather coverage in the Decatur/Macon county area as the storm spotters rely on the local media, and the media then uses information from the storm spotters. Ultimately, this keeps everyone safe. Now if Peoria could just get the hint...

[BU_EMT128]

I know that the WMBD weather team wants their own Live Dopplar radar. And I'm sure that Lee Ranson would appreciate one too. He would be just as capable of reading that data every bit as much as Bob Murray was. It's the powers that be that need to be convinced. (Nexstar & Granite).

WEEK's WX+ is a waste of a sub carrier. Once, I actually saw them screw up and broadcast Almanac information from Ft. Wayne! This is why I'm so against outsourcing weather! If only WMBD would launch a 24-hour substation of their own, WX+ would be in dire trouble! And for those who think that weather+ is the only weather substation, many stations have launched their own such as ABC WQAD & KHQA in the QC. KHQA rejected the Weather + format citing it was not good enough. Of course, our WEEK isn't even good enough to properly run a WeatherPlus station.

Bob Murray... Oh Lord. One of the few people who make all 6'5", 300 pounds of me look tiny.

[pfunk880]

It's really sad my former favorite station WEEK has sunk to this level, the guy doing the weekend weather is actually trying to make people believe it's coming out of Peoria instead of somewhere in Indiana by saying things like "our" weather instead of "your" weather.


From now on it's WMBD for me though I do miss that cute little Amy Paul.

But Peoria is somewhere in Indiana.

[Buesch N Chips]

And Chuck has always referred to Peoria as having the urban heat dome effect. I understand why this can break storms apart, but nobody knows exactly why some cities are effected by this and others, not so much. It wasn't like this decades ago, and it may change again someday.

I think it has to do with the dichotomy between the heat dome that is Peoria and the lack of anything close to a heat dome to the west. And that dichotomy only grows as Peoria expands.

[MacabreMob]

All this weather talk has made me hot and bothered.

Thanks BradleyWX for all your comments.