Buckley: We Dropped Glenn Beck Because He's "Preaching, Not Entertaining"

[DToTheJ]

Rick Buckley of Buckley Broadcasting, whose WOR in New York dropped Glenn Beck's show earlier this year - and next week, their cluster of talk stations in Connecticut plans on following suit - explains the reason for dismissing the show:
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2146472&spid=24698

"Glenn is sort of all over the park from time to time. Some of his direction has changed over the last year and a half... He is preaching a lot more than entertaining. In the last six months or so, he has tended to be more and more taking a religious point of view. It didn't do well here in the east. It has not gotten real traction. If you want a religious point of view, we've got plenty of religious stations..."

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If other broadcast owners read this,  pick up the phone and talk with Mr. Buckley,  and then look at their own stations and schedules,  could some other personalities be in potential trouble.  No one else is quite as blatant with "faith issues" as Beck tends to be,  but several of the biggies really preach a camouflaged religion in their content.

[Frank Provasek]

Beck's church (Mormon) teaches that God the Father has a body of flesh and bones and came to earth with Eve...ONE of his wives....

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What makes this situation and this conversation bizarre is that when Beck "preaches" he is not preaching Mormonism.  He is preaching some kind of  homogenized and curdled chowder mixture of American Evangelicalism.  I have to wonder what his Mormon peers say to him when he shows up for Mormon services...  assuming he does show up with regularity.

[Nathan Obral]

WOR's got a lot of demo problems. Their schedule is a total mis-mash of lifestyle shows and basic conservatalk. It skews REALLY old, even by AM talk station standards.

Dropping Beck actually shows to me that the Buckley folks have no clue what they even want to do with WOR.

[musichead1029]

"Mr Buckley said the WOR change in New York came about after a two-year trial period that did not get the ratings the company expected."

That's the story. Same in Connecticut. The rest is anecdotal.

Eric Fahnoe Vice President/General Manager for Buckley Radio in Connecticut: "I made the change with the goal of meeting our AM Network (Talk of Connecticut) listener’s desire for more locally originated programming that addresses Connecticut issues."

Right. That's the reason. With local hosts already in morning and afternoon drive, we'll see how long a local host 9 to noon works out financially at three low power high band AMers.