[Speed Gibson,
Thursday February 9, 2006 at 8:22am]
Reviewing: WCC0 830 Morning News with Dave Lee
After decades of dominance, WCCO 830 AM is still a major brand in Twin Cities radio. As Soucheray once observed, many kitchen radios tuning knobs were so caked with rust and cooking grease that it was impossible to change the station away from the Good Neighbor.
Many of us remember mornings with Maynard Speece, Roger Erickson, Howard Viken, and Charlie Boone. Those easy-going days of farm reports, the morning hymm, the CBS World News Roundup at 7 am, and Joyce Lamont are all but gone, replaced by a frenetic concatenation of 30 to 90 second segments. The breakdown of my three day, twelve hour sample:
This broadcast is clearly aimed at the commuter who might hear 20 minutes or so. Weather and traffic are given every ten minutes. That and the commercials take up nearly half the time right there. As such, Host Dave Lee doesn't get the air time most morning hosts receive.
That 26% is news is commendable, and it's the best quality radio news on the dial. You get 3 minutes of CBS news (quiet out there!) and 4 minutes of local news at the top of each hour. But most of that is repetition across the four hours. If you boil down the non-commercial content to eliminate the repeated information, you have about 45 minutes or so of content each day.
Dave Lee also does play by play for Gopher football and basketball, and that's basically what he does here, calling the action as the board operators hurriedly switch from one segment to the next. Given that assignment, I think he does a good job.
If you want a quick recap of what's going on, WCCO is your best choice in the morning. But if you have the morning off, "traffic and weather together on the eight's" will either bore you or annoy you. Listen for 20 minutes, then put on some music.
Next up: KFAN's Power Trip with "The Superstar" Mike Morris.
Many of us remember mornings with Maynard Speece, Roger Erickson, Howard Viken, and Charlie Boone. Those easy-going days of farm reports, the morning hymm, the CBS World News Roundup at 7 am, and Joyce Lamont are all but gone, replaced by a frenetic concatenation of 30 to 90 second segments. The breakdown of my three day, twelve hour sample:
Commercials 35%
News 26%
Sports 11%
Entertainment News 10%
Weather 6%
Traffic 5%
Banter 4%
Other 3%
This broadcast is clearly aimed at the commuter who might hear 20 minutes or so. Weather and traffic are given every ten minutes. That and the commercials take up nearly half the time right there. As such, Host Dave Lee doesn't get the air time most morning hosts receive.
That 26% is news is commendable, and it's the best quality radio news on the dial. You get 3 minutes of CBS news (quiet out there!) and 4 minutes of local news at the top of each hour. But most of that is repetition across the four hours. If you boil down the non-commercial content to eliminate the repeated information, you have about 45 minutes or so of content each day.
Dave Lee also does play by play for Gopher football and basketball, and that's basically what he does here, calling the action as the board operators hurriedly switch from one segment to the next. Given that assignment, I think he does a good job.
If you want a quick recap of what's going on, WCCO is your best choice in the morning. But if you have the morning off, "traffic and weather together on the eight's" will either bore you or annoy you. Listen for 20 minutes, then put on some music.
Next up: KFAN's Power Trip with "The Superstar" Mike Morris.
Yours in quality,
Fran G.