Radio, TV Respond To Newtown Massacre

From Scott Fybush, Northeast Radio Watch:

Every broadcaster – every newsperson, anyway – dreams of the day when the “big story” will hit, when the nation’s eyes will land on their market for a few hours or a few days and they can show their skills to a larger audience. But it’s safe to say that no broadcaster, no newsperson, dreams of finding themselves where newspeople did on Friday as the tragic news began to emerge from Newtown, CT. 

There’s nothing at all that we can say about that event itself (as we look across the room at our own young children) that hasn’t been said elsewhere, and better. And it happens that your editor was traveling for much of the day on Friday and missed the initial coverage. The best we can offer, then, is some brief observations of the coverage we’ve seen and heard about. 

The TV stations in the Hartford/New Haven market, as well as those from nearby New York City and other surrounding markets, went – and have remained – wall-to-wall with their coverage, and for much of Friday the networks followed suit, preempting most of the daytime hours and carrying specials in the evening. 

On radio, several stations in the region went wall to wall with their coverage right away, most notably Hartford’s WTIC (1080) and New York’s all-news WCBS (880) and WINS (1010). You’d expect the all-news stations to do that, of course, but it was more of a surprise to find New York’s WEPN-FM (98.7) and WFAN (660) breaking from their sports formats to take calls. On the FM music side, many stations in the region also dropped format and kept morning teams in place to talk to listeners and relay information, including Clear Channel’s WKSS (95.7) from Hartford and WKCI (101.3) from New Haven. We note, too, that at WPLR (99.1 New Haven) and WFOX (95.9 Norwalk), the morning team of Chaz and AJ dropped plans to be on vacation this week; instead, they’re sticking around to help with extended coverage of the aftermath, including a live broadcast last night of the Newtown memorial service.

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