Posted by Allan Sniffen on September 12, 2001 at 09:30:46:
WFAN: Imus has a great radio sense. He had it yesterday and again this morning.
WOR: Ed Walsh, Joe Bartlett. Stayed on through the day, sound good this morning. Jay Diamond last night. This guy should have a full time job at WOR. Maybe they'll recognize that now after his performance.
WABC: George Weber. Great job. Also Curtis and Kuby, John Gambling, Richard Bey and Bruce Anderson. Phil Boyce too. In fact, the whole staff all the way through. Mark Simone last night is showing why he too is a pro.
WCBS-AM/WINS: Two absolutely GREAT New York news stations. Everyone on BOTH stations. Infinity has two gems in New York today. Thank God!
WEVD: Dropping sports and simulcasting WABC was the right thing to do but it seems like a waste to have two stations doing the same thing.
WBBR: Good job too but didn't have the resources of WCBS and WINS.
WPLJ: Scott Shannon. Great yesterday. Great today. Todd and the rest of PLJ's staff also did well.
WCBS-FM: GREAT job. Simulcasting WCBS-AM was the RIGHT thing to do. This morning Steve O'Brien hit the right mix of reverence and rhythm to get the station back to music. Lots of news reports this morning independent of WCBS-AM. Dan Daniel is also hitting the right tone this morning.
The Clear Channel Stations: Yesterday they did their best... today's better. The morning shows are trying. Bob Buckmann was doing a good job talking to New York. Likewise Z 100, WLTW et al.
WNEW: GOOD job! Kudos especially to Don and Mike and Opie and Anthony. For all the criticism that gets heaped on them, both of these shows handled the crisis apporpriately.
WXRK: Terrible job. Infinity hit a home run with WNEW and struck out with WXRK. Except for Stern. Howard did his best and stayed on. Good for him.
WQXR: Poor job. Supposedly the "radio station of the NY Times". Where were they? Playing music? Was that an intentional move or what?
The Emmis Stations: Simulcasted this or that. Better than playing music. The morning shows today were trying.
As you would expect, the stations that had news departments were the ones that shined the brightest. WCBS, WINS. As stated above... GREAT job. WABC too had good people doing their jobs in news.
Stations with little or no news departments (sadly, the majority) faded into the background. At least they had the sense to do so appropriately. Simulcasting news reports from elsewhere was the right thing to do... even if it was being duplicated to an abusrd extent (all the C.C. stations were carrying Channel 4 and all the Emmis stations were carrying ABC-TV news).
And now... Day 2.