UTICA-ROME -- After four months of "auditioning" his weekend show, Newsradio 950 WIBX is getting ready to bring Glenn Beck into the Mohawk Valley every weekday morning. In a roundabout way, Beck will be replacing Bill O'Reilly.
In an e-mail blast sent to listeners today, the Regent news/talker says it will begin carrying Beck live, weekdays from 9am to noon, starting Monday, January 26th. WIBX had been carrying Beck's "best of" weekend shows on Saturday nights since September.
The addition of Beck means changes for other parts of the WIBX weekday lineup. Syndicated host Laura Ingraham, who currently has the 9am-noon slot, will remain on the lineup, airing on tape-delay from 8-10pm. Lars Larson, who is on from from 8-11pm, will slide down to air from 6-8pm. And that all means Jim Bohannon's start time moves from 11pm to 10pm. Got that? Here's a neat chart explaining it all.
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As you can see, the one name that disappears in the "new" column is Bill O'Reilly, who announced his plans to leave radio last month. O'Reilly's show is also carried by WTNY/Watertown. Still no word on what's going to replace O'Reilly there, nor any word from O'Reilly on the exact end date for his show -- he earlier only said it would end sometime in the first quarter of 2009.
Seems like an odd move given you can pull Beck in pretty well in Utica on WSYR or WROW, but Ingraham is only on weekends on WSYR and I don't know if you can get her in Albany at all. Would have thought they'd have done better to just go to a live or one-hour-delay Savage Nation feed in that timeslot, since the WGY signal can get weak by that time of night to try to listen to him.