Updated 5:30pm with a correction - UTICA-ROME -- Sean Hannity is about to get more air time in the Mohawk Valley. Newsradio 950 WIBX, which has carried Hannity's "best of" shows on Sundays, will be adding the conservative talker to its weekday lineup, starting Monday. As a result, Laura Ingraham is out and WIBX is shuffling a few other shows to new timeslots.
WIBX Program Director Gene Conte tells CNYRadio.com Hannity will air from 3-6pm. (We had previously reported 3-5pm.)
The addition of Hannity forces the locally-produced SportsWatch to return to its old 6-8pm timeslot. It will also bring the station's hour-long Five O'Clock News Block to a close: instead, the WIBX News at 5 will last about six minutes, and WIBX News at 5:30 will provide a 5-minute recap at the bottom of the hour.
The later timeslot for SportsWatch, pushes Lars Larson back to 8-10pm. Laura Ingraham, who had the 8pm timeslot, will not be moving later -- she's off the lineup altogether, as the station keeps Jim Bohannon in place at 10pm.
Ingraham's show, which originally ran 9am-noon, was moved to a 2-hour evening timeslot in January 2009, in order to make room for WIBX's addition of Glenn Beck to its weekday lineup.
From the "better late than never" file, WIBX recently added Jeanette Lenoir to its news department as a reporter/anchor, replacing Jennifer Ringrose, who recently left for a job outside of broadcasting. According to her bio on WIBX's website, Lenoir, a native of Suriname, comes to WIBX from Washington, DC, where she worked as a reporter at WAMU, following a job as a Deputy Press Secretary on Capitol Hill.
Our thanks to Gene Conte for keeping us updated on WIBX's upcoming changes. We'd love to hear what's happening at your station as well. Whether it's a press release or just an informally-written email, you can reach us at cnyradio@cnyradio.com or click "Contact" in the menu at the top of the page.
Not sure I understand these moves from WIBX, I can get both Beck and Hannity pretty much anywhere in the Utica area from overlap on both WSYR and WGY. WSYR is weaker that far east (and the nighttime signal seems to not reach at all), but WGY's signal tends to be strong both day and night going back west right out of the market.