SYRACUSE -- There will be a new local talk show on FM Newsradio 106.9 and 570 WSYR starting next Monday. Morning host Joe Galuski announced on-air the 3-5pm timeslot will be filled by Bob Lonsberry, a familiar name in the Rochester market, where he's been doing radio for more than 25 years. The addition of Lonsberry also means additional schedule changes through the evening hours.
Here's the new lineup, starting Monday, January 8:
Given the fact Lonsberry will continue to host his weekday 9am-1pm show at Rochester's WHAM 1180, we presume he'll be hosting the WSYR show from Clear Channel's Rochester studios. The idea of "remote hosting" isn't new to Lonsberry -- up until recently, he hosted the morning show for a Salt Lake City station out of Rochester. According to NorthEast Radio Watch, Lonsberry ended the KLO show last week because scheduling changes at WHAM would make it impossible to continue both shows.
Even though Lonsberry may not be in Syracuse every day, at least the show will be geared only towards Syracuse listeners; the show is being produced exclusively for WSYR, not dozens of other stations. WSYR program director Jason Furst became Lonsberry's boss in November, when Clear Channel assigned him to add programming WHAM and another Rochester station, sports talk WHTK, to his duties overseeing WSYR.
WSYR had been without a local afternoon talk show since Clear Channel fired longtime host Jim Reith and three other Syracuse staffers in October, during a nationwide wave of budget cuts. Reith's sudden dismissal was the #3 most-viewed story on CNYRadio.com in 2010, and it was the most-mentioned item when we asked readers to pick 2011's biggest stories.
Bob Lonsberry Links
Bob's been on in Syracuse before. When Clearchannel's syndicated "The Weekend" (heard on WSYR Saturdays, delayed one hour, at 1:00 PM) lost it's regular host, they went to a rotating format with Bob Lonsberry as one of the four or five alternating hosts. Even though they eventually settled on Joe Pags and Michael Berry each doing 2 weekends a month, Bob also filled in I believe on Christmas Eve (NYE was an advanced taped year in review show). I also believe Bob has filled in for Glenn Beck on a few occasions in the past.
I seem to remember there was some controversy around the end of the KLO show, but I'd have to go back and look at what the details are again to remember it exactly.
Bob will certainly be better than Reith ever was, although he has the propensity to be equally annoying at times. People will probably love him or hate him. And it's not like Rochester is too far away to be local. It almost makes more sense to have one guy on in two or three markets - if nothing else it's cheaper for CC to pay for one guy a few more hours a day than to do the bookkeeping and so on for two or three different guys.
My only complaint is the clowns over there have moved Savage back to a delayed broadcast. I think they do that just to annoy people, it's the same arrogant attitude that's gone on for years over there - we have the show you like, so you have to listen when we want to run it. Which is fine, but I'll turn off WSYR from 6-9 when they put Hannity back in that slot.