SYRACUSE -- Two weeks after Bob Lonsberry took over afternoons at FM Newsradio 106.9 and 570 WSYR, his show has been extended by an extra hour. The Rochester-based host still takes to the airwaves at 3pm, but as of today, his show runs until 6pm rather than 5pm.
Banners on the WSYR website touted the change today. According to the station website, Lonsberry's extension means an hour-long local news block which aired at 5pm is now running at 6pm.
Updated 2/2: That 6pm news block is co-hosted by news anchor Kevin Schenk and George Kilpatrick, the latter adding the hour to his existing duties hosting his own long-running Sunday morning talk show.
The changes come at the expense of syndicated host Sean Hannity, whose timeslot still ends at 9pm, despite starting an hour later.
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The news show started with Joe Galuski, but mostly has been a musical chairs routine with primarily weekend guy Jim Donovan and news guy Kevin Schenk (who alternates news with Don Lark); I'm not sure why Kilpatrick hasn't been on yet. Or maybe he has on a night I didn't listen. Heck, Kathy Denman that does traffic for them now did an hour show mornings ages ago, she could even have filled in.
Kilpatrick is a lefty, so it's possible they plan to put him on for an hour to appeal to the 8 or 10 people in the market who want to listen to that, now that WXTL's flipped to rock and done away with the left wing stuff they were running. Then they can claim to be a balanced station, I guess. I can't stand listening to him, an endless loop of the EBS signal would be better.
And I'm not going to hold my breath on them pre-empting an hour of Hannity as opposed to pushing it back an hour, if not now then sooner or later. Before all this routine started, Hannity was at 7:00 and Savage at 10:00. I do plan to write an angry email if they go back to this, but I don't really expect them to listen; as I've detailed previously, the prevailing attitude seems to be "we have the show you like, so you have to put up with how and when we air it and too bad if you don't like it".
To me, the hour of news by a second guy after three hours of what's supposed to be the local news from Bob Lonsberry is just plain redundant - but redundancy is a big problem at WSYR anyways. Why do I need a second guy to repeat most of the same things Bob's already talked about? I'll just dial up Jason Lewis on WFBL instead. I guess that will get me prepared for baseball season.
Now in addition to that being redundant, I've noticed they like to do a 30-second or so preview of the newscasts at the top and bottom of the hour - this seems ridiculously redundant to me, especially at the bottom of the hour. Do I really need a 30 second summary of a newscast that itself is so short (3 minutes or so) that it's barely more than a summary of each story in the first place? Hello, McFly?
I've also said this before, but the pregame shows for SU sports that air on another station and have been gone now for many years, is a little silly. I see the postgame shows are gone on weekdays now, so maybe they're starting to get it, too. I mean, if you still had say Doug Logan or somebody to talk about it, maybe... but for a while there you'd be lucky if you had the same guys from week to week. Most of the best guys to talk about this stuff are working for WSKO -
Another redundancy: Sean Hannity opposite himself, so you can hear him talk about his TV show - while the TV show is on.
I've got to get an antenna set up so I can pull in WGY here in the house, I guess.
Oh, lost in all that is at least Lonsberry is great, I like his views, the way he puts things, and best of all he doesn't come off anything like Reith did, none of the arrogance, the condescension, any of that attitude.
... I would edit one of the other comments if I could, but -
I was right, 9:07 and Sean Hannity is on. (insert string of explitives directed at WSYR's program director here)
Welcome to Bob. Good show...common sense views, glad my son from Rochester area told me about it. Regarding yesterday's show (1/24/12). Bob picked on NY state's biggest OT/pension "padder" and ID'd the guy from a downstate Psych Center. Bob told all the listeners that because this guy increased his yearly income to nearly 180K for at least the last 2 years that he now would now be entitled to receive a pension based on the guy's 3 highest years salaries...averaged. And because the guy made over 170K the past 2 years that he would be basically receiving a "huge" pension based on a percentage of the 170K approximate figure. Probably not true EXCEPT possibly if the guy is in the Tier 1 Retirement Tier. All subsequent Tiers - after 1973, can only increase their yearly pension calculable incomes by 20%. For example if the guy made about his base pay (61K) the following year a maximum of $12,200 of any OT he earned could be used for calculating pension (ie: 73,200 - not the 170K he may have actualy earned. Obviously if he keeps increasing his yearly income every year by these huge amounts he theoretically could eventually get to the figure of 170K. But it is not possible by just working 3 straight years prior to retirement of 100K OT. Also consider that the Psych Center probably can't hire the personnel needed to meet minimum staffing levels and therefore they have to offer OT to employees to cover. This may cost quite a bit in OT but probably saves the costs associated with "new hires" considering benefits and salaries. So go ahead and keep tracking these stories but include all the facts. Not just the ones that "insense" people. I also work for the state. No one has ever offered me "free OT" to pad my pension and I am in my 30th year. In fact, in the last 3 years I have had less than 20 hours of OT in each year and I am in law enforcement, where OT opportunities abound...but believe it or not, are CLOSELY scrutinized since 2008. Long post, but unavoidable...hope Bob reads it.