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KYW 1060 no longer broadcasting snow-day school closing numbers

Oh no! Where am I going to hear that 551 & 599 are closed (my elementary and high school respectively)? That being said, when school is closed, the home phone rings at the same time as the cell phones and the text comes as the phones are ringing shortly after 5am. And then I listen to Preston & Steve on WMMR and do see that my childrens' schools are closed on the bottom of channel 6.
 
I aways thought that number system would have saved time over the endless droning that happened in the midwest: "St. Pia Zadora Elementary and High School, closed; West Podunk Consolidated School District, closed..." It is true that a lot of folks get those text messages, but my wife is a school bus driver and buses a lot of low income kids. Sometimes she has no phone number to reach parents and sometimes she has a more up to date number than the school system has. Payday or welfare check day isn't until the 1st (or whenever) and those pre-aid minutes are already expired...that means no text message when school is closed
 
ThePowerCow said:
Seems like it attracted young listeners.
Click to expand...

But school age listeners are of no value to radio. What was, before texting and automatic calling, attractive was the listening by parents. It meant that for perhaps several hours on days with snowfall, many parents would put KYW on instead of their favorite morning show or music station.
 
Many years ago, my Mom would listen to the local station for school closings for hours on snowy days. Not sure why. She knew the school was closed because she worked there and got a call early letting her know. Maybe it was something about continually hearing it on the radio. I'm really not sure. But those school closing/snow days bring back some happy memories.
 
Fakeem said:
Is that really necessary?
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Sad but true. A lot of people do not realize the extent of poverty among our youth. I am not going to start the "bad choices in life issue" or parents with "messed up values" issues, but there are a lot of kids that do without a lot of things including food during the last week of the month thru no fault of their own.
 
Do these parents have an AM radio in their house? If they have TV they're ok. No cable/satellite necessary. All the broadcast TV channels with news, 3, 6,10, & 29 will continue to do school closings on the bottom of the screen
 
Just commenting that not everyone's phone service is up to date or have correct phone numbers listed with the school system, particularly prepaid customers. That is all.
 
I grew up listening to the great Ken Garland do the school numbers on WIP. On particularly heavy days, it was pretty much the news at the top and bottom of the hour, then Ken doing numbers until the next newscast.
 
KDKA had a whole process for school closings. The Principal or an official of the school would call early in the morning, where a producer or intern was taking the calls. They would say "St. Pia Zadora closed" and give a secret code number to authenticate the call.

There was one well-known incident where they erroneously announced a Catholic school that was actually open. KDKA could never figure it out, as the code number should have prevented this.

I had a friend who went to school there whose mother worked in the office.....I may have an idea or two
about how that could have happened. :D
 
FreddyE1977 said:
KDKA had a whole process for school closings. The Principal or an official of the school would call early in the morning, where a producer or intern was taking the calls. They would say "St. Pia Zadora closed" and give a secret code number to authenticate the call.

There was one well-known incident where they erroneously announced a Catholic school that was actually open. KDKA could never figure it out, as the code number should have prevented this.

I had a friend who went to school there whose mother worked in the office.....I may have an idea or two
about how that could have happened. :D
Click to expand...

There was a reality show on MTV many years back about pranks at schools. One episode showed how a kid got the local media to announce the school was closed because he had a family member who worked for the school and he knew the "secret code."
 
My mom was a WIP listener during my school days, which is why I always listened to Ken Garland for my school's number. One heavily snowy day when my school and lots of others were closed, Garland at one point said "In Burlington County... gasp..." before rattling off the Burlco closings. (I don't really remember which county but that's besides the point. :)

RIP, numbers! Tell Ken Garland and Wee Willie we said hi!

ixnay
 
He could get kind of winded on those days, especially racing to get it all done before the next newscast.

And honorable mention to Tom Moran, who had the afternoon school numbers for all those night classes to read.
 
I loved it when they called MY number, but could never figure who would be around to listen to the next go-round if school was already closed. And I actually preferred when they use to name the schools and districts that were closed. That way, you could hear if a close-by school system closed, giving hope that yours would be too. But 1027, 1028, 1029, 1031, 1035, 1041 meant nothing to most listeners. But coming from Upper Darby, if we heard that Havertown was closed, it gave great hope we'd be next.
 
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