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The Latest WECK Drama

M

Mark1981

I woke up this morning to read on the Buffalo Broadcasting Facebook page that Ron Dombrowski’s long-running Drivetime Polka Show on WECK had been dropped in favor of another ethnic Polish show featuring a mix of music that doesn’t sound like the traditional polka music listeners of this format expect. Readers of other WECK threads on this board may recall that Ron’s show was recently reduced by an hour so that WECK can air JP’s “Breakfast with the Beatles.” After the Buffalo Broadcasting post, other local Polka hosts weighed in, criticizing WECK. Even Bill Yuhnke reached out saying give him a call, presumably about bringing the show to WEBR Or WLVL. According to one post I read, Ron was asked to change the name of the program (“Drivetime Polkas” makes sense for Ron’s weekday show on WXRL but not so much on Sunday mornings) and reduce his chatter in favor of more music.

Then tonight, I just read a post from Buddy Shula on WECK’s Facebook page, denying all this. Buddy said Ron is simply out-of-town this weekend, and that his show will return next Sunday. INTERESTING! Buffalo Broadcasting said it confirmed its information with Ron himself before posting and is standing by its reporting. Hmmmm!

EDITED UPDATE: Since posting this, I checked out Facebook and, indeed, Ron Dombrowski’s show appears to be returning to WECK next Sunday. Greg Chwojdak, host of Polkamotion on WXRL, intimates that Buddy gave into the pressure of local Polka fans. Listen! I don’t have a stake in any of this. Buddy is banned from this board so he can’t comment. Of course, Buddy is lashing out at Chwojdak, calling him on the WECK Facebook page a “wannabe” when, in fact, Greg is as much a respected veteran of the Polka radio scene as Ronnie D.
 
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Mark1981 said:
I woke up this morning to read on the Buffalo Broadcasting Facebook page that Ron Dombrowski’s long-running Drivetime Polka Show on WECK had been dropped in favor of another ethnic Polish show featuring a mix of music that doesn’t sound like the traditional polka music listeners of this format expect. Readers of other WECK threads on this board may recall that Ron’s show was recently reduced by an hour so that WECK can air JP’s “Breakfast with the Beatles.” After the Buffalo Broadcasting post, other local Polka hosts weighed in, criticizing WECK. Even Bill Yuhnke reached out saying give him a call, presumably about bringing the show to WEBR Or WLVL. According to one post I read, Ron was asked to change the name of the program (“Drivetime Polkas” makes sense for Ron’s weekday show on WXRL but not so much on Sunday mornings) and reduce his chatter in favor of more music.

Then tonight, I just read a post from Buddy Shula on WECK’s Facebook page, denying all this. Buddy said Ron is simply out-of-town this weekend, and that his show will return next Sunday. INTERESTING! Buffalo Broadcasting said it confirmed its information with Ron himself before posting and is standing by its reporting. Hmmmm!

EDITED UPDATE: Since posting this, I checked out Facebook and, indeed, Ron Dombrowski’s show appears to be returning to WECK next Sunday. Greg Chwojdak, host of Polkamotion on WXRL, intimates that Buddy gave into the pressure of local Polka fans. Listen! I don’t have a stake in any of this. Buddy is banned from this board so he can’t comment. Of course, Buddy is lashing out at Chwojdak, calling him on the WECK Facebook page a “wannabe” when, in fact, Greg is as much a respected veteran of the Polka radio scene as Ronnie D.
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The insignificance of all this boggles the mind.
 
flybynight said:
The insignificance of all this boggles the mind.
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I got my first radio job when I was 13 running paid ethnic Sunday shows on a station in Cleveland, OH. Nearly nobody listened to them 64 years ago, and I doubt the audience has grown since then.

(They did bring me some great food, though... particularly the Italians and the Greeks who all brought lots of food and about 20 fans to each show!)
 
DavidEduardo said:
I got my first radio job when I was 13 running paid ethnic Sunday shows on a station in Cleveland, OH. Nearly nobody listened to them 64 years ago, and I doubt the audience has grown since then.

(They did bring me some great food, though... particularly the Italians and the Greeks who all brought lots of food and about 20 fans to each show!)
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By your standard, Hispanic programming is a waste of time and money above 36 degrees north latitude. The fact that the programming is bringing in significant money indicates that there's enough interest for there to be a viable market for it on a limited basis.
 
SirRoxalot said:
By your standard, Hispanic programming is a waste of time and money above 36 degrees north latitude. The fact that the programming is bringing in significant money indicates that there's enough interest for there to be a viable market for it on a limited basis.
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I am talking about block programming, since the subject of this thread is the change in a once-a-week Polish community show.

That kind of programming is still prevalent in any market with significant ethnic groups not large enough to support a fulltime station in their language. While LA can support full stations in Farsi, Armenian, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Spanish, there are brokered shows in Tagalog and other Southeastern Asian languages that do very well. The same is true in San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento and places going all the way to the East Coast. Of course, most of those are on marginal AM signals that have found a niche doing brokered programming.

In Cleveland, in the 60's, two of the only profitable FMs did multiple languages all day long, going into the 70's with that formula. But as the older first generation died off, so did that kind of station in many markets.

Those old-fashioned appointment listening shows in languages that are spoken by limited populations are a separate subject from fulltime Spanish language (Hispanic programming can be in a variety of languages,.. English, Spanish, Quechua, Guaraní, and so on...) which can be very successful wherever there is a significan first generation Hispanic population. The 36th Parallel would eliminate very successful and often Top 5 Spanish language stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, Reno, Salt Lake, Denver, Chicago, New York City, DC, most of Las Vegas, Hartford, Boston, Philly and so many more ranging from Seattle to Detroit to Sioux City.
 
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DavidEduardo said:
I got my first radio job when I was 13 running paid ethnic Sunday shows on a station in Cleveland, OH. Nearly nobody listened to them 64 years ago, and I doubt the audience has grown since then.

(They did bring me some great food, though... particularly the Italians and the Greeks who all brought lots of food and about 20 fans to each show!)
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Back when I was in college, I recall working very briefly with Stan Jasiniski when he was doing his polka show. Sadly, it was just a one-shot.
 
To follow up on what David mentioned earlier: Toronto is the best example of what he's referring to. There are two stations that do block programming.

CHIN-AM/FM(100.7/1540/91.9)is the more established of the two, having started operations in the late 60s. 100.7 does Portuguese, Italian, South Asian and Spanish shows(with Polish, Serbian, Turkish-Kurdish, and Slovene shows on the weekend. 1540 focuses more on Cantonese, Mandarin and Portuguese shows, with a number of other languages on the weekend(notably Somali, Bengali, Jewish, etc.) 91.9 does Spanish, Italian and South Asian.

CHKT(1430/88.9)does Cantonese and Mandarin, along with Filipino, Russian and Punjabi/Hindi(among other languages).
 
ckg279 said:
To follow up on what David mentioned earlier: Toronto is the best example of what he's referring to. There are two stations that do block programming.

CHIN-AM/FM(100.7/1540/91.9)is the more established of the two, having started operations in the late 60s. 100.7 does Portuguese, Italian, South Asian and Spanish shows(with Polish, Serbian, Turkish-Kurdish, and Slovene shows on the weekend. 1540 focuses more on Cantonese, Mandarin and Portuguese shows, with a number of other languages on the weekend(notably Somali, Bengali, Jewish, etc.) 91.9 does Spanish, Italian and South Asian.

CHKT(1430/88.9)does Cantonese and Mandarin, along with Filipino, Russian and Punjabi/Hindi(among other languages).
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CHKT is only on 1430. CIRV on 88.9 is a completely separate operation with multiple HD subchannels. There are several other multi-ethnic operations in Toronto, too - CHHA (1610) primarily serves Latin American audiences, CINA (1650) serves South Asian audiences, CHTO (1690) is primarily Greek and the "CMR" operation on 101.3 also has multiple HD subs for various international communities.

It's worth noting that Canadian regulations don't generally permit single-language ethnic stations. The licenses there generally require multi-ethnic stations to serve a variety of international communities.
 
I ran the board for Emilino Rico a few times Sunday mornings on WWOL around 1970. He was a kind gentleman, an old school radio man. Some of the music he played was current Italian pop. I remember him putting his hand up and twirling his index finger in a circle to indicate he was about to cue me to start the music. A fun memory.
 
The polka show was 9-noon. It's now 8-10. People want polkas after church. The station is in damage control because it'll lose/lost most of its listeners if it replaces it with some Beatles show. I guess they think listeners will change their schedule to accommodate a Beatle. This JP dude whoever he is is literally on 35 hours weekdays and that's 35 too many and now he moved back Polkas on Sunday for Beatles.
 
KurtLockport said:
People want polkas after church.
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Purely anecdotal, but there may be more than a morsel of truth to this sentence, at least from two families I've observed who have a tradition of listening to polkas. Then again, there was a Sunday afternoon polka show that they also enjoyed, so maybe it's a wash.
 
DavidEduardo said:
In Cleveland, in the 60's, two of the only profitable FMs did multiple languages all day long, going into the 70's with that formula. But as the older first generation died off, so did that kind of station in many markets.
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Interestingly, after those two FM stations flipped to commercial formats it fell on the NPR startup in Cleveland, WCPN, to air ethnic programming on Saturday evenings and all day Sunday. That station tried unsuccessfully to reduce the airtime for the block programming in 1988 and 1997—meeting political pressure and threats to cut funding for the station at the state level—and simply let attrition take its course whenever hosts retired or died. By the time WCPN merged formats and personnel with WKSU last year, two of the three remaining ethnic shows moved to a WKSU HD subchannel (the third retired).

Three stations in the Cleveland market, all of them AMs, still carry a small smattering of block ethnic fare in the present day.
 
ckg279 said:
To follow up on what David mentioned earlier: Toronto is the best example of what he's referring to. There are two stations that do block programming.

CHIN-AM/FM(100.7/1540/91.9)is the more established of the two, having started operations in the late 60s. 100.7 does Portuguese, Italian, South Asian and Spanish shows(with Polish, Serbian, Turkish-Kurdish, and Slovene shows on the weekend. 1540 focuses more on Cantonese, Mandarin and Portuguese shows, with a number of other languages on the weekend(notably Somali, Bengali, Jewish, etc.) 91.9 does Spanish, Italian and South Asian.

CHKT(1430/88.9)does Cantonese and Mandarin, along with Filipino, Russian and Punjabi/Hindi(among other languages).
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Toronto is changing too. CHIN was primarily an Italian language station when it started, and Italian remained as the "primary" language broadcast for many years. But as the first generation ages and dies out, we see Italian language programming now being slowing reduced. For example M-F Italian a couple years ago ended at 6 pm. Then went to 5;30 and now ends at 5. As the Italian ethnic population becomes English dominant, other newer ethnic groups will take their place.
 
Nathan Obral said:
Interestingly, after those two FM stations flipped to commercial formats it fell on the NPR startup in Cleveland, WCPN, to air ethnic programming on Saturday evenings and all day Sunday. That station tried unsuccessfully to reduce the airtime for the block programming in 1988 and 1997—meeting political pressure and threats to cut funding for the station at the state level—and simply let attrition take its course whenever hosts retired or died. By the time WCPN merged formats and personnel with WKSU last year, two of the three remaining ethnic shows moved to a WKSU HD subchannel (the third retired).

Three stations in the Cleveland market, all of them AMs, still carry a small smattering of block ethnic fare in the present day.
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I was surprised to see Polish programming still going strong in Chicago. There's WPNA 103.1 with Polish all day, EDM at night.
 
RadioGuy1864 said:
I was surprised to see Polish programming still going strong in Chicago. There's WPNA 103.1 with Polish all day, EDM at night.
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Somehow I got an image of Tiësto spinning sped-up polkas amid a light show.
 
DavidEduardo said:
I got my first radio job when I was 13 running paid ethnic Sunday shows on a station in Cleveland, OH. Nearly nobody listened to them 64 years ago, and I doubt the audience has grown since then.

(They did bring me some great food, though... particularly the Italians and the Greeks who all brought lots of food and about 20 fans to each show!)
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Maybe Cleveland's different. Ethnic shows in Buffalo have definitely had a big impact.
 
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