State of The Station for WOWO Summertime 2021

Here we are in the middle of June 2021 and this weeks article and podcast is a little different from my usual weekly updates.

Today an update on what is going on at WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from an insiders perspective as we peak behind the curtain and give you some insights.

First a bit about me, just so you know who I am and how I know what I’m going to tell you.  I joined WOWO Radio in December, 2013 as the 5th person on a five person advertising sales team. WOWO is one of 6 radio stations owned by Federated Media in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I not only survived, but thrived.  I won my first Feddy Award in 2014 for Supergoal.  Feddy’s are the Federated Media achievement awards, like Grammy’s or Emmy’s.

As the years went by, I continued to grow and I won my second Feddy Supergoal Award in 2019 for Federated Media’s Fort Wayne division.  These Supergoal awards are only given to one person each year in Fort Wayne and they do the same at our Federated Media South Bend division.  I also won my third Feddy in 2019, but this was company wide, not just our division.  This Feddy Award is Account Manager of the Year for our company.

The past nearly 8 years is just a portion of my background in radio, advertising and marketing.  I started while I was in high school on the radio and worked for a few other stations on the air and on the advertising business side for a few decades.  Finally, I will mention that right after I won my second and third Feddy Awards, I was promoted to become the General Sales Manager for WOWO Radio and now lead the team to help businesses connect with our listeners and convert them into customers.

Now let’s move on to what I really wanted to share with you.

WOWO radio is nearly 100 years old.  2025 will mark a century of WOWO radio.  The past 20 or so years, WOWO has been a news and talk formatted radio station.  Since I joined in 2013 we’ve had a couple of changes in our programming line-up:

Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Charly Butcher was on until August 2018 from 5am to 9am.  Charly unexpectedly passed away while on vacation and our company had to scramble and plan at the same time.  Charly was a beloved radio icon who I worked with when I was on the air at our sister station WMEE and when the opportunity arose for a new morning anchor on WOWO, Charly was given the opportunity which he handled marvelously.  He was in his early 60’s when he died and Federated Media had a couple of guest hosts as they did a local and national search for his replacement.  Turns out our news director, Kayla Blakeslee was selected and Kayla has been doing an outstanding job these past 3 years.  Looking forward, Kayla has decades ahead of her as the host of WOWO’s fast paced morning news show.  Her advertisers are getting results and her personal endorsement clients are thrilled.

National talk show host Glenn Beck kicks off the WOWO Mid-Day Double Play at 9am as he has for years.  Glenn also will endorse local businesses, ask me about it.

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh anchored the noon to 3pm portion of the Mid-Day Double Play on WOWO until February this year.  He passed away a little over a year after announcing he had lung cancer.  Rush was able to continue his radio show with a rotating cast of fill-in hosts in 2020 when he was off for treatment.  After the announcement of his passing this year, the program continued with hosts playing clips from the Rush radio archives that were woven into the events of the day. 

The Rush Limbaugh program was syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks and while we at WOWO waited to see what Premiere was going to do to replace Rush, we looked around to see what our options were.  Should we wait and see or pick someone local?  Is there someone that we should consider that another network was offering? A lot of activity was going on behind the scenes even before Rush died because we knew we would need a plan.

We needed a plan to satisfy two groups.  The WOWO listeners who were loyal to conservative talk radio in the style of Rush Limbaugh for decades, was one group.  We also wanted to give our advertising partners a radio show that they would want to continue to support.  Now let me share with you something about that.

Not all of our advertisers would be called supporters of the conservative talk programming WOWO offers.  But they see the value in inviting the WOWO listeners to their business.  Advertising on WOWO is a great investment and I’ll have more on that in a moment.

Around the country over 1000 radio stations carried Rush and as we contemplated our options, we also knew the timing would need to be right.  Rush listeners grieved and by continuing with the legacy Rush shows on WOWO, it helped them, I’m sure.  We also did a poll to our database of listeners to see who they wanted and it turns out the listeners top choice was also ours.

Dan Bongino debuted on WOWO and hundreds of other radio stations on Monday May 24th and the response has been excellent.  Dan’s show is not from the Premiere Radio Network so it created a bit of confusion when about three days after Dan debuted, the Premiere network announced they were going to pair Buck Sexton with a guy from the Fox Sports network to co-host from noon to 3pm.  Dan did an excellent job of explaining that they were a different network and he wasn’t going anywhere.

I am very happy with Federated Media’s decision to add Dan Bongino from noon to 3pm and I think you will be too if you listen.

Afternoons on WOWO continue to be the Pat Miller Program.  Pat marked a 20 year milestone on WOWO this year.  He started out hosting a Saturday morning show on WOWO and then took over afternoons from 3pm to 6pm when that daily show became available.

Nights on WOWO continue with a tape delay (by three hours) of Sean Hannity’s radio show from 6pm to 9pm. We have one more change occuring starting next Monday night at 9pm.  Mark Levin returns to WOWO.  Mark is another national conservative talk show host that was on from 9pm to midnight when I started at WOWO and his return is welcomed by all.

Now that you know the line-up, what about our ratings?

Ratings are done by an independent company that surveys people in the Metro Fort Wayne area and provides us with monthly updates.  During my time at WOWO, we have been either number one, two or three out of nearly 30 radio stations in the number that matters most, total number of listeners.  It’s been at least 5 years since we were third and usually we were number two behind our sister station WMEE in total listeners ages 12 and older.  We’ve always been the most listened to station for grown ups.  Well the last rating update has WOWO as the most listened to radio station with over 100,000 listeners every week.  Hat’s off to all of my co-workers in the programming department and news department for that outstanding accomplishment. 

I was asked this week by the manager of one of the largest retailers based in Fort Wayne, how we are doing financially?  Did we take a hit during 2020 and have we started to recover?

Here’s the answer:  March 2020 was when the state of Indiana was told to stay at home to prevent the spread of Covid.  Federated Media made some adjustments and also worked with our advertising partners to help them survive.  Numerous times I have been thanked by our clients for our being sensative to their situations and it has paid off for both them and us.

WOWO’s goals are to not just beat 2020, but to grow beyond our 2019 pre-pandemic levels.  We are doing it.  I have some of the very best advertising and marketing people in our city working for me at WOWO.  We hear it from our advertisers that we really listen, care and respond to what our clients need.  

As you look forward to the rest of 2021 and the years ahead, my pledge to you is to continue that level of service and earn your trust month after month after month.

Email me if you would like more information, Scott@WOWO.com and one more item…

I am looking for just the right person to join our WOWO Advertising Sales Team.  Email me Scott@WOWO.com and I can give you more details on what can be one of the most rewarding careers available in Fort Wayne, Indiana at WOWO Radio.