Gone today. Anchors are on vacation so no news....Glen Beck on instead. Are you kidding me???? Guess everyone who wanted news will just go to KUGN.

KPNW is on the OAB website as in need of a PD.

Not there yesterday either ! WTF

That's what happens when a station is understaffed and there's no developing talent to fill in for vacations or whatever...

(Unless it's ANOTHER budget cut and the local morning show has been replaced by syndicated Beck)

It was mentioned coming out of a break that Beck was filling in for the "vacationing Allen Craig......etc". For a whole week if staffing was an issue you'd think they'd bring someone up from Medford or another market....

This has always been a problem, but mostly confined to markets smaller than Eugene. Stations' news staffs are often one person deep today.

Satellite programming is a great resource for fill in use on music-formatted stations, but news/talk is a much trickier situation. There needs to be some semblance of consistancy. I agree they should have considered bringing up someone from Medford, but who would have filled in for that person in Medford?

These companies could be using their stations as a farm system. Start in Crescent City, move up to Coos Bay or Centralia, then to Longview and finally to Medford or Eugene, or to corporate in Lakeport.

I listened at 5:30 this morning...and the female co-anchor was doing the 30 min block......so...if she is there...why can't she do the whole thing...or have the PD on with her. The anchor is gone sohere is "no news.." - so much for their legendary status as a 50,000 watt heritage news station...

yeah..don't cha just love it?

Mullin -your profile still has your email address from that former legendary station....lol

I'll stick to KUGN... I enjoy the team of Dan, Alan, and Jerry. They're fun to listen to... The only time I listen to KPNW now is when the Eugene Ems are playing... and I wonder how long that relationship will last... First they gut the morning show, then sportstalk, then... I realize satellite and syndication is cheaper, but come on... Obviously, Joe listener is last on their priority list...

How times have changed! I worked for WLAV-AM back in the early 70's. We had 3 full-time newspeople and one part-timer. We also had 6 jocks on the air doing 4 hour shifts, with a couple part-timers to help cover the weekend. You have to wonder how we could afford that size staff in that market, and we still made a nice profit for the owners. And, we had fun on the air! Some of the best times I've had.

Thats because you put out a fun, compelling to listen to product. the the sales dept. could SELL. and get results. also the owners of the station didn't overpay for the station.

It's also because in the early 70's, if you had a decent AM signal, a decent airstaff and playlist, you could own the market. I am familiar with WLAV in the Furniture City of Grand Rapids. They sounded good. Ten years later everything moved to FM. Those AM music days are long gone.

A quick search of Wikipedia and radio-locator shows that WLAV-AM was on the graveyard frequency of 1340 kHz! In this day and age, it is amazing that a 1000 watt local station like this could have been that effective.

The current call letters for this station are WBBL, and it is running a sports format.

We tend to think of ground conductivity as it applies to us. The 50kw in Waterloo, Iowa is farther from Waterloo than our 1550 is from 1520! Assuming they haven't moved, that's a 25mv/m signal into the downtown area from a pretty fair distance! WLAV might have a decent signal on 1340. I remember listing to KROY Sacramento as soon as I passed Redding and that's a local channel.

According to Radio-Locator, it looks like the ground conductivity in Grand Rapids is better than what we have in the Portland area. The "local" contour encompasses the city very nicely:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WBBL&service=AM&status=L&hours=U

This is a non-directional signal, but there is some distortion in the contour towards the west, likely because of lower ground conductivity.

I remember WLAV to be loud and clear in west Grand Rapids. WGRD, I believe at 1400 was their competitor. Good old fashioned AM top40 battle in the 70's! Both calls exist today on FM, but are long gone on the AM band. BTW, you could also hear top40 giants WOKY Milwaukee, WLS and WCFL Chicago daytime in Grand Rapids.

WLAV covered the market really well, we had a great engineer by the name of Dave Boot, who knew how to get the most out of that signal. Also, we were 1KW days/250watts at night. The station was #1 in those days, WGRD was a daytimer that simulcast on FM. Bill Hennes was consulting them at the time. WLAV-FM was doing an automated oldies format, with the system always breaking down. Everytime the automation got zapped by static electricity, it would go crazy.