Running 33 minutes, here’s part two of our coverage of Hurricane Sandy recorded on Monday morning, 8-10 hours before landfall.
The reason for recording this, was to document radio’s coverage and response to a major emergency. The only editing of this recording done was to remove most of the commercials and music, where it was played.
Note the tone of each broadcaster, and content of each station this particular morning. Before the storm’s effects were fully felt, the Tri-State region was already in lockdown, Connecticut’s governor had already closed all roads in the state, and New York City was already beginning to see flooding in Lower Manhattan. And still, listening to this recording, note that aside from WTIC and WINS, other stations were mentioning Sandy, but basically it was ‘format as usual’ – and this was Morning Drive.
Watch, as more coverage is posted next week, and see just how many stations all but ignored the storm as the day progressed from morning to afternoon, and only News/Talk stations really had a handle on coverage. There are bright spots in the radio coverage, but we’ll talk about that next time.
ESPN Radio 98.7 simulcasted its sister station WABC-TV’s wall-to-wall news coverage of (rightly named) Superstorm (and equally rightly named Hurricane) Sandy, including the nightly “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer”). (I know. Sandy knocked the juice out of my house. [Power was restored to my part of town late the following Saturday afternoon.])
Oh-speaking of Connecticut, the same simulcast was utilized the day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre (Newtown, CT being in the Fairfield County ‘burbs of NYC) and part of the following day. (And both ESPN 98.7/WABC-TV simulcasts were, respectively, six months and seven-and-a-half months removed from the demise of Urban AC station 98.7 Kiss-FM!)