News, News, News

St. Louis' WIL, which may be the oldest commercial radio station west of the Mississippi, is scheduled to switch this week to all news. So doing, it joins a string of half a dozen other broadcasters who have decided to give up music, sunrise chitchat and daytime lady talk for news, news, news.

Switch-on-any-time news sounds simple--a 30-or 45-minute cycle of news coverage that begins with ten minutes or so of local and world news on the hour and half-hour, then sandwiches in weather, sports, interviews, stock-market reports. Then around again, with fresh material added when needed. On-the-spot reporters can break in at any time from the scene of a fire, or a press conference. But the simplicity is deceptive, and the stations that have gone in for all news without irritating their listeners or boring them to death are rare.

Into the Black. One of the least boring is WAVA, which covers Washington, D.C., from Arlington, Va. While admitting that the location has built-in advantages, WAVA's executive vice president, John Burgreen, points to fan mail from Congressmen, Government officials and businessmen complimenting the station for its continuous, up-to-the-minute coverage of the Arab-Israeli war. Even the President has had his office wired so he can monitor WAVA instantly.

Philadelphia's KYW, losing money 19 months ago with disk-jockey noises, has gone into all news and into the black. Listener ratings show a jump of almost 400% in the past two years, and last week the station won the annual Radio-TV News Directors Award for its coverage of the Glassboro summit.

Some of the problems with all news are all too detectable in the teething troubles of New York's WCBS, which began competing with the city's profitable and professional all-news pioneer WINS last month. The hard news was no problem--CBS has been reporting it for years. But the filler--sports for women only, psychologists answering letters from worried mothers, non-interviews with non-persons--showed signs of strain. The station developed a serious case of call letteritis ("And now, CBS news presents the CBS weather report"), mentioning CBS or WCBS about 35 times an hour. It also suffers from a lingering trace of the oldtime-radio multiple-byline syndrome: "We now take you to the White House for a report from Dan Rather," "This is Dan Rather at the White House," and, following the report, "This is Dan Rather returning you to CBS in New York."

Costly Effort. WCBS should grow out of its pains; in its three years, Chicago's WNUS has done anything but. Most of its monotonous news coverage, the product of a 23-man staff, sounds as though it were ripped off the wire-service ticker and read without the least editing. WNUS listeners have also endured reports from Viet Nam by Station Owner Gordon McLendon, 46, and from Tel Aviv by his 23-year-old daughter Jan. As befits its product, WNUS ranks a poor seventh in overall Windy City listeners.

Those stations that attempt to do the all-news format justice have found it costly in dollars and effort. KYW General Manager Robert Whitney estimates that his beefed-up staff is "at least five times" the size of a regular radio news team. WCBS in New York has increased its news staff from 16 to 38, will add 15 more by Jan. 1. At Los Angeles' KABC-FM, news segments are updated every half-hour, rewritten completely at least twelve times a day. Nonetheless, the all-news format is paying off for some stations. Scanning the balance sheets after 2 1/2 years of news-only operation, WAVA's Burgreen predicts that "within the next five years there will be stations like this in the top 20 markets across the country."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.