Radio Content Analysis

In Milwaukee , the three stations came out of three different suburbs, with a mix of formats, and perhaps as a result focused on more varied topics. The only story carried across two different stations, indeed, was the debate about the new nickname of the Marquette sports team.

The ABC affiliate WHBL out of Sheboygan (news/talk) was all headline news in the morning, heavily listener call-ins in the afternoon and all national programming in the evening. On the morning program, “Morning News with Kelly Meyer & Mike Kinzel,” the longest segment ( 3:48 ) and the only one to veer from headline traffic and weather, was a listener news quiz and giveaway. The next longest segment ( 3:39 ) addressed the Marquette team nickname. The afternoon program, “ Middays with Nick Red,” spent roughly 17 minutes on talk and listener call-ins about the site for a new police station. Both hours turned, at the top of the hour, to the ABC news desk for national news headlines, occasionally with ABC correspondents or outside sources.

WTMJ (News/Talk) a CBS station out of Milwaukee , offered a mix of headlines and talk in both the morning and evening hours but had no listener call-in time. The afternoon hours were all national programs. The early morning hour was co-hosted and gave the most talk time (4 minutes) to two boys who went to a local prom together. (The second longest segment was the Marquette nickname debate.) The station stuck with the prom story during the evening drive time with another 3 minutes and 32 seconds on the topic.

The Kenosha station, WGTD, a public station and NPR affiliate, offered the biggest difference. Beyond the top-of-the-hour headlines (mostly from NPR) the entire show was spent with the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside discussing everything from its connection to students to its community involvement, cooperation with other universities and the tenure process. The mid-day local programming, in contrast, was about news. NPR headlines led the hour, and then the host spent the rest of it on a wide variety of subjects, some national, some local and just one sports segment at the end. Many stories were reported from correspondents and some were even fully reported with multiple sources. The longest of those (4 minutes) was about getting more women interested in hunting. The evening news hours were filled with national NPR programming.