The Senate’s impeachment trial of President Donald Trump begins today in Washington DC. It’s obviously major news, but how does radio cover an event so important that winds up being filled with long politically rambling speeches?
Cox Media Group’s News Talk Format Leader Pete Spriggs says, in Atlanta, the AM dial (750) will be used to cover major portions of the trial while updates run on WSB-FM (95.5) during regular programming. ” We will also be utilizing our on-line streams on wsbradio.com and the WSB Radio App for every hearing and every part of the trial. We’re also developing daily in-depth updates on all media in the WSB Noon News, at 5pm with Erick Erickson, and a special hour show 7pm—8pm each night hosted by Mark Arum.”
1010WINS New York Director of News and Programming Ben Mevorach says listeners lead very busy lives and don’t necessarily have the time to follow every minute of the proceedings. “They expect us to report information from the trial and they expect those reports to be free of bias. We will provide updates 5x every hour and stream the proceedings in their entirety on our website through Radio.com.”
In Los Angeles KABC General Manager Angeles Drew Hayes says Cumulus will have coverage of the trial and all the Senate debate live in its entirety on KABC Stream 2. Plus analysis from all of our local and national hosts 24/7…on KABC AM 790 and KABC.com.
WCBS NewsRadio Director of News and Programming Tim Scheld says the station will be relying heavily on the resources of CBS News. “No better team in Washington. We’ll carry their updates at the top and bottom of every hour. We’ll also start out with a reporter in the newsroom monitoring the trial and coming on twice an hour with any additional reporting we feel is needed. We did this during testimony in the hearings in the House and it worked well. We will link to wall to wall coverage via Radio.com on all of our digital assets so if listeners want to listen to (or watch) the full trial they can. Truth be told, our listeners depend on us for local news as well and we have no plans to divert from that mission. This week will see the beginning of the Harvey Weinstein trial in Manhattan and we’ll be putting resources into that coverage. We’re also planning election coverage in two weeks so we all expect to be pretty busy.”
