Florida Radio Meets Idalia Head-On
• Hurricane Idalia continued to strengthen overnight as it moved closer to landfall Wednesday morning on Florida’s Gulf Coast, about midway between Cedar Key and Apalachicola, as a major Category 4 hurricane, packing winds as high as 125 mph. The resultant storm surge in Florida’s Big Bend area is expected to reach as high as 15 feet, which is considered “catastrophic,” while the Tampa area is expected to see a storm surge of 4 to 7 feet, enough to flood those vulnerable coastal areas. Some areas could see a foot of rain in just 24 to 48 hours, and scattered tornados are also possible.
Against that dire backdrop, RAMP made contact with Tommy Chuck, Tampa-based SVP of Programming for iHeartMedia West Central Florida, who was nice enough to take a few precious moments out of his team’s increasingly intensive storm preparations to update us. “Our storm prep actually began over the weekend,” Chuck said, “with air talent providing early information on Idalia’s projected forecast track, as well as sandbag pick-up locations and other important reminders to help listeners get in front of the storm as it quickly approached.”
Chuck continued, “On Monday our stations remained in ‘normal’ programming mode, with 100% of our talent breaks focused on storm preparation and additional news/weather reports from our 24/7 iHeartRadio News Team as well as our local TV partner, WFLA-TV,” Chuck said. “Tuesday morning at 5am we launched full ‘Operation Stormwatch’ coverage on NewsRadio WFLA. At 10am, we rolled that long-form coverage out to [WMTX] Mix 100.7 and 620 WDAE. At 3pm, we took coverage across our entire cluster of English-speaking stations, adding 93.3 FLZ, WBTP (95.7 The Beat) and WFUS (US 103.5). On the Spanish-language side, the Accion News team is providing specific Spanish-language news content on 1250 WHNZ-AM and WRUB (Rumba 106.5).”
Chuck added, “While we do utilize meteorologists from our local TV partner as part of our coverage, we are proud to provide round-the-clock, radio-specific long-form coverage to keep listeners informed. We utilize air personalities from across our entire cluster to team together and provide this coverage. When necessary, our coverage is expanded to include other areas within the state that are feeling the effects of the storm. For example, today we are serving as support for our iHeartRadio Tallahassee stations. We plan to be live all through the night and into tomorrow as long as the effects of the storm are being felt in our area.” You can listen to any of this coverage via the iHeartRadio app. [Graphic: Mapbox]
