Florida Radio On Alert For Idalia
• Tropical Storm Idalia continues to gain strength as it tracks toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, where it is expected to make landfall, possibly as a major Category 3 hurricane, by Wednesday.
In a Monday advisory, the National Hurricane Center noted that “life-threatening storm surge” and “dangerous hurricane-force winds” could develop along parts of Florida’s west coast and the Florida Panhandle as early as late Tuesday.
Naturally, radio stations located on Florida’s Gulf Coast are already making preparations for Idalia’s unwelcome arrival — as an example, Naples, FL-based Beasley Media Group shared its preparedness update for its Tampa Bay and Ft. Myers-Naples markets as Idalia steadily approaches…
Tampa: “We are partnering with ABC Action News as an affiliate to provide meteorologist reports every hour as needed. The Beasley Tampa morning shows are all busy prepping for what could be an earlier than normal broadcast Wednesday morning if Idalia stays on its current time frame and path. Local teams will be creating digital content for our sites and social media. In addition, the national and regional digital content team will be helping to supplement digital content with the very latest updates.
Fort Myers-Naples: In the event the storm would shift to Ft. Myers-Naples, Beasley’s radio cluster will provide the following support: On-Air Updates/Storm Feed: Monday, starting at 5pm, we will be airing updates once an hour unless we need to switch to wall-to-wall with NBC-TV affiliate. Tuesday at 5pm we will be airing prerecorded updates twice an hour first in stopset if not wall -to-wall coverage. Personalities covering all updates and providing the community with information across the Beasley stations include Tom Calococci, Gina Burch, Marija, and Board Ops Rick Church and Roger Marley.
The web/social team will also be posting throughout the storm. In addition, our engineers will be on standby ready to keep us on the air in both markets with generators ready to go based on where the storm makes landfall, and the stations will also be utilizing QUU in-car dashboard messaging to provide important and timely information.” [Source: National Hurricane Center]
