WARM Tanks...

I could sit here and make with the nicey-nice about WARM's passing, and what a great radio station it was, and what a crying shame it is that it's gone.

I can't do that.

The time for wailing and sighs of disbelief is long past.

People need to get a grip.

People need to realize that the WARM you may have loved has been gone for a long, long time.

Any "love affair" I had with the place ended shortly after I went to work there. Whatever warts, pimples, and wrinkles WARM had on the outside looked far more hideous from the inside.

While I'll not dance a hornpipe on the grave of WARM, mourning its loss is not a day late and a dollar short, it's decades late and millions short. I don't think it's great that its gone, I really don't think it's going dark means much of anything to anyone here in 2009. It's a matter of relevance, something WARM surrendered way back when.

Know this, a lot of good friends were made while there. Some living, some not. It changes nothing.

Regardless of what you might think, I also grew up in the shadow of the giant, I also went through grade and high school, and college years, and most of my 20s listening to WARM. WARM was then the radio station of record in NE PA, The Standard Radio Station of this corner of Pennsylvania, a distinction it did indeed deserve...back then. Back then would be the '70s, latest.

Once the '80s dawned, different days awaited WARM. The beast was out of the cave. That beast was FM. Or maybe it was more like FM was the troll that had lived beneath the Radio Bridge forever and had now climbed into the sunlight.

"FM intrusion" is how much of AM management used to refer to the rising popularity of FM, like FM had no right to exist, like it was a threat and a danger that could be stopped, like the barbarians of FM could be turned back at WARMland's gate. Such fools.

It was delusional thinking.

More important, the smart heads in radio as far back as the 70s knew that AM's end days were upon them, that they were very real, that the AM party was over and FM was going to have the pleasure of turning out the lights.

Some AM lights went dim then dark long before others.

WARM, likely because of it size, strength, and image, managed to lumber along through the 80s with respectable numbers. Defying most odds, WARM held on to the #1 position in this market until WKRZ knocked it off the perch, upon which it was never to sit again.

(I can't sign an affidavit to this, but I believe that it was '82 or '83 when 'KRZ did something no other station had ever been able to do in well over 20 years.) ***Since writing that, Andy Palumbo tells me it was 1981.***

For a respectable time, WARM maintained a sizable market share, WARM still had a lot of listeners. WARM also had a lot of something else; it had a lot of down-time. Down-time in the radio biz is those parts of any given hour when the audience stops listening to your station and goes to another. What's happening is that your audience still listens for certain things you offer, like "First News First," while turning away from you for most of what they want.

WARM's down-time was increasing such that it scared its owners, who knew well enough early in the '80s to bolster their market presence with an FM. Thus was born Magic 93. Thus WARM's favorite child status began to show signs of being a little threadbare, a bit worn and ragged.

In time, WARM's owner, Susquehanna Broadcasting, sold its properties here in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, leaving behind the station that had in all reality made Susquehanna a very successful and profitable company. Although headquartered in York, Pennsylvania, Susquehanna had considered WARM its Flagship Station for decades. No more.

Since I worked at WARM I get a pass on speaking my mind, just like being Irish gives you a pass when you feel compelled to tell an Irish joke, or perhaps, take an unkind swipe at parade weekend.

WARM was not a good place to work. Although it had is ups, downs, and in-betweens, it was on balance, a lousy place to work. That I spent seven long years of my life there doesn't say much about me, does it? And I'm admitting that right here and now. That, though, doesn't change the fact that the inside of WARM was nothing like the outside of WARM.

Some may think it unkind, inappropriate, almost blasphemous to trash the WARM of the their dreams. To them, all that can be said is, "You never worked there, did you? You simply do not know, cannot know."

WARM is gone. The world is not a better place because it is, but it certainly hasn't been a better place for its existence since around the time that Springsteen's "Born In The USA" peaked at #9 across the land - a song which WARM never played.

And therein you'll find one telling symptom of the systemic disease that first took WARM to its knees, then shoved it face-first into the canvas.

While Americans were singing along with The Boss about lovin' this great country of ours, WARM was falling further and further out of touch with its audience, probably hoping that Lobo would release a new and innocuous single. It's been a long fall.

Remember, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.

WARM's going away is not a shock, it's long overdue.