Clearing the Air

Up and down the radio dial, stations across the country, especially in New York and Washington, D.C., dropped commercials and music for news and talk, minutes after the first jet plowed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:48 a.m. on Sept. 11. ABC News Radio got its first report out to hundreds of its affiliates at 8:55 a.m. Eastern time. Continuous coverage began at 9:03 a.m. In a quirk of fate, ABC News Radio national correspondent Ann Compton was the sole broadcast reporter on Air Force One. The network estimated that as many as 2,000 radio stations, including some that weren't affiliated with ABC, carried its wall-to-wall coverage.

By 9:30, Westwood One, which is managed by Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting, made all of its news products and services—CBS Radio News, CNN Radio News, Fox News Radio and NBC Radio News—available for broadcast to any radio station in the U.S. until further notice. It also made available via satellite the broadcasts of Infinity's WINS-AM and WCBS-AM in New York and WTOP-AM in Washington.

Only two commercial radio stations, Clear Channel's WKTU-FM and Spanish Broadcasting's WPAT-FM, and two noncommercial stations, WNYC-FM and WKCR-FM, had their main antennas on Trade Center Tower One. WKTU quickly switched to its full-power backup at 4 Times Square, the site of Clear Channel's other four radio stations. WPAT had a reduced-power backup on the tower in New Jersey, where it has its AM counterpart. The signals of the city's other FM stations, most of which transmit from the Empire State Building, and its AM stations, which transmit from towers scattered around the metro area, were not affected by the collapse of the Trade Center.

As of Sept. 13, New York's major news outlets WINS-AM and WCBS-AM were still delivering commercial-free, nonstop news. Elsewhere, radio hosts such as Howard Stern on Infinity's WXRK-FM became instant news reporters. Stern stayed on the air until noon, taking calls, passing on information and calming New Yorkers. Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill, hosts of the morning show on ABC's Hot Adult Contemporary station WPLJ-FM in New York, stayed on the air until 7 p.m. In Los Angeles, Clear Channel's Rick Dees, morning host on KIIS-FM and syndicated on more than 30 radio stations, suspended music and remained on the air until 4 p.m. providing news and taking listener phone calls.

Late in the week, radio managers were meeting to set up special programming, combing playlists to find appropriate music and struggling with the decision of when to begin airing ads. Estimates put the weekly loss for the biggest stations at about $100,000 per station, a small price to pay, said radio execs. Clients such as Coca-Cola, for example, have cancelled schedules in multiple markets. "Clients are requesting we hold off for a while," said Scott Elberg, vp/general manager of WTJM and WKTU in New York. The stations are generally airing reduced spot loads, having stayed commercial-free up until 10 a.m. Sept. 13.