The drop made WILM headline news across the country. Hawkins considers WILM a role model. WDEL, which went to a news and information format in the late '80s, is not competition, he says. Instead, he traditionally considered The News Journal, owned by the Gannett Co, his main competitor, primarily because of its large staff. All the news bases are covered 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Big staffs mean big budgets for salaries.
Partly that's due to demographics. Consider the stereotype, he says. A young, unmarried white female, raised in Hockessin with a good job, has a very different life from a young unmarried or married mother living in a gunshot-riddled urban area. Thus a young white media buyer determined to reach in-office listeners can be a stumbling block for news station ad reps. However, music stations often are background noise in the office, he says.