In January 1999, comedian Jon Stewart began hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. Little did he know at the time, his presentation of the news would later shape the sound of the iconic New York all-news radio station 1010 WINS.
At the time Stewart was beginning his run with the show, Ben Mevorach was ascending to his role as Director of News and Programming for the venerable Audacy-owned station. As he rose to his leadership role, he saw the way younger audiences were interacting with news content and knew that 1010 WINS would eventually need to follow suit.
In the last 25 years, the station has shifted from its hard-hitting, strictly business, stuffy presentation to a slightly lighter, sometimes more delightful conversation while still delivering the information listeners need.
“It was clear early on that he sort of changed the way folks 20 to 30-year-olds were consuming news and what it was and how they were processing information. I always thought that WINS was ahead of its time, but I had to figure out a way to understand those news consumers of doing it a different way, and how that translates to WINS,” Mevorach told Barrett News Media. “And that process really began in 1999, 2000.
“When I first became news director, if you think about it, those folks are now 35, 40, 45, 50 (years old). They’re the news consumers of today, in terms of the younger part of the demo. And I said to myself, ‘Ok, so what do they want? What will they do? How have they changed the news consumption process?’ And every decision that we have made here has kind of been with that as the backdrop.”
One of the tenets of his philosophy was understanding how, and maybe more importantly why, younger audiences were changing the news consumption habits that had been passed down to them by Baby Boomers.
“We had to understand that news has to fit into the macro behavior of people’s lives, not the other way around. forever it was, ‘You’re coming to the news. The news is where we are and you want us, so you come to us.’ That’s all changed,” Mevorach continued. “We had to learn — if we were going to evolve — how we fit into the macro behavior of our listeners. And it was clear that content alone was not the answer, and programming elements alone, that wasn’t the answer. It was finding a way to bring them together, and have them work in tandem to meet the macro behavior of our listener.”
Mevorach pointed to the recent 1010 WINS Pickleball Tournament as a case-in-point of reaching, not only younger listeners, but its audience outside of a strictly news space. He noted the average age of participants in the event was in the early 30s, just reaching into the often coveted 35-64 demographic.
“We realize that that’s something that connects the radio station — beyond the news brand, but the station itself — programming to a listener,” he said. “They connect on a programming level. It’s just one small example.”
One of the biggest changes to the station’s presentation is from its anchors, whether it be news, traffic, weather, or sports. Mevorach pointed to talents like Karen Stewart (morning traffic), Scott Stanford (morning news), and Larry Mullins (afternoon news) as key cogs into providing a lighter, but still serious when needed, approach to the legendary news brand.
“When you find people who have a strength like that … funny when it’s supposed to be funny, self-deprecating when it makes sense, but journalism with a capital J — we’ll never go away from our gold standard — but to understand that need to stop beating people up every day with hard, hurtful, painful, tragic news. It’s okay to do that kind of stuff.
“And when you find talent like that, and I’ve seen this happen before, you hire somebody with great talent and you put them in a position, and then you spend time telling them ‘Don’t do that. Well, don’t do that. That’s that’s not what we do.’ That’s not what if you hire somebody and you see their strength and you hire them for that strength, let them do what they do best,” he said.
In younger audiences, the “TikTok Effect,” or what could simply be viewed as having a shorter attention span, has actually been beneficial to the station. While some spoken word formats can spend nearly 20 minutes on one subject, the all-news format 1010 WINS uses pumps through stories like a roaring coal-powered freight train younger audiences have only seen in museums. And that short attention span also mirrors the need of New Yorkers to be presented with the information they need to know as quickly as possible.
“It reflects the city that we serve,” the 1010 WINS leader shared. “But we’ve always done that. We’ve always done those short hits to get the stories out. But what I do think has changed is the attitude in which we’re doing those stories. It’s programming versus content.
“If I’m a younger demo, and I’m always on TikTok, and it could be a classic song that fits the storyline that we’re doing, but it’s like gigantic on TikTok because those things tend to surface every once a while when all the TikTok users start to do something with that music. We will put that music, we’ll pick that song as a song that we’re choosing to tell whatever lighter story that we’re doing and suddenly like, ‘Oh, that’s my TikTok song, and I’m hearing it on my radio station.’ Those things matter.”
It would be a perfectly acceptable inclination to not mess with success, as Mevorach started in 1999. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? However, the longtime leader was unafraid to make the changes to keep the station on the top of the average New Yorker’s mind.
“Listen, I could have failed, in which case you’d be talking to someone else in programming,” Mevorach said with a chuckle. “But, honestly, there is a mantra that I have believed in for a very long time. It’s not new, it’s maybe a little cliche by now, but it’s true. Sometimes the greatest risk of all is to do nothing. That could have been WINS … if we hadn’t done this journey. Sometimes the greatest risk of all is to do nothing. You have to keep evolving or be left behind.”
The shift is obviously working. The station remains a powerhouse in the nation’s largest market. And while it maintains its journalistic integrity, a lighter side has developed at 1010 WINS that has helped position it to continue to serve an ever-changing audience.
“Our growth in the 18-34-year-old and the 25-54-year-old (demographics), has been dramatic,” Mevorach shared.
“It has fundamentally changed the sound of this radio station and the programming and the content, working together, to change the listening, more so that it’s easy to digest. And people trust us, so we can transition from the news of the day that people need and have to have with things that give them a moment for just a quick smile, a quick wit, a quick turn of phrase. I think too many people underestimate the power of that. And that, again, goes all the way back to 1999.”
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
Before being old news, WINS 1010 wins New York was the home of Alan Fried and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Those of us whose formative years with a 1950s remember both Alan Fried and Alan Sherman and listening to the top 10 hits every night 1010 wins, New York is part of the history of rock ‘n’ roll. It played host the first scandal when Alan Fried was taken off the air for being paid to play.