Lee Rayburn, host of WHCU's Morning Newswatch, tweeted Wednesday that his job has been eliminated.  His post was characteristically upbeat and gracious, with great praise for his colleagues at Cayuga Radio Group, and humble appreciation for the community and his opportunity to serve it.  He also posted on Facebook, where, less than 24 hours later 168 people had reacted, and 152 replied, mourning his loss to the community.  At Wednesday's Lansing Town Board meeting Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler paid tribute to Rayburn.

"It's really a huge loss.  I want to thank him personally for all the work he's done for the last six years," Sigler said. "He has everything on from Frank Towner at the Y to the Hangar Theatre, and all the local news.  I feel that's a giant loss to the community.  I really appreciate his work."

Rayburn came to Ithaca and WHCU in 2012 after 12 years in Madison, Wisconsin and Coachella Valley, California.  He was the sixth and last host of The Morning Newswatch.  His predecessors were Jack Deal, Rudy Paolangeli, Gerry Angel, Casey Stevens, and Dave Vieser.  The format was a mix of local and national news, chat with the station's News Director, and interviews that featured every local group and event you could imagine.  While the station and its sister Cayuga Radio Group stations broadcast local news throughout each day, The Morning Newswatch was a celebration of the community.

Cayuga Radio Group President Chet Osadchey says WHCU will broadcast the syndicated Gordon Deal morning news show temporarily, but the change does not mean that WHCU is pulling away from local programming.  He says the strategy is to add more local news reporters, and expand local programming in a different format.

"The Morning Newswatch host position has been officially eliminated," he told the Lansing Star. "It means temporarily we will continue to run the Gordon Deal show, but eventually we'll be adding additional news reporters and additional local content throughout the morning, and very possibly throughout the day.  It won't take the form of a hosted position, as people have been used to."

Rayburn's posts on Twitter and Facebook praised his coworkers at Cayuga Radio Group, and, most of all lauded the community and its people.  When the Lansing Star reached out to him yesterday, he said he doesn't have anything to add to what he posted.


Osadchey says the change has nothing to do with the financial side of programming, but, rather, with a new strategy for bringing local programming to the station.  News Director John Summers and reporter Chris Hedden have a large beat to cover, difficult for a small news staff.  Osadchey says that eventually hiring more reporters will allow the station to expand local content, something Summers said he wants to do when the Lansing Star interviewed him in February.

"I foresee much more emphasis on local and regional news," he says. "That's what the area wants. Research shows most people don't want to have more of a story on the radio. That's what the Web and print publications are for. On the radio they want more stories that affect them. So we're increasing our story count so we're covering more and more local stories, and providing the information in a smaller content frame. We want to provide more of an outlook for the community to make its voices heard, so we're more interactive."

Running the Gordon Deal show gives station officials a chance to hone their strategy, which Osadchey says they are working on now.  He says the future of WHCU may bring more scheduled local programs, or possibly local programming sprinkled throughout the broadcast day, saying "nothing is certain in today's times".

"I understand the importance of local, and being local," he says. "As a person who is from here I understand that and I believe in that.  That means local print and all the entities and voices that we can have out there to help us better educate ourselves, learn and inform, entertain -- whatever it might be -- I think is imperative for all of us.  I wouldn't want to move away from that.  That's independent of this specific situation."

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