In the very late 1980s, WCBS launched a promotion campaign that involved the distribution of cheap yellow plastic flyswatters as novelty souvenirs. The idea was that Newsradio88 could swat the competition (WINS) as easily as swatting a fly. The slogan “News Without The Noise” on the flyswatter was a slam at WINS for using a teletype sound behind its news readers (a sound WCBS itself adopted, although computers had replaced the teletypes, which were becoming obsolete). Needless to say, the flyswatter campaign was lost on the listeners, who had no idea what it was all about. The unsuccessful promotion came at an awkward time for the station. Not only had there been an ill-advised change in newsroom management, WCBS regularly interrupted its news programming to broadcast a local college's basketball games, which were of little interest to an all-news audience. Predictably, the station's ratings plummeted to unparalleled lows (at one point a humiliating seventeenth in the market). It took new management and years for WCBS to recover.

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