By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

Fans of longtime Buffalo radio personality Bill O'Loughlin can now enjoy his insights on local and national issues five days a week on television.

The former head of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency and a former member of the Amherst Town Board debuted "The Bill O'Loughlin Show with Lydia Dominick" this week on WGRZ-TV Channel 2.

The daily show airs live from noon to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday. O'Loughlin, who has been a financial adviser for 40 years, said he will discuss "issues of the day" with his co-host.

O'Loughlin, who most recently served as host of a call-in radio program on WECK AM-1230, started hosting a weekly show on WGRZ this summer. It was a taped program that ran Sunday evenings at 11:30 p.m. The response was so positive, he says, WGRZ approached him about morphing the program into a live, daily show.

"After the second program," he says, "the general manager called me up and said he needed to meet with me. I thought, 'This is it, I'm done.' "

It proved to be just the opposite. After negotiations, he signed a contract with the station to bring his show to Western New Yorkers daily.

"It is an honor and a thrill to be able to do this," he says of the new program. "I've done talk radio for 15 years. To do live television is a quantum leap from doing talk radio."

From a larger staff and top-notch production to a signal that will make his show available to a radius population of 10 million, O'Loughlin says he is "immensely excited."

"This is the big leagues to be doing an NBC affiliate five days a week, one hour a day, live," he says. "I view this to be as good as it gets in a market like ours ... it's utopia."

Despite his financial background, he says the show won't be one-dimensional. He expects to cover such topics as politics, business, financial issues and anything else on the minds of iewers, both locally and nationally.

"It is basically going to be talk radio on television. People think because I have been a financial adviser for 40 years that it will be a stock market show, but it isn't," he says. "As Channel 2 likes to say, it is talk TV."

He appeared on the three local TV stations as a commentator in the 1990s.

"I don't like doing taped programming," he says. "I'm at my best when that light comes on and it's game time. When you know it's live and there are no do-overs, it is exciting and for me and it is a privilege that they let me do that."

As far as format, there won't be any guests.

"I love going it alone," he says. "I love having the total responsibility of making the program successful and I don't want to be guest-dependent."

The show will invite viewers to call in and plans to incorporate Facebook and Twitter into the daily conversation.

"We want to engage people," O'Loughlin says. "Everybody in this world has pressure - be it job, family, financial or health pressure. My goal is to have that one hour a day where people can tune in and they feel good for having been there."

To follow "The Bill O'Loughlin Show with Lydia Dominick" via facebook, go towww.facebook.com/thebilloloughlinshow.