BlatherWatch

Dr. laura caught cheating at the yacht club

A reader alerted us to another controversy blowing in Santa Barbara around Dr. Laura (KTTH m-f, 9p-12a) whose integrity was again found wanting after she was caught cheating in the arcane, wealthy world of yacht racing.

Two of her boats were suspended for three months of racing after a disciplinary hearing determined she'd had stripped down at least one of boats and raced it anyway.

Will dr. laura kill TBTL?

Night radio took a dive Monday night.

Billo Reilly faded out Friday; and then on Monday, agony aunt Laura Schlessinger, fresh from her flaccid, live morning run on KVI, showed up taped on KTTH (9p-12a) stepping on the last hour of Luke Burbank's Too Beautiful To Live (KIRO m-f, 7-10) and shoving the Lars Larson Show into the wee hours (m-f, 12-3a).

Monday oddems: If KUOW is number one, and KIRO is number two - does that mean does mean steve scher is king and dori is queen?

~~ KUOW, not KIRO is No.1 in the ratings in Seattle as P-I's Bill Virgin has reported. We hope Dori Monson (KIRO m-f, 12-3p) has made a correction, after the strutting, crowing segment he did, taking the credit for KIRO's success. Has Steve Scher (KUOW m-f, 9-11) usurped Dori as the new "King of Seattle Talk Radio?" We doubt Dori would agree, and this is all very beneath the Very Public Radio Steve. We admire his kingly professional decision NOT to be an asshole on the radio. Of course he comes from the confident place of a man whose hairline didn't come out of a box or bottle.

UPDATED: dr. laura is out; dennis miller is in at kvi

Dr. Laura, is being tossed out of the Seattle market once again.

In another admirable but probably pointless re-shuffling of the deck chairs, KVI will put Dennis Miller in the 9a-noon slot, in early February. Maybe they decided one negative, sharp-toothed scold (Laura Ingraham. m-f, 3-6p) was enough -- if so, we'd have to agree.

The doctor is out, dennis miller is in at kvi

Dennis Miller, the former SNL comedian, sports caster turned libertarian, security conservative radio talk host and will take over KVI's 9 ta noon slot in early February. He left the Seattle market when KKOL flipped to business talk early this month.

The KVI slot is now filled with Dr. Laura Schlessinger who tells young women and gay men why they shouldn't sleep with their boyfriends. She tersely supports wives who are having trouble serving and servicing their husbands on demand as, she believes, is their Biblical role. (Laura's never lasted long in this market, though she's tried many times).

Talk radio and the GOP: adrift on the same iceberg...

Talk radio and the Republican Party are intertwined, and both are sinking, and their problems are mirror images of each other.

We've told you many times: neither has had much success enticing and hanging onto young, black, or Latino people nor any other than the fast-fading demographic than whites of a certain age, mostly male.

Talk radio hasn't even tried to win them, and the Republicans don't know how...

For one thing, with few exceptions talk radio's product hasn't changed even for those of us whom they've been targeting -- it's still the old "stir-'em-up & get-'em-to-call" routine based by definition on negativity, anger, cynicism -- or if the host is really good -- all three.

Talk radio is a loser too

Conventional wisdom says conservative talk radio won a big one Tuesday.

The theory this week is that it needs underdog status and always does better when it's them-against-the-world.

(The talk radio tiger is notably paper)

Michael Harrison, publisher of the trade magazine Talkers told the Boston Herald Wednesday:

“It’ll be very good for conservative talk radio, because they’ll be able to play the role that talk radio plays so well - and that is challenging power and the establishment.”

Harrison said the conservative movement in America feels “like it’s up against the world” right now and that’s when people “rally around any medium that supports it - when it feels put upon.”

Slippage on the religious right: dr. laura trashes sarah palin

While the pundit class both left and right wwhile batting around and bat around other juicy details, they're drowning out McCain's convention as effectively as a Category 4 hurricane.

But an influential icon and Mother Bear (bare?) of the religious right excoriated the controversial nominette on the radie-yo today.

Dr. Laura blames spitzer's wife for his whoring!

That paragon of values, and intractable scold, Dr. Laura Schlessinger (KVI m-f,9a-12p) sat her leathery hind parts down on the Today Show, today and blamed Eliot Spitzer’s wife for his sexual adventurism, and penchant for high-priced whores.

When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings — sexually, personally — to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman. […]

The cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged and to feed himself where he’s starving. But yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.

Dr. Laura: there's shrewd to that shrew

(Poster: thanks nonna @ Hysterical Raisins)

Dr. Laura Schlessinger has marched triumphant back into the Seattle radio market again today after a long hiatus.

The former host on the late, not-so-great "the Buzz" has replaced the excommunicated Bryan Suits in a KVI reshuffle that puts her in the weekdaily nine-ta-noon spot.

Self-proclaimed as America's Yenta; she's the morality counselor to the middle class, a multi-millionaire values-hustler, and a very successful talk host, sharing the top of the talk heap with such moral and metal luminaries as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

She's ace among other blonde national nutcrackers like Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Melanie Morgan, Monica Crowley, and Judge Judy.

Like Don Imus' pending return to radio, Dr. Laura's professional life and times prove that talk radio is about bottom-line entertainment values- the high-minded bullshit about conservative or family values is morally relative only to the ratings a talent can pull.