It was the third time in three weeks! Today, Rep. Dave Reichert stood-up Steve Scher on his market-leading Weekday (KUOW m-f, 9-11a).
(photo: Dave Reichert- the package, unfortunately, is empty).
Funny, we've heard The Haircut around the dial a lot lately. On Kirby Wilbur, Dori and Dave -- last weekend on KVI's Cop Talk (Sat. 6-7p). Even the cops tried to lick Reichert to death, and he purred like a kitten.
In December, NPR announced they were cutting some programming: Day to Day, (KUOW m-f,12-1p) and News & Notes (KXOT, m-f, 11p-12a). Last day: March 20.
So far, no pronouncements have come down from Mt. KUOW about how they might fill those noonish dayparts but we think San Francisco's KALW has the right idea about how to fill the holes.
What did they do? They put up a blog.
~~ She got the gig! Tina Nole left CBS Radio wednesday to start Air America Thursday where her duties
as yet announceable. "It feels like home here with all these progressives!" she says. The longtime Dave Ross (KIRO m-f, 9a-12p) producer left for NY in 2007 and produced, among other things, CBS's Super Tuesday and Pennsylvania primary coverage. Stay tuned for upcoming AAR developments. Read her blog here.
(photo: Tina Nole: unrecognizably New York-y)
~~ Rev. Dave Barry? Dave Ross will appear Saturday on The Fairly Spiritual Show, (KGNW, Saturdays, 10-11a) talking about how his Catholic faith influences his work.
(photo: 'Dave in winter' by Dave Ross)
He'll be with host Pastor Doug Bursch, a Pentacostal with a sense of humor who self-describes thus on his web page: "He has the humor of Billy Graham and the theology of Dave Barry. Or maybe it’s the other way around." We
(photo: Pastor Doug)
have a feeling Pastor Doug's spirituality is not as ambiguous as his show title leads one to believe. Advice to Dave Ross: don't sign anything!
Behold KUOW's Weekday with Steve Scher's weekly schedule for 9a Thursday, Sept. 4:
Journalist Ron Suskind investigates the Way of the World.
Ours is a world full of conflicts. America had a hand in starting or encouraging many of them. What will our county's actions mean for the future? Who are the people quietly working to redeem some semblance of our moral authority? Is the idea of America - the great nation - still something to believe in?"
AND OH YEAH, BEFORE WE FORGET: RON SUSKIND, THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST WILL DROP BY. HIS EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK, WAY OF THE WORLD -- WHICH DROPPED QUICKLY OUT OF SIGHT IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA -- PROVES PRESIDENT BUSH AND DICK CHENEY KNEW DAMNED WELL THERE WERE NO WMD, AND SUPPLIES DIRECT, PHYSICAL EVIDENCE -- A FORGED LETTER IN FACT --- DIRECTLY IMPLICATING THEM WITH FALSELY, INTENTIONALLY, ILLEGALLY, CONNECTING IRAQ AND AL QUAEDA TO CONVINCE CONGRESS AND AMERICANS THEIR PREEMPTIVE WAR WAS JUSTIFIED. THE BOOK HAS BEEN CALLED "GUTTER JOURNALISM" BY THE WHITE HOUSE. SUSKIND HAS STAKED HIS HIGHLY REGARDED REPUTATION ON THE FACTUAL CONTENT OF THESE IMPORTANT REVELATIONS.
Or as gentle Weekday puts it: "Journalist Ron Suskind shares his revelatory, yet hopeful, investigation before Steve goes to the next topic: Are cut flowers environmentally sustainable and responsible?
Disregard KUOW'S bloodless introduction -- this is one of the most important books on the controversial war and despite it's vanished at present, it will figure prominently in future investigations and reverberate thoughout history.
It's must-hear radio- Steve Scher does better interviews than this alleged promotion make it seem.
That didn't last long.
Last week, we reported rather breezily (some say rudely and snarkily) about Weekday's Blog, a brand new offering by staffers of KUOW chat show, Weekday with Steve Scher.
KUOW management has told staffers to desist, delete, de-blog. Tuesday at 5:11p, this was posted:
Oops, no blog
KUOW management has directed that we stop blogging. This blog will be deleted shortly.
Steve Scher will be blogging at the wrack line.
Visit there.
The blog was entirely about the show, noncontroversial, and well-written by Steve Scher, producer Katy Sewall, Sage Van Wing, Lily Mihalik and Irene Noguchi, and Brad Iverson-Long. It was a show-notes journal, upbeat, positive, informative -- not untypical of radio talk shows on public and commercial stations who get it.
UPDATE: We just heard from Weekday host, Steve Scher who writes that the new site will eventually be linked from KUOW.org. Weekday's Blog is sort of a beta version not yet ready for the prime time into which the BlatherWatch exposure plunged it.
~
It ain't official, but you know what? It's somethin'!
(Steve Scher wearing his new blogger's hat)
Hidden in plain sight -- it's been there since July 2. There's no link from the KUOW site, but we serendipitously found it today while surfing. it's the new Weekday's Blog, an unofficial site some staffers have put up for the eponymous show (m-f,9-11a) on KUOW, the Seattle public radio station so resistant to new media platforms.
We've been kvetching forever about the lack of blogs (and most anything that interacts with listeners) on the KUOW site.
It was off-putting.
Listeners wrote in to say they turned off Weekday with Steve Scher
(KUOW m-f, 9-11a) this morning in the first 20 minutes of his interview with new media magnate Arianna Huffington, the vivacious cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.
She's an intelebrity, a concept not grokked or appreciated much by the personality-squelchers of public radio. She's a giant in the new media; a towering figure to the netroots.
Arianna's rumored to be showing up at Drinking Liberally (Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave E) tonight after she speaks at Seattle's Town Hall at 7:30p.
She's written 12 books and is in town peddling a new one: Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made us all Less Safe (And What you Need to Know to end the Madness). Other bona fides include being a mom of two teenage daughters; having an MA in economics from Cambridge; being regularly called a vicious far-left smear merchant by Bill O'Reilly; being constantly accused of being a public intellectual; and listed as one of Time Magazine's "100 most influential people in the world."
It started badly, Steve (we always call him Steve) kicked off the conversation with lite, flirty, bio questions "just for laughs," which he said came from her Wikipedia page.
(photo: Steve Scher)
Continue reading "Arianna huffington does weekday does arianna huffington" »
Life forms stirred Monday morning on public radio KUOW's Weekday with Steve Scher, (m-f, 9a-12p) as a few area bloggers came in to talk politics.
Yes! Public radio listeners finally got a taste of real-time political debate, and some actual partisan friction.
Bloggers were lefty David Goldstein from Horsesass; and righties Eric Earling of Sound Politics;
Eastern Washington's Tom Forbes from Palousitics; and non-partisan blogger Liz Burlingame, a recent UW poli sci grad who blogs at Seattlepoliticore.
(photo: Weekday's hottie, Steve Scher).
We're always complaining that public radio KUOW, the leading talk station in Seattle leaves political talk to a few revolving newspaper harrumphers, whose tedious room temperature opining are restricted on-air by their journalism jobs, and their hypotension. Their comments are often their columns regurgitated and delivered in soporific tones that threaten drivers' wakefulness even in the crack of the morning. (Maybe it's OK they re-deliver their columns on the radio since so who few actually read them in their typeset and inky glory.)
We've often kvetched about rarely hearing conservatives on KUOW. This is a liberal town, but unless a rightie is a viable candidate, or in the news in a way that can't be ignored, they must stay in the woodwork they call home.
Here, today, were two, with their sticky, out-of-the-Seattle-box Republican talking points; heard usually in Seattle screamed at the moon or on one of the few live and local talk stations left.
(photo: David Goldstein, Eric Earling by Carmen Santos)
Eric Earling is a thoughtful conservative who makes larger points than just talking points; and he does it with none of the pathological meanness of his co-blogger, Stefan Sharkansky. Tom Forbes is a clonservative talking point machine, but he spews them well, and there was a place for at least one of those in today's conversation. Burlingame, who's traveling around the country with campaigns might have been a little cowed by the seasoned and more verbally aggressive company -- she didn't much get into the partisan fray.
Continue reading "The bloggers (and the 21st century) invade KUOW! " »
Public radio is, or at least tries to appear, immune to the personality cultishness of their commercial media counterparts.
KUOW, our own NPR talk station particularly strives to be personality-free and directly or indirectly above the stink of self-promotion, or any promotion for that matter.
Sometimes this Quakerish posturing is little more than just stupid.
Weekday, (m-f, 9-11a) the morning blab show, is known for award-winning coverage of BC politics, appearances by world famous hydrologists, and presided over by Steve Scher, whose sexy, sexy, weekdaily pedantry causes dampness in drawers in drawing rooms 'cross the fruited plain.
It's the highest rated show in that important midmorning slot up against Rush, and Dave Ross.
They send out a weekly email each Friday hailing the schedule for the next week.
We receive this, and the the write-ups are so ho-hummable we're rarely stirred enough to announce upcoming shows on BlatherWatch. But a recent one took the cake
A week ago Friday the e-mail contained this gripping show topic for Wednesday last:
Is Humor Genetic? An Unofficial Exploration (with much Joke Telling)
Is the ability to be funny learned or genetic? Maybe your sense of humor is very similar to your dad's. Perhaps you tell a good joke because your grandma could spin a good yarn. Today we unofficially explore the notion of humor and the family line. If you think you're funny: prove it to us. Tell us some jokes! Regale us with stories of the funny in your family line. The practical jokers, the comedians, the ridiculous storytellers -- they're in your family! Tell us about them and how they've influenced you.
Sounds dull, doesn't it? We couldn't imagine anything more boring than a bunch of caffeinated NPR
oldsters telling jokes they might have heard from their grandmothers. (made worse, we figured, because Scher would sooner cut off a testicle before cutting off a boring caller).
Continue reading "KUOW & NPR's cult of anti-personality -- a losing strategy" »
It's that time of year when all heads turn toward The Oscars™ to the Heavy Hundred awards where Talkers Magazine, the self-proclaimed "Bible of Talk Radio and the New Talk Media," ranks the "100 most important hosts" every year.
As usual we're underwhelmed.
It's a quirky list; made to promote the magazine's influence in the industry; and to sell syndicators those gnarly full page ads to plump up the fragile egos of those perpetually needy talk hosts. It's dominated by conservatives, naturally.
What are the criteria? You've gotta be working plus, as the august editors always say, their "painstaking compilation" is based on courage, effort, impact, longevity potential, ratings, recognition, revenue, service, talent and uniqueness.
In other words, they pull it out of their ass.
Change is good
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