liberals make talkers magazine list, slinky's suck, sleek geeks are peaking, dr. laura perky after all these years, michael savage kicked to death by donkeys

It's the talk radio doldrums again...Blathereaders will remember July, August and September when hosts were all stretching and tap-dancing and changing topics every hour and talking about sitcoms and movie stars.

It's after the elections, and the good guys won one--so conservatives have little to say. The Bush administration is struggling and paying the piper for their years of incompetence, guile and dissembling--so most right wing talkers are changing the subject, if not spinning the debacle as a birthday party with a new pony for everyone.

Dori Monson talks about the his troubles with Slinky's and even liberal Erin Hart recently led a thrilling conversation about geeks being the new hotties.

Yes, we're all bored...readers are bitching that BlatherWatch is dropping the ball. We wish something would happen at KIRO (we're hearing it will). We wish something would happen at KTTH (we're hearing it might).

The latest (yawn) Talkers Magazine semiannual "Top Talk Radio Audiences" list of the top 15 spots in national talk radio came out and it was more interesting than usual--the liberals finally broke onto the list!

Last spring's list made right wing blogs such as our friend Brian Maloney over at RadioEqualizer scream that Air America (which had only celebrated a year in business) had not made a showing.

This year, we're happy to say, four new liberal talkers made it to the list. Ed Schultz, (sharing 11th place with Bob Brinker) Al Franken (shared 13th place with Jim Cramer and Tony Snow) Stephanie Miller and Allen Colmes (shared 14th place with liberal Dr. Dean Edell, Phil Hendrie and Rusty "Pants" Humphries).

The Radio Equalizer failed to mention any of this in a recent post, instead he criticized the list and its methodology.

(It's the shooting the messenger for how we say it: one of the few tactics conservatives have left. Instead of addressing criticisms, they scold us for being "shrill," or "hateful" or "hysterical" or "inappropriate)."

Besides being in deep partisan denial that liberal radio is growing, Maloney has a point--it's not scientific. Most in the industry don't trust the Talker's Mag survey-  especially if they lose their place on it.

But it's influential because it's the only attempt at making a public national talk radio ratings list and media always refers to it.

The survey is conducted through a suspect and dubious process of listener interviews, chats with radio professionals and advertisers; a Ouija board is involved, also tea leaves, nepotism, (or incest) and intrigue.

In the '90's there was a great kerfuffle when Big Pants, the king of talk radio ratings, was displaced by Dr. Laura or Howard Stern or somebody and he made such a stink, he was re-installed after some "new calculations" by Michael Harrison, the dapper, high toned publisher who's ubiquitous on talking head TV whenever a talk show host gets his butt in a sling and makes some headlines.   

This time, the top five were essentially the same as last time and as we said then--it's a discouraging commentary on the taste and entertainment threshold of the consumers of talk, not to speak of any assumptions you might make about their politics.

Designated GOP Liar Sean Hannity at #2 (an appropriate number) again is within shooting distance of #1, Rush Limbaugh. Many speculate Hannity has passed Big Pants in reality, but Harrison is too timid to publish the powerful Big Pants in 2nd place. Many think the big guy's peccadilloes (drug addiction, trading his 3rd wife in on a CNN anchor, on-air blow-job talk, the celebrity farting) might very well be catching up with him and losing the values crowd who make up so much of his audience.

The well-scrubbed Hannity, whose on-air persona is that of sexy het altar boy is, so far, squeaky clean in the morés dep’t. (Oh, how we'd love to see him caught with his penis in a strange location. Some say Hannity's penis is in a safe deposit box in a New Jersey bank, and is taken out only on Holy Days in the presence of his wife or a priest). 

Hannity got a tremendous knee-up back when he was first syndicated. ABC Radio actually bought his show into major markets all over the country. Here in Seattle, Michael Medved was literally shoved out the back door at KVI when Fisher got the big offer from ABC to install Hannity in the noon-to-3 spot. (In retrospect, considering today's ratings, it wasn't a bad business decision).

Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have perfected (or have had perfected for them) the cross-marketing of cable TV shows, and radio syndication, which have boosted book sales which have boosted audiences. It's brilliant, and depressing.

Michael Savage is at #3, by himself this time--Howard Stern has dropped down to #4 with evil nag, Dr. Laura, (we can't help it--see her perky naked self here) who jumped up from #5, proving that the S&M crowd really is a viable market.

BlatherWatch sincerely believes the most potent sign that American culture is declining is not "freaky dancing," or bellybuttoned fashions on 5th grade girls--it's the popularity of Michael Savage, the snarly homophobic nutbuster whose schtick it is to pounce on pathos and gut out empathy and compassion wherever he sees them skulking.

Stern won’t be a contender after January when he goes to satellite radio.

We were happy to see Big Eddie Schultz (KTTH m-f, 12-3) make it up onto the list. He's the midwestern talker who can speak to red staters like nobody else on our side of the political fence. He's smart, well-prepared, and if his good ol' boy manner grates on urban ears, just be happy to know that his politics are right in there, he's doing the Lord's work and taking it to the outlanders. Ed recently got re-accepted recently by Armed Forces Radio after the powers that be reneged on their offer to make him available to the troops who'd otherwise had little in the way of talk radio other than Limbaugh.

Michael Medved has come back up to 9th place from 11th last time. He's sharing it with liberal newcomer Jerry Doyle, and our favorite KTTH talker, Digital Goddess® Kim Kommando, the sexy, technobabe. (Maybe geeks are the new sex symbols, except our darling Kim doesn't talk geek or blonde, even though she is and she is.

The bombastic coot Bill O'Reilly, who ties Sean Hannity for highest talk radio ratings for lying and lying about lying went from #9 to a shared # 7. A relative newcomer to radio, he reaps the benefits of cross-marketing and can be counted upon to make it into the MSM with his impolitic remarks.

Bill Bennett, the disheveled, disgraced former "virtues" czar, went from 14th up to #10; probably the fruits of the publicity stirred up around his racist misspeaks a few months ago. He's such a blow hard, you can hear the cigar smoke in the back ground. He should be giving advice to poker and horse race fans, an audience that's growing and a subject he's well familiar with.

Still well below the tropic of cancer in ratings is Michael Reagan, the half-witted adopted son of Ronald Reagan pere and Jane Wyman. He was at the level of his incompetence as a playboy racer of motor boats, but just had to demonstrate the Peter Principle to became one of the most ungrammatical, ill-spoken, slow-studies on talk radio. He has a reading disorder and no cliché filter.

Also missing is misinformation guru Matt Drudge (KVI Sun. 7-10p) whose talk show show reaches hundreds across the nation each Sunday night with such revolting regular guests as Luciane Goldberg, the Republican pit viper who helped set up Monica Lewinsky. (The post-menopausal Goldberg shamelessly flirts with the peculiar 40-something Matt, which can bring up some very disturbing images for some of us more imaginative listeners).

Comments

[Trip]

Who says this site hasn't been keeping it real?

OK, I"ll start with my .02 -

* Stephanie Miller could cut down on the sound effects a smidge and have a really great show.

* If Mike Webb insists on consuming our air with Motown and such, could he at least cover some local stuff or spin something from the 21st century? Leave the dinosaurs in the museums.

* John Procaccino in the morning is acceptable I guess - maybe a touch more righteous anger.

* When is Shiers never coming back?

[ExDem]

Isn't easy to objectively measure how talk radio hosts rank? Can't you just go into any radio market and inquire how much it would cost to purchase ad time during each host's show? Isn't there a pretty good correlation between high ratings/popularity and advertising rates?

How much does a 30 second spot cost on KTTH during the Rush Limbaugh show? Or during the Michael Medved show? How does that compare to 30 seconds on KIRO during Dave Ross or Dori Monson? How much does AM 1090 pay someone to place their Public Service Announcement on during the Stephanie Miller show? Or during the Al Franken show?

These have to be pretty easy to measure within individual markets. There shouldn't be much mystery to this....

[Lazy Murrow]

And speaking of Brian Maloney, I see where he's guest-whoring over on Michele Malkin's webstain these days. Kudos to Michele for finding someone almost as batshit crazy as she is -- not an easy task.

[LeftTurn]

I am still trying to figure out why we care what Brian Baloney thinks of anything radio? The turd can't even get a gig that involves a mic?

[sparky]

heh....agreed

[JDB]

But Mr. Maloney is the Radio Equalizer. In a sea of right wing ideologues, he equalizes everything by showing you just how insane all those right wingers are.

Now if someone can just explain to me why people listen to Hannity. He's whiny, argumentative, and has never let a such things like facts get in his way. Given the choice between Medved (who has his moments of insanity, but I don't think anyone could accuse him of being crooked), and Hannity (who, lets face it, if he could not pot down the mikes of his opponents, would not exist), wouldn't a conservative with any respect in their beliefs pick Medved? Listening to Hannity is basically admitting that you have no logic, and need propganda to keep you flagging spirts up.

The fun in talk radio right now is listening to the desperate attempts at spin from the various legions of the right as Bush's polls keep digging deeper and deeper. All the talkers are so desperate, and they keep reaching for the things that worked in 2001, but it hasn't quite sunk in that 80% of the people are seeing through them now. It would be sad if it was not so funny.

[Andrew]

I turned to KVI just to see if they realy had nothing to talk about. Hannity is basicly saying that Democrats are throwing stones while living in glass houses by criticizing the pre-war intelligence. That's fine, because the hypocracy or culpability of Democrats pales compared to the trade-off realization that Republicans thought the lie up and misappropriated national defense, meaning they are guilty for one count of manslaughter for every dead soldier, if they weren't beyond reproach.

"these democrats think a few thousand soldiers are expendable just to get some power back" - Hannity caller

Another Hannity caller says she wrote a political college paper sourced from "Deliver Us From Evil", she says she got an F, the University said her paper was incensitive to liberals, but that wasn't necessarily why she got an F (obviously). So Hannity then says poor conservative caller, squashed by the liberal establishment.