Where the hell was talk radio this weekend?

Seattle talk radio let us down.

After the shocking murder and mayhem Friday afternoon at the downtown Jewish Federation, they crapped out.

Talk radio is always lecturing us on how they're the real journalism; the community builders; the vox populi.

But the talk stations on that day of days, evening of evenings, weekend of weekends just checked out of live and local at the regular times. A terrorist event ending in murder was within the realm of possibility; it was a frightening national story erupting in a frightening national time and had come home to roost; and local radio didn't seem to give a national fuck.  

A reader writes: "KIRO in the past would go live and wall-to-wall on major weekend events: Princess Diana, Reagan's death, Saddam's capture. Fisher has always been too cheap and incompetent. Only recently did KIRO begin to blow off weekend breaking news for restaurant infomercials and crap."

KIRO stayed on live and local the rest of the evening as they always do on Fridays, and went to CBS at 1a Saturday as always. Then they went into the weekend crap of animal husbandry, infomercials, canned syndicates, Chef Tom, Sheriff Tex, Gardner Ciscoe, broken only by the occasional news live mikes of Frank Shiers, The Styblehead, Carl Jeffers, and Goldstein. 

There was a time when KIRO would have stayed local with talk hosts coming in and working the phones all weekend. KVI, and KTTH had the same ol' sorry morass of canned corn like Republican Radio; syndicated best-ofs, infomercials, brokered health and cooking shows.

Their so-called talent were all at their Eastside homes patting their hamsters, and watering their laburnum.

We were a community needing community; the radio could have been a town hall for news and talk; an outlet for angst and a safety valve for anger and recrimination.

Newspapers, no matter how great their news-gathering capabilities, don't have the potential to create neighborhood like radio. Radio folks have always prided themselves on it.

Then it was Monday and and talk radio went back to partisan "entertainment" and doctrinaire "community;" selling mortgages, Geico, Select Comfort, and up-to-the-minute conservative mudhoney.

Friday's shooter was "a liberal," Michael Medved assured us, today. This is a great time of year to buy gutter protection, we learned this afternoon.   

"Public service" is safely shelved in the few hours a week the government makes them play those bad commercials about chlamydia and owning your own home. Let's face it- this "public good" shit doesn't pencil.

Community service, talk radio- what a crock!

Comments

[Tahoma Activist]

Hey, Blathery, if you hate corporate radio and news as much as I do, for just this reason, then you owe it to yourself to get involved with Northwest Media Action. We meet every fourth Wednesday in Tacoma from 7 to 8:30 and we are planning the Tahoma Progressive Media Conference, in which we will lay the groundwork for new media initiatives to serve the public interest in a way that for-profit industry has been unwilling or unable to do.

Check out our weblog at mediaaction.blogspot.com and let us know what you think. We could use any and all ideas that folks have, so don't be a stranger!

[Jon]

I too was surprised at our local media's downplaying of this horrific event. However, when I ready Ken Schram's commentary yesterday he had an interesting side note (http://www.komotv.com/stories/44677.htm):

“Something else I need to talk about: The emails I got from people who thought KOMO's news coverage of the Friday shooting was excessive. People who wrote to complain about not getting any sports scores; people who were upset at not being told if it was going to rain on the Torchlight parade; people who felt cheated that ABC News was on.
I can't say what I'd really like to say to all those people. So I'll simply say: Shame on you.”

Is it that people of this area are becoming acclimated to murder with all of the recent events starting with the Capital Hill killings? Or should Mel Gibson relocate to this area and be able to find some supporters?

I know I was frantically calling my Jewish friends making sure they where alright after hearing this news. I just hope that Seattle doesn’t turn into just another big city with crime that no one cares about as long as they aren’t involved.

[sparky]

Isnt part of the problem the fact that the owners live in Pennsylvania??? If there were local owners who actually had an interest in what happened around here, perhaps it would have been covered???
I dont know, just speculating.

Tahoma, that sounds like an excellent venture! Good luck!

[sparky]

I was referring to KIRO and their owners in Pennsylvania....
I dont know what the excuse was for the other stations. I was out of town that weekend and Northwest Cable News did a good job of carrying news about it.....

[eileen]

I hate to bring up this point, and for one I almost felt like this -- that if there had been more that had been killed, or just a bit bigger in nature - the story would have been carried wall-to-wall on most stations. It seems to me our society has been de-sensitized to such violence now. Perhaps worse, though, is the possibility that being this was an act of violence against Jews, that it wasn't deemed important enough to cover wall-to-wall. If so, its a sad statement of the state of the world - any act against any particular groups of peoples is abhorent, still - this incident brings home just how imbalanced things seem to be with the equal treatment of all humans, no matter what path they walk.

[Tommy008]

oh please. Let's not cry antisemitism here- there's already plenty of the real stuff to go around. I don't recall their being wall-to-wall coverage of the Capitol Hill Masacre, or the Kirkland Massacre. Damn, we seem to have a lot of "massacres" this year.

[sparky]

I think there was more coverage of the Capitol Hill tragedy...remember--Dori said it was their fault for being at such a party in the first place....

[AprilMayJune]

I couldn't believe that I was actually listening to Dumb & Dumber for coverage of the Friday afternoon events. And I have to admit that they did a halfway decent job; they actually sounded almost like professional radio guys instead of professional moronic frat boys.

Unfortunately, weekend radio has little to offer me other than NPR and the Mariners. Very little "live & local" worth listening to. This is not good, because I am a radio listener.

[JoAnne]

I used to be a radio listener. Started in Seattle when Al Cummings was on. Discovered talk radio in LA in the 60's, before it all went right wing. Listened in Seattle since the 70's when we had 2 or 3 talk stations. Used to listen to King before the Bullits sold it. Hung on up until the Kiro purge. When Kiro moved Dave Ross to afternoons it discombobulated my whole schedule.

Now when I want local news, I go to TV. Not good, but better than nothing.

[Scrilla]

Well Mike,
The reality is that no one listens to radio on weekends FOR news. Even if a terrorist goes on a rampage.
Now...if a Mariner or Scott Simon kills, THAT'S weekend radio.

[Fremont]

A couple of weeks ago, I heard helicopters flying over the lake. I stepped out on the deck and saw nearly the entire SPD, SFD, scuba divers and members of the press searching for a missing five-year-old girl. She was found in her home, but the response was astounding! Neighbors who had been video-ed did NOT see themselves in the news. Sunday, on the same lake, a huge low-income/senior complex was aflame....one resident died and several were rescued. Fantastic service response again, but no press helicopters. Local TV covered the "breaking news" but we were directed to tune in at 10:00 for "the full story". My point here is that a missing child is more prurient than dying seniors, apparently. While both incidents received remarkable City response, the televised press was tardy in its weekend coverage of the fire. I have heard that local tv news is reported as if it were targeted to fourteen-year-olds....I believe it.

[Das]

Michael,

You more than most of us have access into public and private radio doings. Medved's station is what it is, crappy radio ads and all and, yes, it carries the corporate watermark which doesn't allow for much local coverage, Well, change it. Why don't you get a radio show - you 've got the track record, the talent, et al.

And as a high-profile Seattle blogger of note I'd like to see you post an outright condemnation of Friday's murder/foiled mass murder of Jews. Cut with all the little "gotcha" squibs and lay it out, baby.

[KS]

Too much talk radio is bad for one's mental health and can mutate or behave like a fungus. Being that this blog is devoted to talk radio, I listened to the news about it - their take on the incident rather than listening to the local liberals/conservatives blathering away. It was refreshing to avoid talk radio last weekend.

In the end, I found that there were no new revelations about this violent and sick event from my take on this from listening to the news.