Friday oddems: the sexy, sexy jingle of rugs; arrogance on long island; formatic tremblings; arbitron rootings; eyman & the pieman; ominems for terrestrial radio; bryan suits TV; and what if they had a war on xmas and nobody came?

~ "There is zero evidence of global warming." Dori Monson, The Voice of KIRO 

~ Neocons' idea of free speech seem to frequently involve firearms. Sean Hannity's producer tried to have a guy arrested for intending to ask Hannity a question in a book-signing. A story of arrogance, sanitizing, and girth last week. It's like having your comments deleted at Sound Politics.

~ Sweet har-moan-ey... We get mail suggesting unlikely fantasies with those ubiquitous harmonious hummers the Haight Carpet Girls, who sing the ads for Abbey Carpet stores and their father's floor covering joint, Haight Carpet. They're all over the radie-yo with their mellifluous young voices singing their sexy, sexy jingle of rugs, and carpet installation. Here's a News Trib story that will fill you dirty-minded  fans in on their exciting lifestyles as "jingle girls." We never want to hear about this again, boys.

(Photo: from left:  Lynn, Emily and Annie, the rugs)

~ it's always shaky to put your money on what Arbitron says, but the latest Format Trends Report based on the summer '07 book gave spoken-word formats an overall 17.4 share holding steady with the previous two books. Broken down by category the results showed all-news radio steady from Spring to Summer (2.3-2.3); Sports flat (3.1-3.0); News/Talk also holding steady (9.7-9.7); and talk essentially flat (2.4-2.3). The 17.4 overall share is up just a bit from summer a year ago (16.9) and off slightly from the format's biggest share of the past eight Arbitron books which was an 18.0 in the fall of 2005. (Hat tip to  Al Petersen at NTS Aircheck for this medium news).

Why o' why is it that when you put "Brian Hawn nude photos" in The google, you get BlatherWatch? Who o' who the hell is Brian Hawn you had to ask? We did too- check him out.   

~ Factoid: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer website overtook the Seattle Times in October with 2.1 million unique visitors. The Seattle Times had 1.9 million. Could it be because of the new beta P-I youth pandering news site?   
 
~ Fun for everyone: Tim Eyman: meet the pieman.

~ liberals listen, conservatives? not so much. A new Zogby/Lear Center poll says that when it comes to talk radio, liberals are "much more likely than conservatives to listen to commentary and entertainment with which they disagree philosophically." The June 2007 poll, with over 3900 adults nationwide, reports that 22% of conservatives said they "never" enjoy entertainment that reflects values other than their own, while just 7% of liberals felt the same way. Meanwhile, 11% of conservatives said they "very often" enjoyed programming that ran counter to their personal philosophies, compared to 20% of liberals and 18% of moderates who said the same thing. Zogby says the results may shed some light on why liberal talk radio has had a tough time gaining traction against its conservative competition. The audience for conservative talk, according to the poll is literally larger than that of its liberal competitors because more liberals say they will listen to conservatives than vice versa.

~ Bryan Suits TV: Watch Brian play with his cute puppies in Monroe, WA; and do his duty in Iraq wearing one of his handsome soldier suits. (He may kill actually somebody in one of these vids, but we fell asleep watching them).

~ and oh yeah.. those listeners above? they probably won't be between 14 and 24 years old. According to a study by Paragon Media Strategies, things look ominous for terrestrial radio. "When we asked 14-24 year olds how much ownership/use of a new media device had affected their radio listening, iPods/MP3 Players and Personalized/Mix CDs took the biggest bite out of radio TSL. What’s interesting about this is that the iPod and personalized CDs are something the listener or a friend had a hand in producing.  The consumer becomes the producer. Over 70% of respondents own an iPod/MP3 Player and/or listen to personalized or mix CDs. When asked open-ended why they were listening to radio less, “Listening over the internet” popped up. Internet listening (either regular stations and/or internet only stations) is at best sporadic with a relatively small percentage spending significant time listening to internet radio. However, the next generation of 25-54 year olds is saying that listening over the internet  is a significant reason for listening to radio less. While iPods/MP3 Players’ and personalized CDs’ market penetration may have peaked, the threat to terrestrial radio from the internet appears ominous. It behooves radio stations to be part of the menu as young listeners go to the internet for a significant part of their audio experience."

~ The only way you can control people is to lie to them- you can write that down in your book in great big letters. ~ L. Ron Hubbard, Technique 88

~ wow, we're so fucking prescient, dep't...  back on Sept 27, 2006: BlatherWatch said: "we were ranting about how the afternoon drive now sucked in Seattle and all the best programming was bunched up in the weekdaily 9 to noon- you know- Dave Ross, Thom Hartmann, Steve Scher's Weekday, etc. We forgot The 'Tators (KVI m-f,) that caffeinated dinner table debate between John Carlson and Ken Schram. We gotta admit, we like that show, and only wish it were on in the dull afternoon drive. We'll be interested to see what kind of numbers they're generating."

Comments

[Duffman]

Bla'M a Friday oddem wrap up on the week's news lends me to comment on two revelations.
1. Australia'a apparent 'directive' to it's Santa Claus'es to say Ha Ha Ha, rather than Ho Ho Ho, reasoning the latter may be offensive to some in that it is American slang for 'whore'.
2. Seattle school district's apparent 'guidance' to it's educators to 'tone down' the celebration of T/Giving, reasoning it may be offensive to some who may find this a time of mourning.
I said to someone (much younger than I) that may be not in my life time but possibly in their's we would see either abolishment of both T/Giving and Xmas or changed in such a way to be non-recognizable by any of the current 'baby-boomer' gen.

[Janet Morrow]

Who is that big fat woman?

[DT]

I say let's go all the way. PC'ers are worried about offending? Okay. Well, some people, like JW's, don't celebrate anything. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc. So if you think you're being less offensive by saying "Happy Holidays" to someone instead of "Merry Christmas," guess again. I say we should just get it over with and in the spirit of trying not offending anyone, we stop the celebration of anything, lest we offend people who take offense at the very act of celebration.

[Andrew]

I'm not surprised liberals are more likely to listen to the oposition. They're world view seems more pragmatic and fluid, ariving at conclusions after so much considerations, desiring to work together as a society to solve problems like health care for kids, while conservatives who call into conservative talk shows always sound like they're set concrete, permanantly dimissing anything any kind of wealth redistribution that might help the less fortunate. They don't want to be challenged, they want to be reminded why they're right.

Re the singing girls, that this blog receives "dirty-minded" emails and itself characterizes their young, underage voices as " sexy, sexy" is case in point why local merchants shouldn't use their kids as spokespeople for their endeavors. What kind of customers are they trying to attract? None I'd want. Probably none their daughters would want. What if the youngest grows up and says one day to her parents "why did you exploit me?"

I don't know much about why talk radio ratings rise or fall but unless their it's election season their standard for what constitutes an hours worth of discussion is pretty low. Even now Dave Ross is discussing ballot issues that have already been decided but have yet to impact anything. It's over. Boring. iPod time!

[markie]

Our society is diversifying fast, the culture is including more and more non-christians and others who haven't been raised on the night before xmas. It aint the 1950's anymore.
That said, the so-called war on christmas has few real world examples outside the fake world examples created by talk show hosts and Bill O'Reilly to get people riled up enough to call in to their shows. How does this straw man effect you? It doesn't. It's just talk fodder for demagogueing broadcasters; and a laugh to people who care about real issues. It's run its course, it was so roundly mocked last year after O'Reilly's fake indignation.

[YellowPup]

You write:

"Zogby says the results may shed some light on why liberal talk radio has had a tough time gaining traction against its conservative competition."

I find it hard to believe that liberal talk radio gets fewer listeners because of lack of cross-over conservatives.

I consider myself left of center and I find a lot of Air America programming just not very interesting, I guess because it's conservative talk from a Democratic perspective. Most of it (that I've heard) deals with beltway bubble national politics and issues already ground to powder by the MSM, which is boring, plus you have to sit through hours of commercials.

Now, by contrast, I listen to David Goldstein every week, even though I can't stand AM and hate the commercials, because the show is local, covers topics and has guests you don't hear elsewhere, and the talk is funny and entertaining.

I think the problem is that (with at least one exception) liberal AM talk radio hasn't been around enough to find its own voice.

[Andrew]

By "find its voice" surely you mean "figure out how to push people's buttons."

[markb]

Hearing those ladies sing and seeing their pics, makes me wish I was 14 again.

[Andrew]

Oh, well that's healthy.

[JustinAtheropinion]

Hey, DT:

You're being a bit obtuse today (as opposed to being inaccurate, or slip-shod). You wrote:
"Okay. Well, some people, like JW's, don't celebrate anything. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, etc."

What is JW's?
Jolly Wranglers?
Jerky "Wobblies"?
Jazzy Wet-Nurses?

Or did you simply leave the "E" out of the middle of the word. Last time I heard, our jewish brethren did celebrate birthdays, and Thanksgiving...and a few things them Christians don't celebrate.

Personally, I celebrate when DT doesn't post here. Gives me a day off.

[sparky]

In this case, JW means Jehova's Witnesses.

DT bathes in Eau de Hyperbole every morning....

[sparky]

or Jehovah's Witnesses too :-)

The people who bring you The Watchtower...

[jim anchower]

Before DT was born, it is possible his mom was PG with him, let's keep this on the QT and not worry about his cute PC situation, OK?

[Bendawg]

I have to agree with "YellowPup" above. I only wish I remembered to turn my radio to 710 KIRO more often on Saturday nights. Sundays... well there's all that male-focused (and halfway entertaining) animated content on Fox TV.