BlatherWatch

BlatherMunch9: eat me! candidates' recipes

I was pretty mad that BlatherMunch didn't get the scoop that John McCain's latest wife, Cindy's "family recipes" were lifted right off the Food Network website. Tell you the truth: Cindy's Ahi with Napa Cabbage Slaw, or Farfalle with Turkey Sausage, Peas and Mushrooms just didn't feel like home cookin' to me, even though the happy homemaker is a blonde cougar and wildly rich heiress married to a Republican U.S. Senator. 

But other bloggers got the story first, and we're hoping it just might be what Democrats need to tip the election from the futzy warmonger and his plagiarizing and -- dare I say -- elitist wife.

Food matters, people!

Too bad the McCain campaign put on airs instead of sticking to the Senator's BBQ ribs which would have kept it real for the hoi polloi. His BBQ wouldn't need plagiarizing or publicizing for that matter: the McCain-horny press have already done all the heavy lifting. This McCain fellation from CBS News’ Dante Higgins at a McCain patio party a few months ago:

McCain wore a white sweatshirt with a silk-screened family photo on it, sunglasses, a green baseball cap and blue jeans. As grillmaster, he looked like the all-American dad, with a story for every spot in the house. He explained that he loved to grill because it was social. He said it gave him something to do with his nervous energy while everyone could enjoy food and drink.
He shared his recipe for “practically” fat-free ribs. He rubs a salt, pepper and garlic powder mixture onto the ribs along with lemon and cooks them for an hour and a half to allow most of the fat to fall off. Fat-free or not, the ribs lived up to the hype. After three servings, I’m confident in reporting they were succulent and flavorful.

Seattle times radio reporting: look for less of the same

Slog posted an internal Seattle Times memo Friday listing staffers taking the company's buyout offer.

The paper accepted "expressions of interest" from 19 people, who will get the money, take a hike, and their jobs will "simply vaporize" as The Times puts it so poetically. 

Not surprisingly, Florangela Davila, a reporter whose beat is radio -- another medium in deep shit -- was on the list opting for the sweet grass.

No fault of Florangela's, but frankly, The Times hasn't paid that much attention to the industry anyway. That's been left to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Bill Virgin, a busy business reporter who writes the Wednesday On Radio column, bookmarked by every local radio staffer in town who can read. Virgin does due diligence with industry press releases, and covers the hard news stories with the kind of access to management BlatherWatch only dreams of. He leaves the sturm, drang, and nasty bits to us, for which we've always been grateful.

(photos Bill Virgin, left; Florangela Davila, right)

Ron reagan: back on the air!

Dang it, the one thing wrong with KPTK's instantly signing up new Nova M talent, Randi Rhodes, is that now Seattle listeners won't get to get a listen to whomever replaces her.

Not even if it's Seattle homeboy Ron Reagan!

That hadn't occurred to us until we heard Thursday that he'll fill-in/try out next week in Randi's old spot in which Air America has created a new show called American Afternoon, which airs on the network's webstream, satellite feed, and a few terrestrial stations. It's live at 12-3p, Pacific time, weekdays .

If Ron makes it, (the chances of which we'll discuss farther down) he'd be not heard in his hometown where some 2-3.5% of the listening audience could be counted upon to listen to him. Those numbers are from his old KIRO time slot and weren't, actually, too bad in this market especially for the peculiar 1-hour radio spiderhole he used to have.

Others reportedly in the chute for Air America trial flights are comedian/TV personality Roseanne Barr (with Johnny Argent), and The View co-host Joy Behar. (We heart Roseanne, btw, who told one of the teevee night talkers recently: "I went and had vaginal rejuvenation surgery. No, I did! And now I have a va-junior. And I’m not afraid to use it.”)

More Fisher grief: rigged contest at KVI

"I knew who she was," a KOMO staffer told BlatherWatch, "she was a cute little trick."

She might have been more trick than cute," according to KVI management who have reported to Seattle Police a scam by a suspect who worked a short time in the promotions department and left on her own.

In a listen-and-win contest Feb. 6 to March 7, 2007, KVI blabberjocks read the names of registered listeners on-air and told them they'd win $1,000 if they called the station.

Using her inside information, the 20-something alerted friends, told them when to listen, then she'd take a cut.

Wednesday oddems: Will KOMO lose the mariners? are vaginas more popular than talk radio? will billo reilly implode, or explode? can kiro make it without the mariners? will kvi babble on? the answers...

~~ Will KOMO lose the Mariners? We asked our most reliable BlatherWatch source who intimated inscrutably, "outlook not so good." But we've been instructed to ask again later, stay tuned.

~~ Sad faces in the management suites over at KIRO: Market Manager Scott Sutherland is returning to Phoenix to be Bonneville’s VP/Market Manager. He came here after being Director of Sales there. It’s also his hometown and his wife’s too. (photo: Sutherland)

~~ "Given the disastrous Iraq War, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the economy hurtling toward recession, the huge budget deficits, the plummeting dollar — to name just a few problems — these historians sound a lot like the 20 percent of dentists who don’t recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum." ~~ the New York Times editorial board on the 20% of historians in a poll who think history will judge George W. Bush presidency favorably.

~~ Rumors fly like arrows, fruit flies like bananas at least at Fisher Plaza where the tea leaves are read as often as are the All Access help wanteds.  Much hinges on the whether KOMO keeps the radio baseball or whether the Bonnevillains at KIRO or B97.3FM steals all the bases. When we say much hinges, we're told not only is the flabby old website on hold, but KVI and KOMO employees are sent to the Qwik-E-Mart for 6-packs of toilet paper because the company doesn't want to stock up until after the July announcement. Meanwhile, the help is understandably disparaged and some are dusting off their resumes. Others wail, "why, oh why, wasn't Fisher more aggressive when KIRO was floundering under Entercom? . .. we coulda been a contender!"

~~ the most persistent rumor which has again caught afire is that Bonneville will grab the Mariners, and put them on B97.3, and make it into FM talk. Our guy at Fisher says, turning FM music into FM talk is B'ville's MO, and there hasn't been an FM talker in Seattle for years." (since Entercom turned The Buzz (100.7) into the shit-kicking The Wolf in Dec. 2005). That would mean dumping the losing oldies format and diddling Frank Shier's once again.

Rachel maddow: come on in, the timing's great...

Items:

• Rachel Maddow has expanded her Air America radio show to three hours.
• MSNBC suits has hired her to join David Gregory  as a permanent panelist on the network's new show, A Race for the White House.
• In a groundbreaking move, MSNBC announced last week they'll simulcast the show on Air America.

Things are definitely looking up for The Doctor (she's not that kind of doctor...).

AlterNet's Rory O'Connor sat down to lunch with Maddow the other day, then wrote Rachel Maddow: Progressive Media's Next Mainstream Star, a glowing interview on something other than her forte: policy and politics. This time it was about her, and the future of talk media.

The bloggers (and the 21st century) invade KUOW!

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.

Mike Webb audio memorial tonight

Today is the anniversary of the death of Mike Webb, the murdered former KIRO talk host.

As an audio memorial, Bob Vesely, Mike's webmaster is running talk, music, remembrances, humor and vintage airchecks of Mike’s disc jockey days.

Vesely says, "It’s been a year today since our friend Mike was taken away from us. Each day I look at headlines and think about what Mike would being talking about on his evening broadcast. So rather than have silence tonight, I decided to run a vast array of clips from Mike’s career."

It will start at 6p, tonight, and run into the morning.

Go here. Or use this direct link to the stream. (Bob suggests using winamp or Real player. WindowsMedia player will work, but you will need instructions from the website).

April 13th was when Webb's broadcast went silent, and he disappeared. He'd been slain and laying in his house, not to be discovered for several months. A homeless man, Scott Brian White has confessed to the crime, but has pled not guilty.

His trial-setting hearing has be re-set many times: the latest date is April 28.

BlatherMunch8: radio of food, food of radio

We love radio, and we love food -- so whither food radio?

Food is not music. Food is not news. Food is neither right-wing politics nor the Christian religion. So in the radio business, food ain't shit.

But for those who love food, there is food radio worth listening to.

The food show of record on Seattle radio is, of course, Seattle restaurateur, Tom Douglas' In the Kitchen with Tom & Thierry. (KIRO Saturdays, 4-7p). Find it here, with an archive full of well-described podcasts, because KIRO doesn't give him a web page.

Thierry is "The Chef in the Hat" Thierry Rautureau, the whimsical Gallic chef/owner of the venerable Madison Park frog pond, Rover's. The two are old friends and that they like each other, is plain to hear.

Tom Douglas is the Victor Rosellini of this century (he actually has more restaurants and enterprises than Victor every had). No hashhouse operator, Douglas has stayed on top for years with well-run, upscale eateries whose quality never seems to slip -- much to the envy of other Seattle restaurateurs. (Cooks are a jealous lot).

Know thy enema: is oprah the anti-christ?

Uh-oh.

If this isn't a black-op campaign tactic by the diabolical Clinton forces, the religious right is now identifying Oprah Winfrey -- Barack Obama's super-starriest supporter -- as The Anti-Christ!

Yes. that Anti-Christ -- The Dark One, the Worthless Shepherd, the Little Horn, the Abomination, the Brug-o-later of the Diabolical Trinity; the upcoming, earthly Messianic pre-cursor-in-chief.

How could that be, you ask?

It's her collaboration with the bestselling, Vancouver guru, Eckhart Tolle™ whose sugar-coated spiritual books she's helped put into the platinumospere. The two teach an on-line class called A New Earth on his gentle New Age teachings so innocuous that even Sean Hannity says he's taking it.
(photo: Oprah, Auntie Christ?)

Maybe Sean would be a little more careful if he knew: It's a "Doctrine of Devils!