BlatherWatch

THE LOSERS: 2008

LOSING QUOTE OF 2008: "Every time you see a funeral procession, so goes another AM listener."

THE LOSERS:

~~ Fisher Broadcasting, (KVI, KOMO, Star 101, KOMOTV) on its very lips,  hed its smaller teevee stations, the Mariners, their more expensive employees -- even put their home office plaza up for sale. Their premier KVI talk show, The Commentators was moved once again to the newsier KOMO (where they had even  Ken Schram's head spinning: "I just hope the schizophrenic people who run this company finally make a decision that they're willing to stick to," he told Bill Virnin of the Seattle P-I, "I figured it out. They're moving us on average every six months. So I figure somewhere around next Easter we'll wind up on Star 101.5 spinning records." His partner Carlson said, We've got a really popular show. Let's see if you can figure out where it is."

~~ Late night and weekend listeners. KIRO shut down local shows (besides the gardening Cisco and the cookin' Tom Douglas) on weekends and after 10p. David Goldstein was arguably the only local liberal talk show in the vast liberal sink that is Seattle, He was canceled in January, and Dori Monson successfully sabotaged him for further fill-in KIRO. Fortunately, he has a blogging career to fall back on.

Liberal talk kicked ass in 2008

Tom Taylor of RadioInfo writes in his annual list, "Who had a good year in 2008?"

“Progressive/liberal talk show hosts”, says longtime radio pro and Lesley University prof Donna Halper, in Boston. She says “it’s true the progressive and liberal talk...

(photo: Stephanie Miller, KPTK m-f, 6-9a)

Magic negros and sensitivity training: will talk radio change to save the GOP?

It's a debacle -- RNC Chair hopeful Chip Saltsman's sending a Christmas CD to GOP committee members with the song calling the President-elect Barack the Magic Negro.

Democrats are outraged, and so are everyone else who are behooved to get that way; but Republicans can be likened to freshly-beheaded domestic fowl roiling around the barnyard wondering who they are and why.

Senator calls for al franken to be seated anyhoo...

Minnesotans are concerned their state could be without a Senator for the early months of the next Congress, So Sen. Amy Klobuchar proposed to seat the unofficial winner until all legal challenges are finalized.

That would be Sen. Al Franken, the first radio talk show host ever exalted to the U.S. Senate.

"If the Canvassing Board declares a winner, that should be our senator," said the Minnesota Democrat. Even if a court challenge were to follow, she added, "[The Senate] could seat a senator pending the litigation."

It's a great idea by Klobuchar, a great Senator. It's how our state handled the 2004 governor's race after Christine Gregoire won the official hand-counting yet faced what turned our to be a laughable court challenge by the hapless Dino Rossi.

We needed a governor, and we needed her right then. We couldn't wait for the court case to ripen, which it didn't until Spring 2005.

Despite our many disagreements...

With a nod to Politico for the opportunity to steal this idea, we'll attempt to be gracious in the spirit of the season and invoking Thumper's genteel dictum (if you can't say sumpin' nice...") address some of BlatherWatch's critiquees and verbicidal victims starting with the words: "Despite our many disagreements..."

Please feel free to do the same in our rich, and colorful comments columns.

Bill O'Reilly! (KTTH m-f 9-11p)
Nice suit! You not only cleaned up by getting that huge teevee contract, but now you don't have to do radio anymore and have all those scary and disgusting contacts with "the folks!" You've got a great sense of humor, too Bill -- your pretext of impartiality is a hoot!

(See how easy this is? Just sincerely try to be sincerely sincere, and the love --or whatever -- just flows... it's a fucking miracle).

Merry Whatever from Blatherwatch!

We'll be back soon with our annual wrap-up of the Blathers and The Blatherers of 2008.

God bless from the staff of BlatherWatch.

KIRO, KTTH jump to no.1 and no 2 in the market

It's gotta be Dori Monson, TBTL, and Dave Boze's wife.

And PD Rod Arquette, and CEO Bruce Reese,.

The Phase II Arbitrends (for Sept. Oct, Nov.) are out, and  KIRO (AM & FM) made a huge leap to #1 in the market from tied for 5th in the summer book. A jump from 4.1 to an astounding 5.7.

And who's tied (with market biggie country KMPS) for # 2?  Why, it's KTTH, the little station that apparently could. (Jeez, it was only Tuesday we were calling it a "prerecorded afterthought.")

Fred Thompson to replace o'reilly: will radio survive?

Bill O'Reilly is giving up his two-hour Westwood One radio show with its 3-4 million listeners on January 19. Buzzing: Who will replace him? Fred Thompson? Rudy Guiliani? John Gibson?

In a long piece about talk radio, The New York Times reports it will be Thompson, the long-winded former Republican senator, actor, (Law & Order) and lobbyist who ran for president.

His candidacy was a great disappointment to conservatives who figured the drawling Tennessean to be the next Ronald Reagan. He wasn't. He was a hemming and hawing stump speaker who took weekends off and hadn't the energy to even show in a national campaign.

UPDATED: Weekend america will fold in january; john moe speaks

John Moe says in an e-mail to BlatherWatch he'll stay on with American Public Media after Weekend America goes away and will be developing new projects.

"APM has been really great to me and seem to really believe in investing in me as a national host." he says.

He didn't move to St. Paul to host WA, "That came later -- I moved out here for a change for my family and for new opportunities within APM, which apparently have happened and are happening."

(photo: John Moe)

Part of why WA went down was that it was a big show with moving parts all over the country, and too expensive to produce in the declining economy. Moe writes: "I think whatever I do here next will probably be[with] a smaller staff but hopefully will fit my vibe pretty well."

He's been getting mail already from Seattle: "Now is the time to take [his old one-man KUOW show] The Works national!" 

Big weather brings the best of radio

  When Big Weather arrives, flipping on the radio is still what people do first.

(We're having a "snow event," as they say in newsrooms these days, a term we find as annoying as "window treatments," or "water features").

Bad weather is non-controversial, and irrefutable. It's a negative outrage perpetrated by God and not a politician, or your neighbor. Everyone experiences it simultaneously and has an opinion about it which usually boils down to: it sucks!

People love to talk about the weather. It's a perfect storm, if you will, for talk radio -- KOMO and KIRO's lines have been jammed all weekend with people who never call radio shows, but just want to bitch a little, share a harrowing experience or nugget of information from their neck of the woods.

We love hearing live radio on the weekend, and only wish this weren't so rare, and limited only to snowmeggeddon or other catastrophes.

Gotta admit, listening to KIRO bsack-up host Frank Shiers sans his deluded politics is an improvement; he's certainly better skilled at chat radio than his evening counterpart Jennifer Harriman over at KOMO. She did a yeoman's job, but comes from music radio, and hasn't had the hours and

Photo: KIRO's Frank "Shiver" Shiers)

hours and hours of talk radio that Frank had the opportunity of perpetrating on all of us over the years. (that's the closest you're going to get to a compliment out of us, Frank. We're just glad KIRO management didn't call on the insufferable Peter Weissbach who they recently stole from Fisher).

While his kind of non-adversarial talk warms our hearts, it bores the shit out of us... That said, we'll be the first to say: when this kind of homey, local radio of shared community went away -- a wide swath of audience left too.

(phot: Komo's Jennifer Harriman)

 We're always predicting the demise of radio, and bitching about how nobody but old people listens to it any more. But dump 12 inches of snow on a population and see how lame new media can be at connecting communities and disseminating information.

We've had the 2nd string in all weekend on KIRO and KOMO, but you can bet the first stringers on Monday will continue the weather talk, and the lines will keep filling up no matter what else is happening in the world.