TBTL: "the best new radio show in seattle is on... KIRO?"

(photo: Jen, Luke, Sean)

" I just think they're smart enough to leave it alone. Basically we're like a transplanted organ, and KIRO is just doubling down on the anti-rejection drugs every day." ~~ Luke Burbank on his show, TBTL.

Eli Sanders, The Stranger's ace reporter has written a definitive piece on KIRO's groundbreaking Too Beautiful to Live, (m-f, 7-10p) and Luke Burbank.

Luke, Jen, Rod Arquette, and the other KIROFM suits ought to be creaming at this detailed, and well-written love-note delivered directly to their target demo via the hippest web and print delivery system in town.

 Some excerpts: 

~~ KIRO FM is owned by Bonneville International, a broadcasting company controlled by the Mormon Church. At almost every hour of every day, KIRO's on-air programming consists of sports jabber, political shouting matches, and the same old traffic reports—except for during three very odd hours each weekday evening when Too Beautiful to Live is on.

~~ The main difficulty in verbally encapsulating TBTL, as it's known by fans, is that it doesn't have an easily defined subject matter so much as it has a sensibility: eclectic, arch, highly literate, and committed to exploring everything that comes to mind—from Beyoncé to the troubled banking system. Some have said, likely out of a mix of disgust and descriptive frustration, that TBTL is, basically, a cult that has somehow tricked the Mormons of Bonneville International into allowing a bunch of questionably talented pied pipers on-air. The initial response to this from Burbank—a former standup comedian and proud NPR dropout—was to try to raise money for buying some land in Central America in order to really make the cult thing happen. He had a country picked out (El Salvador), three of "the tens" were offering to be his "sister-wives," and Andrews helpfully noted that "there's more money in cults."

~~ "{Bonneville's] smart enough to realize that in 10 years, all their listeners are going to be dead," Burbank told me. "They're just willing to say, 'This is a spot where you hang out and do this thing that sounds totally weird to us.' And there's no way that these bosses listen to the show and go, like, 'Oh, good, another hour on Kanye West's girlfriend.' But I just think they're smart enough to leave it alone. Basically we're like a transplanted organ, and KIRO is just doubling down on the anti-rejection drugs every day."

~~ Something is certainly happening. KIRO program director Rod Arquette told me that there's been a measurable uptick in 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. listeners since TBTL began airing. It's a modest uptick, yes, but measurable: from January 2008, when TBTL first launched, through this summer, its share of listeners in its time slot grew from 2 percent to 2.2 percent, bumping it from 17th to 15th in the market. (Delilah, by contrast, was ranked 5th in the market this summer.) On Facebook, there is an organized group of over 350 self-identified "tens"—with an additional 450 more "tens" on an official Facebook page set up by the show. Many of them listen via the show's podcast, which had roughly 100,000 downloads in November, far more than any other show on KIRO. This pleases Burbank, who says the podcast is better than the show anyway.

He means that while as an on-air show TBTL clocks in at three hours because of station breaks and advertising spots, as a podcast it's only an hour and a half of pure, noncommercial, somewhat NPR-like radio. Plus, it's not interrupted, and tonally undermined, by KIRO's carnival-barker promos and questionably newsworthy news updates (a recent one featured an urgent report on spaghetti-sauce-throwing vandals in a suburban community). Those are cut out on the podcast.

We're not sure where TBTL will end up. It's possible it will lift off the terrestrial radio platform like a space ship disguised as an earthly barn in a sci-fi movie that drops its rough exteriors and leaps up into space -- in this scenario, cyber space. It's ready for bigger worlds, and the grubby little planet of Dori Monson, and Kirby Wilbur may not eventually be able to sustain its life-forms.

Comments

[PugetSound]

don't forget that the water in the hot water heater is also okay to use in a pinch.

[PugetSound]

and make sure you keep your vehicles topped off with gas so if you have to get in your car you can get warmed up. but don't do that in the garage!

plus, i am sure chucks will be willing to let you bring the sparky family up to his hacienda. he's a very generous fellow.

[chucks]

The guy that built my house put in gas water heaters to heat the floors, electric wall heaters in every room, plus a massive Russian fireplace that will heat the whole dayum house. Gotta loose electricity, gas and wood before we get cold. He put an oven in the chimney as well. Between that and the bar-b-q, we eat. Glad he did all that heater crap to. My bride has been having thyroid (sp?) issues this past coupla years. Poor lady just can't get warm. Last winter, when we were in Belize at 90 degrees, she wore a coat.
As for water, we have an indoor endless wave lap pool. Gotta boil it, but we and our neighbors have water enough.
But fisrt and foremost, I'm calling Jeff Renner on chanel 5 and the weather Barbi on 7 and having them cancel the storm. We just don't need one this winter.
(can't call KOMO, because they are idiots and can't hold on to talented reporters.)

[sparky]

Weather Barbie. chucks, that is perfect.

Car has a full tank, i have a gas stove that works even without electricity.

[WILD BILL]

tbtl ain't this, it ain't that (pa tooie) what it is, to these greasy ears, is a lot fun, and during the Panic of 08 that's like gold...by the way, I'm no longer a 44 year old guy, I'm Big Mable, a 300 pound, heart of gold hooker from American Samoa...

[Mike Barer]

TBTL is not always great or even good, but it's free-form radio and it is for the most part, outside the corporate structure.

[Former KIRO Listener at Nite]

Jen's pic is an immitation of Mr. Ed.

Luke looks like he just passed gas.

Their show I don't listen to. Ugh

[KS]

that's just swell, CL