BlatherWatch

Is KVI doomed?

(no listeners, either) 

One thing upon which everyone could agree: something will happen, today.

And it did: After more than four years, The Commentators, John Carlson and Ken Schram were split up and given back-to-back talk shows on KOMO radio (m-fs, 9a- 3p). That means Carlson will go up against Rush Limbaugh, and Dave Ross- word is Carlson will be putting more emphasis on "lifestyle." (This to the delight of Bonneville suits who believe by KOMO giving up on midday news blocks, KIRO can win it back).

Fisher, we hear, had little choice: the two have no-cut contracts.

The question roiling Radio Town on Friday is: after pulling the plug on KOMO's Nine2Noon and The 'Tators, will Fisher kill off heritage talker KVI as we know it? Staffers and outside insiders fear that it is so.

Rumblings are they'll flip to all-syndication or music.

While we seriously doubt that AM music will be back, what we know for sure is: Fisher has recovered a little on the teevee front, but radio, even with market leaders KOMOAM & Star 101 is still sucking.

That means KVI.

We thought they'd decided to give live & local a go... they re-hired Bryan Suits (m-f, 5-9a), and put John Carlson back on at noon.

(Whither Bryan Suits?)

In other ways, it's obvious the money-draining KVI has sucked company hind nipple for a long time... the website has been seriously neglected with no podcasting (except for Suits) nor means of interacting with listeners.

Stay tuned, more changes are supposed to be announced. A New Day dawns Monday.

The Commentators R.I.P 2006-2010

Ken Schram: "After 4 1/2 years, the radio show (KOMO m-f,  12-3p) I did with John Carlson is no more.

Starting Monday he will have a show that runs from 9 a to noon on KOMO Newsradio and I will have a show that runs from noon to 3p.

Nine2Noon, R.I.P. 2010-2010

Brian Calvert sent an email to friends Thursday evening; subject line: A fun AND informative ride.

Today, Friday (9-17) will be the last for Nine2Noon, KOMO's cheeky, eclectic, weekdaily, narrated news and yak-yak with Calvert and Nancy Barrick.

(photo: Facebook)

Seattle cartoonist goes into hiding after fatwa

She was a satirist doing her job, and they ran her off. 

Seattle Weekly editor, Mark Fefer announced Wednesday: "You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly."

Can't remember ever seeing a First Amendment outrage such as this. Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris was literally chased from her very lifestyle by a fundamentalist Islamic fatwa. Fefer:

Bonneville throws another PD at KIRO sports

  KSPN/Los Angeles APD Brian Long has been named PD to replace Owen Murphy at Seattle's sports/talker KIROAM. He comes from KSPN in Los Angeles where he served as APD, hosted his own show and anchored pre-and post-game shows for USC and Lakers play-by-play. 

According to NTS' Al Peterson:

Prior to joining ESPN Radio in 2007, Brian oversaw programming, production and strategic planning for Morris Desert Media in Palm Springs. He also held on-air and programming stints at KGEO and KERN/Bakersfield, CA. He began his Sports radio career working as a producer of athletic events at his hometown station KMBZ/Kansas City.

O'Donnell,1; masturbation, 0

Autoeroticism took a big hit tonight, as former abstinence counselor, Christine O’Donnell knocked over Mike Castle who was comfortably on his way to capturing Vice President Joe Biden’s former Delaware Senate seat for the Republicans.

She’s a cutie: A scrubbed up and perky born-again Catholic, one of those rare, extremist winger women on Fox News who isn’t blonde. She's definitely talk radio and Fox News' choice in the race.

The goddess jessicaman and madame brodeur

She's known as Goddess Jessicaman, and we hear that no matter what else happens at KIROFM, she'll be a major part of the dayparts around the Bonneville cluster.

Jessica Gottesman is the midday news anchor who every day, takes more and more of Dori Monson's airspace on the eponymous midday talk show (m-f, 12-3p ). She's there to add the woman-yang, soften the cranky, adolescent boymanishness of the midday. (The Goddess, 46, is from the New York market, and despite her momistic tropes, she's about 130% hipper than Dori. She probably wrote it, but read her impressive Wikipedia bio here. Dori, btw, has a new antfarm! Tune in to hear how that's going).

All this teamin' up, yingin' and yangin' is kind of a new thing around KIRO, a product, we hear of the new PD who comes from sports radio where that's common. Yeah, yeah, they've done it forever in the morning, and there's the yingle and yingle of Ron & Don (m-f 3-7p). But injecting the X chromosome into the testosteronic afternoon mix is brand new around there.

 But hey, they gotta to do something... Dori's numbers are sad. And KIRO, according to anonymous, and highly subjective experts, are "the lowest summer numbers EVER for a Seattle radio station carrying Mariners baseball."

Could she become a full-fledged co-host of the midday show on KIRO? We're hearing a resounding "probably" from biased observers. That would be a blessing to those of us who'd rather eat poison than listen to Dori, but for others, not so much. 

(Did you know: Gottesman does a country music show on sat radio (Sirius m-f, 8p-2a)?

Adding the distaff voice has been tried in the nine-ta-noon, too. Seattle Times columnist Madame Nicole Brodeur is a print pundit looking to diversify. (Will she have a job next month if the price of newsprint goes up?) She's been tried out lately on KIRO as a g-droppin' foil to Dave Ross who's not so easy to yang up against. He's not an obnoxious little boy, he's a grown-up who takes a reasoned, nuanced view of things. Madame tries a little too hard to play lite to Dave's full-strength and, unfortunately, ends up sounding dim-witted.

What will happen at KIRO, when will it happen? Stay tuned.

 

What if a koran burned in the forest, and no one (from CNN) was there to see it?

It's Burn A Moron Day.

After the week of meta-yada yada leading up to the Christianist preacher in Florida not burning the Koran on the 9-11 ann'y, how come when a Koran actually was burned that day in Topeka, Kansas, there's nothing about it on the web or anywhere else?

(photo: the ignominious Florida preacher)

Saturday at noon Central time, Rev. Susan Phelps-Roper and family of the infamous Westboro Baptist (God Hates Fags) Church ripped-up and burned a Koran in a Weber grill, throwing in an American flag for good measure.

On the record, it never happened. A story drifted briefly by the internets, but disappeared like a styrofoam boyfriend.

It was taped by local teevee, and an account of it appeared on the Topeka Capitol-Journal site. The reporter interviewed a smug Phelps-Roper who'd had to squirt extra charcoal lighter fluid on the holy book when it unceremoniously went out. She also talked to a Moslem man who'd traveled to Topeka to protest.

We read it Saturday afternoon, but by 9p, all traces of the Topeka book burning had been scrubbed. Off the TJ-C site, off the Google, even.

It was, apparently, a rare fit of journalistic responsibility, prompted by god-knows-what government pressures, an perhaps prodded by over 200 fierce readers' comments. The TC-J did the right thing.

It's over, and has ended ignominiously for the Florida evangelical. They media got their overcooked headlines and the story had sweaty dominance over real news for a week. 

Now they're hanging their heads like a drunks in the cruel morning-after. "We've been had," they cried to the Florida preacher. "You used us!" They wailed, "We've embarrassed ourselves..."

We, the news consumers might cry the same thing, if we weren't partially to blame for our rejection of news gained with journalistic standards, replaced with our indifference by the vomitus of tabloid info-tainment model.

Why couldn't the media have acted righteously and ignored the Florida sonofabitch in the first place?

Maybe we all, not only deserve to be taken for a ride, but wish to be taken for a ride. It's ever so less painful than walking ...

(You'd think the media might have learned about McScandals after they got boozled in the Shirley Herrod affair or the fake New Black Panther scandal. Media could start a new day taking a new look at how the right used them to create the issue of the not-really-a-mosque not-really-planned for Ground Zero...)

Old Seattle Radio Saturday: kay jay arrrr, see-attle... channel 95!

 

Schoolmates: rush limbaugh and the koran-torching preacher

(photo: Terry Jones as a high school junior)

Cape Girardeau Missouri can be proud: not only can they point to Rush Limbaugh as a local boy done good, but also to Terry Jones, the hyper-Christian, self-promoting, hick preacher in Florida threatening to burn Korans, and bring down all manner of schmutz on the country both here and abroad.

Rush and Rev. Jones were both Class of 1969, Central High School.

Is there something in the water down there?

There's no proof they were friends, but Rush is certainly part of the media that's been rife with anti-Muslim rhetoric in the lead to the 9-11 anniversary.

This dangerous media-driven porqueria is but chickens coming home to roost in  America's rafters thanks to the right, and the Republican Party who are trying to get elected in November.  

                                  (photo: Rush as a senior)

Rush didn't mention that he might have brushed by him in the halls of his high school, he made a joke:

The pastor's probably saying, "Where did I go wrong? I've watched all these other groups get federal money for dressing themselves up nude in chocolate and putting the crucifix in a jar of urine. The NEA is paying for that, how come I can't get paid for burning the Koran?" So he's probably gonna take that up with Obama.

Jones has apparently caved to the intense pressure applied by the administration and others. But the torch has been taken up by those Christian bastions of love and redemption, the fanatical followers of Topeka Westboro Baptist pastor Fred Phelps, known for their "God hates fags" mantra, and protesting American soldiers funerals.

He's calling Jones a "false prophet," and if you know Phelps you know there's no reasoning, no caving with him. He's already burned Korans, but nobody noticed. He says he'll fire 'em up again on 9-11. 

Jones has previously joined-up with Phelps -- According to Capecentralhigh.com:

On April 18, 2010, members of Dove World participated in a joint protest against homosexuality with the Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for disrupting the funerals of U.S. soldiers. On April 21, Dove World member Fran Ingram published a blog post proclaiming the church’s endorsements of the Westboro Baptist Church’s protests against homosexuality and homosexuals. 

Sometimes when it's embarrassing to be an American. This is one of those.