BlatherWatch

What's john curley running for?

It's a given that John Curley (KIRO m-f, 7-10p) doesn't take his new evening radio show very seriously.

(image: "gravitas-ing up"- the blonde is nearly gone)

Not only does it conflict with his charity auction business, it collides twice a month with regular Sammamish City Council meetings which occur on first Tuesdays and third Mondays at 6:30p. What's more, Council member office hours are third Tuesdays from 5:30 to 6:30p. He's a Councilman, and that's quite a commitment for someone who's supposed to be on the air weekdays at 7p...

There's more floating around about Curley's intentions: "He's gonna run for a higher office," says a grumpy KIROFM staffer. "He's using KIRO as a stepping stone."

The NPR Spring: give ... now, more than ever

  The right is going after public broadcasting tooth & claw. NPR is facing the most serious threat to its existence ever.

If defunded as the wing-nutty House Republicans intend, NPR will be hurt badly.

KUOW is deep in their Spring pledge drive.

So is KPLU.

If you give to public radio, or have ever had the inclination, this is the time to give and give generously. A few bucks not only will be put to good use, but will show your support in a real way.

Sean hannity is a birther, but is he a mexican?

Teevee and radio talk host Sean Hannity, is now espousing birtherism.

That's the kook-a-do conspiracy theory about President Obama's birthplace that Donald Trump legitimized for those who consider Donald Trump's presidential noises legitimate.

Such people are rare, and now Fox News Star, Sean Hannity is one of them. (Hannity's tape-delayed show is run in place of the antepenultimate and penultimate hours of live and local programming on KTTH, which may be the ultimate right-wing talk station in Seattle. To listen what's left of live & local on KTTH, tune in The David Boze Show (m-f, 3-4p).

Maybe it's unfair, but many believe that Sean Hannity, for all his Irish cover is an illegal Mexican! He could look like one with all that shiny black hair- and get this: he claims to have been born the same year as Obama- 1961!

Jason Easley at Politicusa:

Hannity claimed that he believes that Obama was born in this country, but that it is odd that Obama won’t produce the birth certificate. Interestingly Sean Hannity claims to have been born in 1961, and he wants us to assume that he was born in the United States, but I can find no copy of Sean Hannity’s birth certificate anywhere on the Internet. Sean Hannity’s Fox News bio makes no mention of when of where he was born. Hannity claims to have grown up in New York state, but as we know illegal immigrants flood into New York on a daily basis.

After dropping out of college, Hannity has a sketchy personal history of drifting across the country and working odd jobs as a general contractor and a bartender. This would appear to be the history of an illegal who is trying to avoid detection. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that Sean Hannity was born in America, but the gaps in his personal biography raise some disturbing questions.

John Curley AWOL @ KIRO: WTF???

"Isn't showing up supposed to be 80% of success? The dude is not showing up," says a KIRO FM staffer.

We've written about his lack of pith, but now it seems former teevee host, and new evening talker John Curley (KIROFM m-f, 7-10p) is routinely AWOL from his talk job.

The void (if you're generous enough to call it that) is being filled in by out-of-work, veteran talker Mike West, or his predecessor Frank Shiers, or hilariously, "Best of" re-frieds despite he's only been on the air for a couple of months!

He's missed about 5-6 shows out of the last 20. Radio, it seems, is just a little media sideline - Curley makes his real money running charity auctions, a profession practiced in the evening. The auction season is ripening (it peaks in June).

UPDATED: Old Seattle Radio Saturday: Buzz Barr, 1937-2011 R.I.P.

(CORRECTION: CHARLIE BROWN IS NOT DEAD, AS WE REPORTED EARLIER).

He once gave Mick Jagger a piggyback ride. Said it was "all in a day's work in Seattle rock radio in the '60's."

Buzz Barr, Seattle Top 40 program director and rock 'n' roll deejay cum station owner and publicist died Thursday at his home in Aberdeen. He was 74.

Old friend and former KOL colleague Bill Taylor says, "He was a good guy and a terrific broadcaster."

Pat O'Day both competed with Mr. Barr and employed him. "Buzz was such a dedicated broadcaster. It was his life and he did it
proud. Always reaching for the stars, he was show biz!"

His radio career started in Hoquiam (as did the careers of several other Seattle locals such as Steve West (KJR) and Bill Munson (KOL, KJR, KAYO).

Buzz Barr moved-on up to Centralia’s KITI (where his on-air name was Tom Cat), then to Tacoma’s long-gone KMO, then to KVI.

He left KVI in the mid-1960s for KOL, where he kick-started the station’s Top 40 format (KOLORFUL KOL) going head-to-head against market leader KJR and Pat O'Day.

Dex Allen (KOL 1965-67) writes: "Buzz rescued me from Pittsburgh in September 1965 when he hired me to come to KOL as the 9 to midnight guy... KOL and KJR were in a head to head battle and I was thrilled that Buzz brought me to Seattle." Listen to some old KOL "Magnificent 7" jingles.

(KJR heyday: Lan Roberts, Mike Phillips, Big Jim Martin, Tom Murphy, Buzz Barr, Charlie Brown).

His next stop was KISN (Portland) for a short time, then back to KOL, then to KJR where Pat O'Day hired him away to do middays at KJR in 1967.

The World Famous Tom Murphy writes: "I used to listen to Buzz on KISN when I would visit Portland. I thought he sounded great and if an opening at KJR came up, Pat should grab him. He did."

O'Day says: "Lan Roberts, Mike Phillips, Jim Martin, Tom Murphy and Buzz Barr were all on my team at KJR. What a parade of talent we enjoyed and deserved our sky high rating because they were that good!"

Buzz was program director at KING radio during the station’s ill-fated foray into Top 40 (again head-to-head against O'Day) in the 1970s.

Stan Foreman writes: "Buzz and I were friends for 50 years as we both started our broadcasting careers as teenagers in the Grays Harbor area in 1960. Buzz was a natural entertainer and loved radio. He started in a small market but soon became a Program Director in Top 40 radio in the Northwest's two biggest markets, Seattle and Portland. He was my friend and he will be missed."

(Photo: Buzz Barr, singer Vicki Carr and record promoter Ron Saul, about 1966. Thanks, Bill Taylor)

After KING, Mr. Barr became sales manager for KYAK-KGOT in Anchorage, then bought a station in partnership in Kenai.

He told Blatherwatch last year: “I did really well but my partner took me down to a point where I came back to Aberdeen, opened an agency, was doing well until last year when I retired and hit 72 with 52 years in broadcasting, and miss it in a big way."

Dex Allen says: "A great kidder, ol' Buzz was. I asked him where KOL was, and he said, 'Harbor Island.' Imagine my excitement - palm trees, soft sand beaches… Wow! I was going to heaven on Harbor Island! The dream ended when I drove into Seattle and was directed across the bridge to West Seattle and Harbor Island. I never let Buzz live that down."

I enjoyed working with Buzz and followed him on the air at KJR. We didn't really hang out much but when we did I always enjoyed his company.

"Buzz was such a dedicated broadcaster," said O'Day. "It was his life and he did it
proud. Always reaching for the stars, he was show biz!"

The beauty of donald trump

(photo: wouldn't he be AMAZING in Iowa?)

We're not prone to praying, especially for politics (maybe that's our problem) but we gotta admit: We've been calling on the Almighty lately to prevail upon Donald Trump to PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012!!! (God sits on a couple of boards w/The Donald and is said to have his ear).

Facts: True to market-slavish form, Republicans are thinking of selling their debates to media interests; Trump says he has $600 million to spend on the race. Debates are a campaign hurdle for a candidate.

Solution: Trump could problem-solve the way he always does: by buying the hurdle!

Can talk radio be saved with KIROFM's "broadening philosophy?"

Randall Bloomquist at Newstalk Edge writes today about Indiana GOP Governor Mitch Daniel's recent heresy that the Republican Party needs to expand by reaching out to “those who never tune-in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean.” 

Daniels was promptly punished by such as Rush Limbaugh who said: 

"You don't diss the people who are already audiences of those shows...who won election for your party year after year after year after year. And all of this, of course, done to impress the mainstream media."

But Bloomquist points out that Daniels was only trying to expand the GOP base, not replace it... and, he writes (agreeing with us) that expanding the base would be good for radio, too.

Bashing pitbulls on the radio: bad career move

Ooh, people, won't you leave my dog alone?
People, won't you leave my dog alone?
All he ever did was wag his tail
People, why did you have
To throw my dog in jail ?
People, won't you leave my dog alone?

~~Nancy Sinatra

                           (photo: pitbulls are people too)

A talk host can call the President of the United States a traitor, a terrorist, a commie or just about anything south of one of the FCC Seven Dirties, but... he better not be dissing no dogs!

(photo: "Fitz," on the right, doing what he does)

Stereotyping dog breeds fares no better (maybe even worse) than racial stereotyping does on the radio, as The Wolf morning yackster "Fitz" (KKWF m-f, 5-9a) (real name: Filvin Grobstad) found out after he bashed pit bulls on his show yesterday. 

We're the first to point out the racist overtones of his specist slurs and we hear his career's on the line over at the shitkicker station, as reported by Robert over at Seattle Dogspot.

Glenn beck: "the world is about to be plunged into complete and utter darkness, despair, famine," and I'll be starting up my own TV network."

The apocalypse will be televised, and Apocalypto will be getting the residuals.

Fisher showdown on May 11

The sides are drawn and the votes are being lined up. Will Fisher Communications (KOMOTV, KOMO1000, KVI, Star 101) continue to exist or be sold off?

The May 11 annual shareholders meeting may very well decide whether the 101-year-old Seattle company which began as a flour mill.

According to RBR, a radio trade site:

Dissident shareholder FrontFour Capital is nominating its own slate of candidates in an attempt to take control of the board and put the company up for sale. The four would join FrontFour’s David Lorber to constitute a majority on the board.

Fisher management is pushing for its own slate of four directors, whose election would leave Lorber as a one-vote minority voice. 

Fisher is urging shareholders and beating the bushes for votes to rout the New York hedge fund's slate. In a letter to shareholders:

As of March 9, 2011, FrontFour owned approximately 2% of our outstanding common stock. If all four FrontFour nominees are elected to our Board of Directors, FrontFour’s nominees (including David A. Lorber) will constitute a majority of our Board of Directors.

RBR notes that bush-beating by both sides probably won't matter as much as the vote of Mario Gabelli, whose mutual funds own 27.8% of Fisher’s stock – far more than any other shareholder. He recently told a teevee interviewer that he would be willing to sell, but not at the price being offered by FrontFour-affiliated Huntingdon REIT.

Fisher got greedy, and went to Wall Street and got that ol' easy money. They binged and built a fancy high-tech building in downtown Seattle that's been a white elephant, (now for sale) and bought a bunch of small-town teevee stations that didn't pay and that they're now struggling to sell-off.

The New York money boyz are impatient. They want out with as much dough as they can squeeze.

Fuck Seattle. Bidness is bidness.

Who could expect more or different from Wall Street? More or different was expected of the hometown company who forgot who they were, where they came from, sold their souls, lost control.

(CEO Colleen "2x her annual salary plus optional bonuses" Brown)

We can't imagine why or how the Fisher management team, led by CEO Colleen Brown, is still employed. We're sure there's a gilded parachute all packed and ready, if the plane starts to go down.

It's more than sad... it's sickening.