BlatherWatch

Michael savage takes to the mattresses

"I'm sleeping behind locked doors with a shot gun," says Michael Savage.

It's just the latest crisis manufactured by the bellicose San Francisco talker to enhance his profile and give him victim coin to spend in the outer edges of the right-wing.

Tomorrow, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval's non-binding resolution which "condemns defamatory language used by radio personality Michael Savage against the immigrant community."

This is what dreams are made of for a talk radio host such as Michael Savage (KSFO's Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan must be so jealous).  

Seattle arbitron ratings: liberal talk sucks, so does KVI- has everybody gone satellite?

The Spring '07 Arbitron ratings book in the vital 25-54 demo for the Seattle market are in. And yikes!

~ Liberal talk KPTK is tanking across the board- down 66% overall.

Stephanie Miller (6-9a) lost 40%; Thom Hartmann (9a-12p) plunged 63%; Ed Shultz is in the bucket 68%; our Rachel Maddow is down 50%, and Randy Rhodes lost 33% of her audience. The only host who got over 1% of the audience was Mike Malloy- and even he dove 64%. Has everyone taken to reading blogs?

Global warming reality mugs bush, murdoch- when will the true believers catch up?

It ain't easy to be green- especially if you've been a red-meat denier of global warming for lo these many. 

Well-ingrained in the conservative consciousness is driving SUVs and other fat-ass gas guzzlers. Not only has it been stylishly politically incorrect, but there's the too-delicious to-pass-up message: "I can afford this- you whiners can't!"

Rush Limbaugh (whom James Wolcott has called, " a massive blockage endowed with the gift of gab.") blarted only last week: "I can't emphasize enough, folks, that this whole thing is a hoax. It's nothing more than the latest way to push the big government, liberal agenda."

Tuesday oddems: dry humping saves lives; librarian porn; free fm- free at last; schram blames victim, eats the black bird; lutefisking the issues; outercourse with your inner child; clench-sphinctered, war mongering, altar boys; and: we have standards!

~ Lutefisk has been a standby for Northwest "comedians," since Stan Boreson. Just mention the odiferous Norwegian seafood- and you'll get a laugh- at least you would have in 1952! Sytman & Boze (KVI m-f, 5-9a) aged 37, and 34, respectively, joked over two days  on their show about a lutefisk eating contest and stirred up enough complaints that even we heard about it. The topic may have been tailored for their aged audience, or- as we suspect- they themselves consider lutefisk funny. It isn't, and as a talk radio topic, it's one of the losing-est we've ever heard. The crunchy conservative talkers should go back to mocking the homeless and putting a schmutz on people who ride bicycles.

~ Celebrity rape talkers Anthony & Opie, suspended from XM satellite radio, bitterly complained recently, "We're being held to the same standard as NPR!" to which Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait, Wait don't Tell Me (KUOW Saturdays, 10-11a) asked, "We have standards? Let's go to break before somebody holds us to them!"

~ Book lust, Babes with Books- yum!

~~Did you ever think you'd hear the words, "I'm sorry," out of KVI contrarian/libertarian Ken Schram's (The Commentators; m-f, 9p-12p) mouth? Dep't of Corrections Olympia offices were evacuated Friday after Schram ineptly sent a package sans return address containing a bobble head doll of himself to corrections chief, Harold Clarke. (It was an award, ironically, for Clarke's ineptitude). Schram speculated on his show that Clarke might have engineered the evacuation to get back at him, but no one was buying that one. Schram's apology from the KOMO Web site: "To the 350 people forced to scurry from their workplace: I'm sorry. To the Tumwater police and state patrol bomb squad who responded and handled things proficiently and professionally: I'm sorry." He didn't apologize for being a pompous, self-mentioning ass- what kind of person has a bobble-head made of himself? But he did say he's sending as penance, 35 dozen Krispy Kremes to the injured parties. (donuts? is that stereotyping cops?) He'll have them delivered, he says, because, "I sure as hell ain't mailing them!" Despite the upside of the obvious headline bonanza generated by the incident, KVI suits are wondering if it might be the bomb-like qualities of The Commentators that's made all the listeners evacuate.

News talk websites: why don't they get it?

Talk radio, especially from the right where it's flourished, has always held itself above "old media."

Dialing up the Web sites of local newstalk stations finds them as boring as their programming. We'd say that maybe radio talk is also the "old media."

While it's true that talk radio stations aren't newspapers; (and probably have a better long term prognosis than those media dependent on dead trees) they've woefully neglected their presence on the Internets, a medium that could play the most important role in saving their bacon. 

Seattle misses the imus-ing of radio

As if they needed something else to drag it down, the radio industry is quaking once again over the public outrage, and the prospect of the disastrous consequences of more Imus Eruptions.

Two new tremors have shaken and stirred the radio world-at-small: a couple of FREE FM/New York's JV & Elvis and their producer were canned last week after prank-calling a Chinese restaurant on-air and ordering "flied lice," and other such hilarities.

This on the heels of splatitudes wracked by those rascals, Opie & Anthony on XM Radio, who interviewed a homeless guy on the street who fantasized outloud about having rough sex with Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush, and Queen Elizabeth- all to the glee of the boyz. They're the jocks who were fired from CBS radio in 2002 for getting two listeners to have on-air sex in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

"We don't know what to expect," an FM morning radio person told Blatherwatch. "We've toned it down for sure- problem is, nobody knows where the boundaries are."

Winter of our discontent: the Arbitron losers

The Winter Arbitrons in the all-important, 25-54 "money" demographic show pretty much a break-even period for local newstalk stations in tight competitive formation.

In the hallowed tradition of our half-glass, half-assed style of reporting, here are the losers and low points that you've come to expect from us:

~ KTTH was the lowest of the newstalk stations in the overall ratings going from a 2.9 (%) share to 1.6; ranking #22 out of 30 stations! KIRO barely lost to KOMO; 16th and 15th respectively).

~ Morning Drive's (5-9a) biggest losers were Sytman & Boze who dove into the dumpster with a startlingly dank 1.5 share, down a full point. KIRO morning news barely lost to KOMO; but KVI's Kirby Wilbur regained a little of his past glory at 2.5.

~ The biggest 9 ta noon loser was KTTH's Rush Limbaugh who went from an impressive 5.4 share to a 3.1, but still beat an improved (1.8 to 2.6) Dave Ross, and KVI's The Commentators who did better this time, splitting Rush's lost points with Ross. But no cigar to the high-priced, weekdaily KVI tofu wrestling with Carlson & Schram.

Is talk radio as we know it, finished? we hope so.

After years of a healthy (yet deliciously unhealthy) addiction to talk radio, we're frankly bored with it, these days.

Tuesday oddems: walt crowley, j.p. patches, third ballsack hernia, ron reagan, phil the junkie, the styblehead, silver threads among the gold, and pass the ammunition!

~ News of HistoryLink's Walt Crowley still recouping in the hospital from his larynectomy last week from friend Pam: "Walt had a cup of coffee from the Tully’s downstairs, declining the one that came with his hospital lunch. He also now proudly sports a Patches Pal button, one of a bunch of gifts from JP Patches himself, who made a surprise visit yesterday. Marie & Walt continue to ask that you wait to visit until he gets home and more recovered, but for JP Patches an exception plainly had to be made."

Seattle-baiting, hating radio talk hosts: LIVE IN THE DAMN SUBURBS!

Seattle talk hosts dine elegantly, and daily at the banquet of anti-Seattle. No different than from Eastern Washington legislators and their sour grapes; the minority state Republican Party: or people from places like Centralia who think Seattle is Sodom & Gomorra.

(Eastern Washington legislators have constituencies to demagogue; Centralians are correct. Republicans can't prevail in the most populous city in the State, so continue the flawed strategy of running against it).