BlatherWatch

Great Blatherings de 2011: KIROFM jocks join the "fart fetish groups;" KUOW pledge drive soars

Market leader KIROFM, once an award-winning prince among radio talkers has devolved to prurient blather. Their undeniable success is due, in part to lowest common denominating "topics" like the following one we chronicled on Oct 7. An update: in November, Dori Monson (KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) spent a segment or two on an alleged flatulance by Whoopee Goldberg on The View.

KIROFM is no. 1 in the ratings, but can anyone take it seriously as a community forum? Or anything but a dumbed-down Page Six with sports and pets?

We'd say no. Latest evidence to the contrary: air time spent nearly every day for a week on the Nancy Grace flatulance "issue." Did she fart loudily and cartoonishly during a recent Dancing With the Stars episode? Or is the YouTube audio a fake? Inquiring children need to know...

Nancy claims she was framed, but doesn't anyone when accused of making the choice between shame and pain?

Dori Monson (KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) took time away from his pet and government abuse stories numerous times over the week, always playing the audio at least twice per. He and L'il Jake couldn't resist the latest "development" that the audio rights were being requested of ABC from a "fart fetish group." The "reporting" was done, of course, accompanied by two more plays of the alleged flatulance, "Just so you can decide for yourself."  Ron & Don couldn't resist playing it a few times. Even Dave 'Bigfoot' Boze, (KTTH m-f, 3-6p) filling in for John Curley, played the cut (if you will) in the evening. (Ya think he's auditioning for the job?)

Frankly, there's nothing that Nancy Grace could do or say that would make her remotely interesting to us. It's hard to imagine Dancing with The Stars generating any real news. Celebrity farting is a recent entertainment phenom, but one we'd rather explore on our personal computers late at night.

Can anyone take KIRO seriously these days? The old Dave Ross must be rolling in his grave... reminds us to get our pledge into KUOW.

Magnificent! Dori's breath products endorsements

Dori Monson (KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) has made solutions for bad breath, halitosis, and tonsil stones absolutely sing with his brilliant

(photo: Dori Monson, crack flack)

live-reads for TheraBreath, the self-described leader in breath treatment strategies since 1997. (canker sore-free toothpaste, mouth-wetting lozenges!)

It's the kind of presentation that underscores - once again - the depth and breadth (if you will) of Dori's message and never fails to remind us to return to the BBC Newshour (KUOW m-f 1-2p.

Bravo, sir!

Ron & don, dori monson too lazy to do the last hour of their shows

Back in 2008, Ron & Don (KIROFM m-f, 3-7p) got their four-hour way by pushing out Tony Miner's Big Story, an Murrow award-winning long-form news hour.

The idiot twins (as Robert Reich has called them) went around boasting "you wanted more, now you got four."

(photo: Ron & friend-"he's the bright one").

But as many readers have complained: you don't get 4 hours of new, live content, and neither do you often get 3 hours of The Dori Monson Show (KIROFM m-f, 12-3p).

Both shows play tape the last hour of the day. Our KIRO guy says, "The whole office laughs behind their backs because they say they do a 4-hour show, but really it's only 3."

How can they get away with this? They justify it by saying that the audience changes over so much that it doesn't matter, but pretty much everyone we talk to at Eastlake says: "Laziness is the culprit."

That's also why they added Rachel Belle ... and their newest, lamest segment, "hit me with your talk shots" where they simply rerack cuts from the other KIRO talk shows.
 
It's simply less time they have to actually work. 

Dunno what Dori does in his free last hour, (we've heard he disappears into the john  for prolonged periods, only to emerge with his hair fluffier in the front); Don can usually be seen watching teevee on the KIRO web stream; Ron goes home for the night.

(photo: Dori- "full of, but NOT no. 2)

This what you can do TO your listeners getting so puffed-up being the "No. 1 local talk show in Seattle." You're forgetting who put you there. You can say "fuck 'em," but eventually, that sentiment will be turned back on you. Listeners are your bosses, member? (Dunno where Dori gets off screwing listeners out of their last hour- he's not even No. 2 - though he's unswervingly full of No. 2, as we keep telling you).

KIROFM jocks join the "fart fetish groups;" KUOW pledge drive soars

KIROFM is no. 1 in the ratings, but can anyone take it seriously as a community forum? Or anything but a dumbed-down Page Six with sports and pets?

We'd say no. Latest evidence to the contrary: air time spent nearly every day for a week on the Nancy Grace flatulance "issue." Did she fart loudily and cartoonishly during a recent Dancing With the Stars episode? Or is the YouTube audio a fake? Inquiring children need to know...

Nancy claims she was framed, but doesn't anyone when accused of making the choice between shame and pain?

Dori Monson (KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) took time away from his pet and government abuse stories numerous times over the week, always playing the audio at least twice per. He and L'il Jake couldn't resist the latest "development" that the audio rights were being requested of ABC from a "fart fetish group." The "reporting" was done, of course, accompanied by two more plays of the alleged flatulance, "Just so you can decide for yourself."  Ron & Don couldn't resist playing it a few times. Even Dave 'Bigfoot' Boze, (KTTH m-f, 3-6p) filling in for John Curley, played the cut (if you will) in the evening. (Ya think he's auditioning for the job?)

Frankly, there's nothing that Nancy Grace could do or say that would make her remotely interesting to us. It's hard to imagine Dancing with The Stars generating any real news. Celebrity farting is a recent entertainment phenom, but one we'd rather explore on our personal computers late at night.

Can anyone take KIRO seriously these days? The old Dave Ross must be rolling in his grave... reminds us to get our pledge into KUOW.

Great Moments in Blather: Dori's bogus 'spring spheres' story

We are tired, threw our radio into the street, have been arrested, are really busy, so we'll ask this question: What ever happened to this phony poodle in a Port-a-Potty of a Dori Monson news story from last summer? We called Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel again and she told us in an email that as far as the district is concerned, "It never happened."

Did the heads roll at KIRO news? Of course not. They're too busy with such as Dori's startling interview of the Puyallup Porn Dad's daughter-law's best friend.

Here's the story from April 19, 2011

Ruffled Christians from around the world bombarded Seattle Public Schools with ferocious emails last week. 

They were furious about a teacher who refused to call them, "Easter eggs," in the classroom, and insisted they be called "spring spheres."

(photo: feckless talker, Dori Monson)

It was based on a call to The Dori Monson Show KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) from a 16-year-old allegedly named "Jessica," (last name mysterously withheld) who said she was corrected by the teacher when she'd tried to fill plastic Easter eggs with treats for 3rd graders at her volunteer job.

Of course this was red meat to the feck-free Monson, Seattle's last, red meat radio winger. Pious man that he is, he pumped it with a trumpet, heaping his normal ration of anti-Seattle scorn and "outrage" on the Board, the teacher, and all the rest of us unchurched, Seattle, latté-lapping, hippy scum.

Ho-hum, another day on the radio with The Master of the Puny-verse.

Then it went all viral. The KIRO site made it a "news story." All of this gave the Little Guy another day or two to strut around the KIRO cubical farm.

Problem is: there's no proof it ever happened. There's nothin' but the word of an alleged 16-year-old talking on the phone to Dori.

The Stranger News Editor Dominic Holden due diligenced the story and so far, no one can confirm it ever happened. Missing in the piece (and apparently to the "reporter" who wrote it for KIRO's mynorthwest.com) are the ID's of the school, the teacher, the 16-year-old, an the father of the 16-year-old.

Those are pretty big parts of the "news story," so where the hell are they? The reporter, KIRO website (mynorthwest.com) Editor Stephanie Klein, didn't have any sources (!) May we underscore that, please? She's not protecting sources... she  doesn't fucking have any! 

       (photo: sourceless reporter, Stephanie Klein)

So she referred Holden to Dori, who's not answering emails.

Jesus.

"We haven’t been able to verify that it happened," says Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel. She says district officials contacted all 88 schools in Seattle last week, asking if any employee could confirm or deny the "spring sphere" story. "Generally when we put out some question, we usually do get some kind of confirmation from people. But it has been silence so far."

News Chick (morning lady Linda Thomas) picked it up, but unlike the "news" story that went viral, was careful to write that the story couldn't be verified. She also added this:

Incidentally, I love Dori and his "outrage." [quotation marks Linda's(!)]: He finds some interesting stories to be outraged about on his show from noon to 3 p.m. every day. 

Holden writes:

Not only an affront to fundies ignorant that decorated eggs predate Jesus by thousands of years, the politically-correct term also concerned liberals who thought educators couldn't distinguish a sphere from an ovoid."

"It’s a good story," insisted Klein to Holden, comparing it to the phony War on Xmas stories dragged out every year in the season. But, she said, she "'got a lot of flack' for not naming the school or the people involved." Indeed.

The School District is left with the bag of dogshit flaming on its doorstep.

Holden adds that school district policy from 1983 says that "no religious belief or non-belief should be promoted" by its employees. He adds:

In the district's defense, Wippel says people believed Seattle schools are "somehow to blame for denigrating Christianity in some way," adding, “We can't respond to that because we don’t even know if it happened. I would love to tell you I was able to verify it, because then we could put it to rest on way or the other."

Meanwhile Dori, the self-proclaimed watchdog of everybody he disagrees with is onto the next "outrage." Upcoming from the microwave: "The strange story of the girl who mutilated a cat so she could go to Lady Gaga concert."

(And whoon hell hired this so-called editor who wrote a news story with no sources? Does she edit herself?)

Dori covers the bun .. with a secret sauce of unadulterated "opportunethics"

We don't want to poop on Dori Monson's picnic (actually we do) but his "scoop" about undercooked burgers at Burger King is stupid on its face and disingenuous, too.

(photo: an allegedly undercooked BK burger photographed by a Dori dittohead. Note unmelted cheese)

Seems there's been a "disturbing trend" at BKs, around the Sound, of undercooked burgers due to faulty flame broilers and undertrained staff.

The Tacoma Piece-County health department caught it, the state health dep't is working on it.

Somewhat later, Dori (KIRO m-f, 12-3p) heard about it and predictably, lit his hair on fire... but, as always, it's a controlled burn.

Dori's dilemma: find some outrage against government despite it was obviously already doing its job. So he settled, incredibly, on that government was not pressing its boot hard enough on the necks of the private business involved here.

You see, Dori is usually all libertarian about government staying out of the private sector's business, letting the free market do its magic, blah bliddy blah. You'd think  he'd be for letting the stupid people who eat at fast food be culled from the herd by eating those undercooked sandwiches and suffering the consequences. Like this fat woman, whose eating habits he was so adamant about judging.

Dori went all "investigative reporter" ... "covering" this, and "my source tells me" that, yet it's unclear what Dori and "his reporter" Brandi Kruse actually got and why it's all that newsworthy- nobody got sick or anything, and all the public health authorities were already working it when Dori and his sources heard about it).

He had to gin up some outrage, so he went with government hasn't been big and mean enough with the burger chain.

It's another example of the "opportunethics" of Dori Monson, and old-school talk radio. It's not based on the issue, but rather on the volume of the noise you can raise about it. It's pretty much all talk radio is.

(We gotta say: we like undercooked meat of all kinds, but don't eat in cheap burger franchises so we don't expose ourselves to e coli epidemics ... In our own home, however, the burger bleeds profusely as we stuff it into the family pie holes.)

Is dori monson a birther? or just a "small government nazi?"

  We honestly don't think he is, even though he wants you to think he just might be. 

(photo: birther thinking about coming in out of the rain) 

What he is, is not a birther, but so craven and desperate for notice that he casually hinted last week that he questions the validity of President Obama's American birth certificate.

It was in an off-hand comment last week. "I'd believe Obama's birth certificate before I'd believe hers." (it was in reference to some some dubious woman in one of his rancid tabloid "issues.")

The fairness doctrine: RIP

A total of 83 “outdated and obsolete media-related rules” have been wiped off the books, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday.

The main one was the so-called  Fairness Doctrine, defunct since 1987.

Politico:

While the commission voted in 1987 to do away with the rule — a legacy to a time when broadcasting was a much more dominant voice than it is today — the language implementing it was never removed. The move Monday, once published in the federal register, effectively erases the rule.

Monday’s move is part of the commission’s response to a White House executive order directing a “government-wide review of regulations already on the books” designed to eliminate unnecessary regulations.

Nixing these regs were never done by the Bush administration, but even before Obama was elected, right-wing talk hosts were riling the dittoheads with predictions that Democrat Dictators would use the long-shelved regulation to silence them.

(photo: a muffled Rush: yeah, right...)

The Doctrine was like Elvis. Or Jesus. Dead for a long, long, time but sighted or resurrected whenever convenient to scare the dittoheads, or frighten the begging-to-be-frightened listeners of religious radio.

Rush, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, the Marx Brothers, Pat Robertson, J.P. Patches, Neal Boortz, Dori Monson, Donald Trump, Billo Reilly, and Rev. James Dobson- all have warned that the subversive, socialistic and dangerous Doctrine (not ever a law) which required access to broadcast stations of opposing views, and discussion of controversial issues, would be revived by Barack Obama, his FCC henchpersons, or Congressional running dogs like Nancy (Shiver) Pelosi. 

It was dropped by the FCC in 1987. But, a bill to kill it again was proposed last year by Republicans in February, even though it was already dead even before Senate Republicans slew it in 2009.

It was a convenient right-wing straw man, a conspiracy theory that buttressed the right's dire predictions that Obama was an evil oligarch on the brink of cancelling the Constitution; it was cited in Christian pastoral infomercials on religious stations to scare the money out of their flighty listeners. 

Despite FCC Chair Julius Genachowski testified in 2009 he wasn’t going to revive it. And he never has. No matter candidate Obama was against bringing it back, and President Obama still opposed the Doctrine. Or that Speaker Nancy Pelosi never proposed it when she had the power, and neither has Leader Harry Reid.

Despite all this the policy remained, fallow, on the books. Until now.

And Limbaugh, Beck et al, kept it alive by warning that it might be revived in the long-debated "localism" initiative proposed by the Bush FCC, and continued in the Obama years by Genachowski.

Don't expect the right to stop using this bogey man- Obama's “'government-wide review of regulations already on the books' designed to eliminate unnecessary regulations" runs counters to their narrative of "big-governent liberal trying to run your lives."

The facts haven't fazed the right so far, don't expect them to any time soon.

UPDATED: Jason Stein 2009-2011 RIP

There aren't many radio producers we take note of, but Monday another one lost his job in homage to the gi-normous ego of one of the talents he served so well.

Jason Stein, who was brought from LA's megatalker KFI to "polish the turds" that was the Ron & Don Show (KIROFM m-f, 3-7p) was fired Monday after repeatedly refusing to polish a certain sensitive proturberance on the person of Don O'Neill, the dumb one.

Don O'Neill, (the "Don" of the outfit) gave Stein the ol' thumbs down like Joaquin Phoenix's character in Gladiator. Don's a blithering fool who handles success by becoming more obnoxious, and is said to be untouchable by management. Even though before they hired Jason, he and Ron fetched diet Pepsis for Dori Monson and were praying on the air in 2009 that the show would last until Xmas.

                                   (photo: Death Angel Don)

They were flailing away in the deep caca; they were #15 in their timeslot, their days were numbered at KIRO. (You'd think...hell, they are inane and puerile, after all)

Enter Jason in Novemberof that year. He'd worked on KFI's powerful John and Ken Show, as well as Bryan Suits' Kennedy and Suits. 

They rest, as they say, is history. Don O'Neill takes credit for saving the station, but it's the consensus of KIRO staffers we know: It was Jason with his big city FM talk know-how, who guided the very lame show into the new world of the PPMs and its present level of success.

They lead everyone - Dori, Dave & Luke, the morning news - in the vital 25-54 demographic; it's #2 in the PM drive (after All Things Considered). Even BlatherWatch has given them props for the show's ability to get and keep earballs.

We're sure Stein, with his resumé and abilities, will land softly somewhere. Sadly, that may be hard to do in Seattle... talk radio, but for the KIRO's is pretty much gone to flowers every one.

Good luck Jason. (and congratulations to the next PD who hires him).

Radio mystery: what's dori monson hiding?

We give up, we can't figure this out. No one is responding from KIROFM or Auburn Chevrolet.

What are we talking about?

(photo: Dori Monson)