... and the rest

A little cleanup from the holiday weekend...

Musical chairs

Nicole Sandler is back for another week of noon-3P fill-ins on Air Ameirca. This is the slot vacated by Thom Hartmann last month.

Actress Deidre Hall will be guest-hosting Air America’s "Hollywood CLOUT!" this week. The program airs weeknights at 9P ET.

And veteran Denver talker Erin Hart will fill in for morning host Jay Marvin through Wednesday.

Talk shakeup in Twin Cities

The current meme about the addition of a pair of left-leaning talkers on venerable KSTP (1500AM) in Minneapolis/St. Paul isn't all that big of a deal. KSTP has had a rather long history of mixing it up, rather than take a hard partisan direction.

Last week, the station introduced a new show from Shawn Prebil and Chris Murphy to the midday lineup, to replace conservative duo Bob Davis and Dave Thompson. The show will air from 9A to 1P weekdays.

Murphy and Prebil were last at WTDY (1670AM) in Madison, another station that has traditionally aired shows from various sides of the political spectrum.

As I mentioned, mixing it up is nothing new to KSTP. For many years, they aired left-leaning shows from the likes of Barbara Carlson and Turi Ryder around Rush Limbaugh, whom the station carried for many years until opting for a more locally-oriented approach. Patrick Reusse, a local sportswriter and KSTP morning host, is considered left-of-center. And many previous local hosts at the station were not politically-oriented. Ironically, the station's owners, the Hubbard family, are known for being very conservative politically.

KSTP program director Steve Konrad, addressing the apparent ideological shift, said, "We never, ever have had a political/ideological 'sense' for any program we have ever aired. ... Our only agenda is to offer the Twin Cities a place to talk about the things that are affecting those of us that live and work in the metro."

The station is currently the flagship for regionally syndicated conservative-leaning talker Joe Soucheray, who's show airs from 2-5:30P. And they are the flagship station for Minnesota Twins baseball.

The Twin Cities is a very competitive market for talk radio. KTLK-FM is a run-of-the-mill Clear Channel conservotalker, with mostly syndicated programming. The venerable WCCO is very middle-of-the-road, and rather apolitical. WWTC is the Salem wingnut station in the market. KTNF is all liberal talk. And WFMP-FM is light on politics and heavy on estrogen.

Where programming ideas come from

Finally, it appears the broadcast networks are constantly on the lookout for unique promotions. This one is for a colonoscopy. And it's from CBS. Yes, you read that right.

CBS News Radio is running spots for it on their radio newscasts, and most likely on television as well. Lucky(?) winners will be flown to New York City, stay at the "luxurious Loew’s Regency Hotel," and what is perhaps the clincher, a colonoscopy."

I'm sorry, there are too many jokes here to come up with just one. This one just writes itself.

You want details about entering this (mostly) glamorous New York City trip? Go to the CBS Cares website, here.

Schultz on 'The Mic': "That's no way to run a railroad"

The following article from The Capital Times in Madison goes along with a great deal of what I've been posting about lately, and frankly, I couldn't agree more.

When he first heard the news that Clear Channel was dropping the progressive talk format in Madison, radio host Ed Schultz assumed the station wasn't really serious.

"When I heard about this, I thought it was a radio stunt," Schultz, known as "Big Ed," said in a phone interview from his office in Fargo, N.D. "I thought that maybe the management was trying to figure out how much passion there is in the community for the format, and bring visibility to the format."

Now that he knows that it's not a stunt and that WXXM/FM 92.1 "The Mic" will switch to Fox Sports Radio affiliation at the end of the month, taking him off the air in Madison, Schultz is blasting station management for the decision.

"Our job is to get ratings," he says. "Not only our show, but other shows did what was expected of us. It was poor sales management and poor market management, in my opinion. It makes no business sense, and it makes no operational sense either.

"The Mic is not a heritage station," Schultz says. "The Mic has no tradition other than to continually fail with different formats. The Mic was given a pulse. The Mic was given some life and a heartbeat. And they killed it."

Jeff Tyler, vice president and market manager for Clear Channel in Madison, declined to comment.

While the financially precarious Air America Radio syndicate has gotten most of the press when it comes to progressive radio, it's Schultz, not affiliated with Air America but with the Jones Radio Network, who is considered the top liberal radio host in the country. He's heard from 2 to 5 p.m. weekdays on The Mic in Madison.

Schultz, who bills his show as "Straight talk from the heartland," attracts an estimated 2.25 million listeners, ranking him No. 10 among all talk radio hosts, according to a recent survey in Talkers magazine. Al Franken, the best-known name in Air America's stable, attracts 1.5 million listeners, putting him at No. 12 on the survey.

Schultz says ratings in the Madison market for his show and others were solid; the station posted a 3.7 percent of the overall market share in the summer Arbitron rankings, good for 11th place. He believes where the station fell down was in the job it did attracting advertisers.

"The sources that we have make it very clear that the radio station was poorly managed," he says. "The radio station did not have dedicated sellers to the talk radio format. You can't have a bunch of rock sales people having the talk radio format thrown into their portfolio, and then expect them to meet projections. That's no way to run a railroad."

Madison listeners have been organizing to try and convince station management to reconsider its decision. An online petition has garnered almost 5,000 signatures. And a rally is scheduled for 7 p.m. next Tuesday at the High Noon Saloon, 701 E. Washington Ave. for listeners and especially local businesses and organizations to show their support.

"I think it's great that the community is showing passion for the format," Schultz says of the uproar. "I think that it's important that they remain positive and continue to communicate with the management of the station, so that maybe they'll change their mind."

Some listeners have pointed to Clear Channel, a media conglomerate that owns more than 1,200 radio stations in the United States, as having political reasons for killing The Mic. But Schultz notes that the company has more progressive talk stations nationwide than any other, while fellow radio network ABC Radio has none and Infinity Broadcasting has just one.

"I have no bone to pick with Clear Channel," he says. "I think Clear Channel has been very aggressive in putting progressive talk stations on the radio. I do have a problem with mega-ownership not paying attention to detail. It makes no business sense whatsoever to have three sports stations in a market the size of Madison."

Advertising revenue has been a thorny issue for progressive talkers, which as a format really only was launched in early 2004 with Schultz's show and the birth of Air America. The New York Times reported last month that ABC sent an Oct. 25 memo to its affiliates listing more than 90 sponsors that specifically asked not to have their advertising on Air America programming.

Schultz acknowledges that conservative talk "has a 20-year head start" on progressive talk, and that there's no place for a sales staff to go to learn how to sell talk radio. But he says that last month's election results illustrate that his show and his listeners are in line with the mainstream of American thought.

"The country has spoken," he says. "Our show is where America is. And all this talk about progressive talk being alternative, or progressive talk not being in the mainstream, is a bunch of hogwash that I think has affected even salespeople being timid to pitch it."

After Dec. 31, Madison listeners will still be able to hear Schultz on Sirius satellite radio and streaming online at www.bigeddieradio.com. Schultz says his network is working to get him back on the air in Madison as well.

WTDY-AM/1670 "The Pulse" originally broadcast Schultz's show when he debuted in 2004, but station manager Glen Gardner says that station is unlikely to take Schultz or any other nationally syndicated radio shows back. Gardner says the station is happy with focusing on live, Madison-based talent and is reluctant to carry syndicated hosts like Schultz that larger radio companies can lure away.

"What ends up happening with syndicated programming, because we're the small guys, we're the local guys, we don't have the clout of 1,300 radio stations," Gardner says. "We put a show on, we popularize it, we spend money promoting it and then a company like Clear Channel comes in and uses its corporate power to take the show."

Regarding the move from The Pulse to The Mic, Schultz says Clear Channel led him to believe that if he moved his show to a Clear Channel station, the company would be able to deliver other markets for him.

"We moved the show away from the AM station over to The Mic, and now Clear Channel drops the format," Schultz says. "I think that's dirty pool. Now, the station that we left, I don't blame them a bit for telling us to take a hike. If it were me, I would give them a long-term commitment. I definitely want to be in the Madison market."

Despite going dark in Madison, Schultz's popularity continues to rise, and next week his show moves from the afternoon slot to the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. slot, the "prime real estate" of talk radio currently occupied by Franken and Rush Limbaugh. (The Mic will tape-delay his show and run it in its existing 2-5 p.m. time slot for the rest of the month.)

Schultz says that progressive talk radio has to be run like any other radio format - like a business, with an eye on the bottom line and with sales in mind. He also says his primary focus is not to win any sort of political victory, but simply to do compelling radio.

"You can't go on the air with a mission to win elections," he says. "That's a very tunnel-vision view of how to do radio. It basically comes down to what's interesting."

Madison: WTDY sticking with their local approach

Don't look for WTDY (1670AM) in Madison to pick up any programming being abandoned by WXXM (92.1FM) in January. They've been down that road before and are a bit sore from the experience. Seems they've been burned once too often by radio syndicators. WTDY program director and afternoon host John "Sly" Sylvester explains:

There has been much speculation on whether or not another Madison radio station will pick up some of the syndicated programming that is being abandoned by Clear Channel.

The Capital Times recently urged Madison radio stations to consider picking up the Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller programs, which are distributed by Jones Media, a national syndicator. These shows will NOT be returning to Madison 1670 The Pulse (WTDY) for a number of reasons.

First, and most importantly, our prime-time programming is dedicated to live, local talk radio, and employs local announcers who live in Wisconsin. We pay them a living wage, and provide decent health care insurance. We also give Madison listeners a chance to talk about what is going on in our community. We feel this is the primary responsibility of our news-talk station in Madison.

We're very lucky that many of our owners are behind the microphones and in the offices at our Rayovac Drive studios. Our programming decisions are made right here in Madison at our employee-owned company.

Another very important factor in not re-taking Schultz or Miller is this: Jones Media, the syndication company, did not act in an ethical manner when they removed the programs from The Pulse and buckled to Clear Channel pressure. Here is the story.

In 2003, Jones contacted us and asked us to carry this talk show host, Ed Schultz, whose program originated from North Dakota. As WTDY's program director at the time, I figured that Schultz would make a good addition to our lineup, as he was a Midwest voice. Such talent comes second to our local hosts during prime time, so Schultz was delayed from his live afternoon broadcast to an evening slot, certainly not an uncommon tactic.

Not long after that came Clear Channel's decision to change the format of WXXM to progressive talk. I received a phone call from Jones Media and they said that if we wanted to keep Ed Schultz, we would have to run him live, and also run Stephanie Miller's show in the evening. Since we were running Sean Hannity in the afternoon, it made sense to capitulate to Jones' wish. This did not make Clear Channel very happy. They had picked up Air America for many of their stations from around the country, and supplemented Air America's product with Jones' Schultz and Miller. So they put pressure on Jones to take Schultz and Miller away from us.

At that point, I decided that we had been betrayed by far too many syndicated programmers. You may remember that Clear Channel also used corporate clout to move Rush Limbaugh and eight hours a day of other programming from WTDY back in 2001. WTDY was one of Rush's first 80 affiliates in 1988 - we didn't just run the syndicated programming, we spent thousands of dollars promoting it, and running their inventory of commercials.

With a good portion of our programming being live and local already, we decided we'd make a full-time commitment, and make all of our prime time live and local. It is for this reason that we will not reward Jones or any other syndicator that operates in this manner. Progressives in Madison and other cities should be pushing for more local programming rather than trying to mimic the Limbaugh-Hannity model. As a proud reader of The Capital Times, a locally owned newspaper, I hope that its readers will appreciate our identical commitment to Madison.

Neither Schultz nor Miller ever lifted a finger to say no to the corporate greed that caused their downfall in Madison. They "talk the talk" about being for progressive causes, but when push came to shove they decided to gorge from the Clear Channel trough.

Ratings Roundup: Madison, Albuquerque

Madison's two progressive talkers make a fairly decent showing in the Summer ratings. WXXM (92.1), the only FM signal carrying Air America programming, moves up a couple notches, from 1.7 for the previous adult contemporary format to a 1.9. Whether this is related to the new talk format remains to be seen, since the switch happened only a few weeks prior to the end of the Summer ratings period. There is no relative ratings spike or drop here, unlike San Diego or Sacramento. Meanwhile, on the AM side, WTDY comes in a point below, at 1.8, up one notch. They refocused in more of a left-leaning approach around the time of 92.1's switch, so any ratings success remains to be seen. Stay tuned.

In Albuquerque, KABQ makes a showing in the ratings for the first time in a while, splashing with a 0.4 rating. KABQ picked up the format on August 30, so we have to wait and see as far as any real ratings success here.

WXXM/Madison, WI dumps Hendrie, picks up Malloy

In Madison, WI, Clear Channel-owned WXXM 92.1FM has decided to replace Phil Hendrie's show with AAR's Mike Malloy, which will be broadcast live from 9-12 CST. CC also owns talker WIBA (1310), which airs local shows and syndicated fare like Limbaugh, Savage and 'Coast To Coast'.

Surprised that Hendrie was dropped, since the show is owned by Clear Channel's syndication arm, Premiere. But they probably saw Malloy as a better overall fit on the station.

WXXM, aka "The Mic", is also one of only a few CC-owned 'progressive talkers' that doesn't run Ed Schultz. WTDY (1670) scooped that one up as well as sister show Stephanie Miller in anticipation of a CC flip to AAR. The two stations were in a scuffle a month ago when WTDY started to use the term 'progressive talk', and even registered the domain name 921themic.com. Not sure whatever became of it, but WTDY hasn't been using the 'progressive talk' moniker much on the station (though they are on the website), and the station isn't exactly 100% progressive either, unless you consider Bill O'Reilly and Michael Medved to be liberals. Still, they air a decent amount of center-left leaning content, and a surprising amount of local shows, hence their inclusion in my links.

Speaking of WTDY, Ed Schultz will be in Madison tomorrow on his book/radio show tour. Here's the info:

http://www.wtdy.com/beta/Edinmadison.htm