My colleague here in Rake-world, Colleen Kruse, (in the print version, she’s the better looking one on the opposite page), has signed on as a regular with FM 107’s 1-to-3 p.m. Andrew Zimmern show, now known officially as, “The Andrew Zimmern Show with Colleen Kruse”. The third part of the new ensemble is producer, Christopher Gabriel, who worked with Zimmern Saturday’s at KTLK and recently tunneled to safety at Hubbard Broadcasting.
The Zimmern-Kruse-Gabriel team is of course no threat to the KQRS Fleetwood Mac/Heart/Poison/Journey juggernaut. (Who can ever get enough of that?) But at a time when talk radio is mired in its version of Classic Rock, with the same white male gas bags repeating the same long since-discredited assertions of “class warfare” (in their world that’s the poor attacking the rich), denying climate change, still looking for weapons of mass destruction, the heroic and inspirational leadership of George W. Bush and the inferiority of the French, (better health care, higher standard of living, right about Iraq), the ZKG trio has an opportunity to play smarter, funnier and with more of a, shall we say, “reality base”.
Zimmern is smart operator, and has demonstrated a shrewd knack for professional show biz by sharing as much air time as he has with Kruse and Gabriel since turning on the mike two weeks ago.
FM 107, a.k.a. “The Chick Station”, to more manly competitors around town, is in need of some kind of an infusion. Ratings haven’t moved much in several years. The station’s signature act, “The Lori & Julia Show” will probably benefit from a stronger lead-in, (than the Satellite Sisters it replaces) and the usual in-house competition.
Full disclosure: I regard almost everyone mentioned here as friends. But that happens in a small town.
Kruse, a well known stand-up comic as well as columnist, is jazzed with the possibilities of producing video bits for the show’s web site.
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