To the surprise of no one who can read a ratings book, my former employers at KTLK have at long last spared Twin Cities radio listeners a third hour of Sean Hannity. The downside of course is that that same audience will get a third hour of Jason Lewis. … Oh, come on. That’s a joke.
As has been reported previously, based on the most recent Arbitron ratings, Clear Channel’s expensive, heavily promoted experiment with FM talk in the Twin Cities has not been going well. Explanations for the station’s brutal under-performance all fall under the heading of, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
The Top Three: (1). On Day One the idiots put Lambert on the air. (2). The underlying psychology of right-wing talk is heavily dependent on associations with a “winning team”. Team Conservative has badly screwed the pooch over the past six years, and as a consequence fewer and fewer listeners are eager for its’ company. (3). The KTLK line-up was monotonous. The same talking points at the same pitch hour after hour.
The “Hannity factor” plays big in that last one. No one cares if I call Hannity a dim bulb. But, to put it kindly, the guy brings nothing new to the table. Ever. Worse, he really is a performer who appears to have no concern at all for the accuracy of his “information”. Nevertheless, Clear Channel and KTLK were stuck with him via his syndication deal. (They made Hannity and Hannity’s people big promises to run him both live and at full length when they yanked him away from KSTP-AM.)
Like most businesses radio runs on leverage, so the assumption is that Hannity’s godawful performance meant leverage slipped from him to KTLK’s management, and in turn they felt brave enough to screw him.
It is known that Lewis has been campaigning for that third hour, the 4 to 5 p.m. slot — a warm-up before prime-time drive-time. Now, beginning March 5, he has it.
Leave a Reply