Category: Blog Post

I’ve been cautioned to be careful with this. Schadenfreude, though a lovely sounding word, is unseemly. Its supposedly beneath a responsible adult. But what the hell is a media blogger supposed to do when confronted with the train wreck ratings for KTLK-FM (100.3), where I very briefly co-hosted a show? I mean, come on kids, this is news!

KTLK is one of gargantuan media empire Clear Channel’s experiments with FM talk. The way it was supposed to go was Clear Channel would steal Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity away from rival local stations, in this case KSTP-AM, (Clear Channel owns Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Network), and build a kind of instant dynasty in what the radio industry blithely refers to as “news-talk”. In reality of course these stations provide very little in the way of news, (Fox News is a punch line, not a news service), they do precious little original local reporting, and 95% of the talk is pretty much of the hard-right, mostly bullshit vein we’ve all heard for years and years ad nauseum.

In a very significant gamble, Twin Cities Clear Channel managers negotiated a deal, rumored to be worth $300k/per year for five years, to bring Jason Lewis, once a solid performer for KSTP-AM, back from exile in Charlotte, NC. Tragically, this meant tossing my partner, Sarah Janecek and myself out on the streets.

So what happens? More specifically, what happens through October, November and December 2006? Through the teeth and aftermath of another hotly contested election? With endless opportunities for impugning the patriotism, sanity and toilet training of liberals?

According to the quarterly Arbitron ratings report, KTLK, home of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jason Lewis and various bizarre, late night Fox News fungal species, delivered an anemic 2.1 share of the Twin Cities radio market, good enough for … 18th place among adults 25-54 listening from 3pm to 7 pm. (The station is 13th with a 2.6 share through Limbaugh’s midday shift — virtually tied with Air America on AM 950, and 21st, with a microscopic 0.9 share through morning drive.)

It would be a monumental understatement to say that expectations for both the station and Lewis were much higher. Now in fact, the hourly breakdown of these ratings won’t be available for another couple days, which means KTLK may argue that the abysmal ratings for 3-to-7, which is two hours of Sean Hannity (3-to-5) and two hours of Lewis, (5-to-7), is all Hannity’s fault. And maybe that is so. But, bad as I am with math, it seems to me Hannity would pretty much have had to turn off the mike and play dead air in order for Lewis’s audience to “lift” them to a 2.1 share.

By the way, that 2.1 share/18th ranking puts KTLK in a tie with MPR’s “classical music service” on KSJN, and two notches BELOW, “The Lori & Julia Show” on FM 107.1, (a.k.a. “The Chick Station”). Meanwhile, MPR’s “news service” ranked 8th with a 5.0 share, and Clear Channel’s country station, K102, led the pack in afternoon drive, with a 7.2 share.

Now, I make jokes about the Arbitron diary keeping process. In the radio business people are often heard saying how all it takes is, “two drunks in a trailer court”, to skew the numbers all over the place. So yes, everything could change when the current quarter’s numbers come out in April. But KTLK’s audience appeal has remained more or less constant since the station debuted in January ’06, replacing Smooth Jazz. It is beginning to look like a 2-to-3 share is pretty much reality … for a radio property that has been the beneficiary of a wholly unprecedented year-long billboard campaign valued at nearly $1 million. (KTLK’s parent company, Clear Channel, owns the billboards you see all over town, which means they don’t have to pay rent on them, but I’m just talking value here … and those billboards will most likely disappear once Clear Channel goes private and cleaves off its’ outdoor advertising arm).

Because the fate of KTLK will be a fascinating story to watch over the next few months, I’ll spare you my deep analysis of what has happened so far. But I ask, what do YOU think is going on when the established, franchise lions of fog and spin generate so little business through an election season? Is the audience for run-of-the-mill “news/talk”, (i.e. “Fox News”/ludicrous spin), abandoning it just as average Republicans have abandoned George W. Bush’s failed presidency? Does that mean, as some of us have long said, that the fundamental emotional appeal of “news/talk’s” bloviating gurus is their delivery of bullshit triumphalism? And that people have had enough bullshit? Or has the rancid partisanship of the past dozen years — goosed in large part by Limbaugh et al and “hot talk” — finally turned off the public, leaving only the delusional core?

I don’t know. But when a proven act like Lewis comes back to town, with a hefty paycheck and more road signage than I-35 and his audience is so small he’s two rungs down the ladder from “The Current” (MPR’s eclectic pop act, at 89.3), something significant is going on.

Here’s the rankings for afternoon drive, adults 25-54, Oct.-Dec. ’06.

1. K102 7.2
2. KSTP-FM 6.1
3. KTIS-FM 5.5
4. KQRS 5.5
5. WLTE 5.4
6. KSTP-AM 5.2
7. Jack FM 5.2
8. KNOW 5.0
9. Cities97 4.9
10 KFAN 4.9
11 KOOL108 4.5
12 93X 4.1
13 WCCO 3.6
14 KDWB 3.1
15 “Current”2.4
16 FM107 2.4
17 B96 2.2
18 KTLK 2.1
19 KSJN-FM 2.1
20 AM950 1.8

A generally reliable voice from within the Star Tribune’s reporting ranks defends Ms. Moses in the previously-posted back and forth e-mail spat with City Pages’ Steve Perry. Reliable Voice defends her on the grounds that she may actually be making a defensible argument. Voice argues that Moses probably saw that she was the only one among the Strib’s current managers willing to defend the tattered ship, but that she feared corporate repercussions because she does not have authority to speak for her peers and superiors.

“The real problem here,” said Reliable Voice, “is that there’s no one running the place. What she said is probably true, as far as we know. But she’s not in the position of being able to say so publicly.”

The tiff left me bemused, because of years of listening to newspaper managers parrot the high-minded virtues of transparency … as in “we are a public institution”, “let the public see how we function” and “FOR PUBLICATION”. If Moses, by all accounts a McClatchy corporate climber,is confident enough in her argument and as passionate about the Star Tribune as she says she is, she ought to do the virtuous thing and say what she believes is right and proper and corrective in a transparent, public way, McClatchy bureaucracy be damned. If she can’t summon the courage to go public, well then, maybe she ought to just CALL Perry … or put a sock in it.

But the idea that you have this snippy back-and-forth and CC a bunch of reporters — OK, five not a dozen, sheesh — and think somehow no one will disclose anything to anyone beyond the perimeter is, uh, naive. McClatchy has pretty much torched the “loyalty” card in Minneapolis, and Moses ought to be smart enough to realize that.

Any professional newspaper manager who thinks the wretches are unconditionally sympathetic to the McClatchy corporate predicament might want to buy a few rounds of drinks and see what they’re really thinking.