That's OK. No one is requiring that you invest any of your personal money in KBLA. It's still a free country, and if someone wants to waste $7 million of their dollars on a radio station that will get a .4 share, they can do it. It hasn't bothered Saul Levine with KSUR, and it obviously doesn't bother Tavis Smiley.
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Tavis Smiley Buys KBLA
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
That's OK. No one is requiring that you invest any of your personal money in KBLA. It's still a free country, and if someone wants to waste $7 million of their dollars on a radio station that will get a .4 share, they can do it. It hasn't bothered Saul Levine with KSUR, and it obviously doesn't bother Tavis Smiley.
Saul is likely worth well above $250 million. Tavis, it was reported, did not have the money to settle the judgement against him for the court case and was selling his Hancock Park home because he could not pay the mortgage.
My point is that, unless he has some deep pocketed backers, there will likely be poor results and a difficulty in finding support.
iHeart can take their concept to big national brands and companies to make a case. Pittman has the ability to get together with people with money. I do not think that a stand-alone in LA will be able to get the need PR and Community relations dollars that Pittman is counting on.
And if iHeart decides to flip 1150 in LA to their Black talk network, it's all over for KBLA.
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Yes, I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the KSUR situation will work out better for Saul than the KBLA situation does for Tavis. Just because a lot of people will show up for a BLM riot does not mean they will tune into the AM band and search out the tiny station at the top of the dial and then listen to tedious "fight the power" talk all day.
Oh, and Saul has one more advantage - his target audience is familiar with the AM band and knows how to tune it in.
Who is saying that might happen?
I am saying it is a possibility and has widely been discussed in the market as "when Limbaug is no longer on the air, they will pull the plug on being the #2 talker.
The contrarians say that LA clearance for the Premier talkers is necessary.
By anyone at iHeart?
Yes, there are people there mentioning that the subject of 1150 going with the new network have been discussed and the only impediment is the state of Limbaugh's health.
On the other hand, over at The Boulevard and the 405, there is skepticism. I suppose that they are debating it out at the walkway tables across the street at P.F. Chang's.
And yet you cite the low black population as a reason why a black talk station would be a bad idea in LA.
iHeart is putting the format in as many markets as it can on facilities that are not much good for anything else. 1150 in LA has not been a good performer... well, ever.
iHeart is going for national "image" buys. A local station like 1580 is going to bat .000 on that one
The point of the Jon Stewart mention was, there are very talented liberals who could do or have done radio. Many of them are on general shows on music stations.
Here's another truth - you can't generate ratings with liberals (or moderates) when you don't hire them because of their politics.
I would bet money if I were a gambler.. that you present a demo from an equally talented liberal, or moderate host vs a conservative host, and at most talk stations, the liberal won't even be considered (or the moderate.) Because of their politics, not their talent.
But it is extremely short sighted to claim liberals (and again, non liberal moderates, non Trump conservatives on many stations even) are not talented enough to do talk radio. Many are. But where are they on the AM and FM dials?
The Air America model and much of their talent didn't work. But that's not an indictment of all liberal hosts. The Franken allegations are irrelevant. Plenty of right wing hosts have troubled personal histories. That doesn't disqualify the decent ones.
There was at least one Clear Channel GM who discouraged sales from promoting the Air America signal and allowed it to be a neglected station. He encouraged them to sell the main conservative talker exclusively and to steer clients who might advertise on AA to that station.
To bring this back to Tavis Smiley, I am very interested to see where he finds talent from and what shows are broadcast. The one thing we'd agree on is it's a limited set of possibilities, unless he's investing in bringing on new voices.
Here's another truth - you can't generate ratings with liberals (or moderates) when you don't hire them because of their politics.
I would bet money if I were a gambler.. that you present a demo from an equally talented liberal, or moderate host vs a conservative host, and at most talk stations, the liberal won't even be considered (or the moderate.) Because of their politics, not their talent.
But it is extremely short sighted to claim liberals (and again, non liberal moderates, non Trump conservatives on many stations even) are not talented enough to do talk radio. Many are. But where are they on the AM and FM dials?
The Air America model and much of their talent didn't work. But that's not an indictment of all liberal hosts. The Franken allegations are irrelevant. Plenty of right wing hosts have troubled personal histories. That doesn't disqualify the decent ones.
There was at least one Clear Channel GM who discouraged sales from promoting the Air America signal and allowed it to be a neglected station. He encouraged them to sell the main conservative talker exclusively and to steer clients who might advertise on AA to that station.
To bring this back to Tavis Smiley, I am very interested to see where he finds talent from and what shows are broadcast. The one thing we'd agree on is it's a limited set of possibilities, unless he's investing in bringing on new voices.
Yes, because the target audience for talk radio is the same audience of mostly younger, non AM listening, and probably non voting "rioters" that disrupt BLM PROTESTS. How incredibly myopic to say Tavis Smiley's station will target miscreants.
My sense is he has a financial partner somewhere who hasn't appeared yet. Because I don't see a way for him to deliver the balance by himself on closing day.
AA hired TV people who didn't realize radio was a different medium and didn't even have format basics down, like re-setting the table and re-introducing the guest. There are people they should have called who they didn't, Jay Marvin being one.
There are a lot of reasons why AA failed. This isn't about political ideology. When Rush is placed on a station that is all syndicated, as is the case at KEIB or in San Francisco or Boston, he gets less than 1 share. For conservative talk to get good ratings, it needs a local element. In this case, Tavis appears to be doing this in order to originate his own local talk show. Not simply offer a satellite service.
I have never seen anyone denied a job in this town (or any other major metro) due to their liberal politics. What you are selling is a theory that isn't supported by even a scintilla of evidence. Liberals always believe it is some "evil force" holding them down when it is really lack of radio talent and the free market of both dollars and ideas.
As for Jon Stewart, he may be a funny guy on a largely scripted HBO show with multiple writers, producers, show runners, etc. , but there is virtually no evidence he has the skills that are necessary translate any of his success to radio. Coming up with 15 hours of timely material in a non-visual medium that will interest an audience is an exceedingly difficult job and only the most very talented of people (I can just go ahead and give the obvious example of Rush here) can do it at all, and even less for any length of time. I have seen nothing from Jon Stewart that would indicate he would even last a week on talk radio.
I don't hold that position at all. I'm not saying it's an "evil force." It's a reality of the modern talk format and how it's narrowed ideologically.
What I am saying, is that there are few platforms that would even hire and develop a liberal (or moderate) host.
You're so determined to peg me with your stereotype of what a liberal is or thinks that you ignore the central point. And that is, where is this liberal talent supposed to gain any footing or hearing on the modern talk format, which hires the talent with the ideology, not JUST the "talent."
The fact you don't hear liberals on talk radio often even in blue markets isn't proof of your theory (basically - "liberals can't do entertaining and successful talk radio") either.
Again, your theory would be less laughable if you actually offered examples.
How about the topic of this thread: Tavis Smiley. The fact that he has to buy a radio station in order to present his views.
While there is certainly a tendency to blame anyone but ourselves in all areas, I don't think it is exclusive to liberals. The real issue with station owners is that liberal talk has not worked for the last 30 years or so, so they don't want to be the guinea pig in this experiment.
Here you are totally on track. When the company I was with merged with a TV network, there was an effort to expose the TV talents by giving them radio shows. Without a whole crew of writers, producers, teleprompters and researchers, they could not do a show. They were used to being scripted, when radio is all about being a "non-scripted zone". Not one succeeded. At first, the PDs were blamed, but finally it was seen that a TV "personality" is not a radio talent.
As many of us who have searched for radio talent know, even comedians are likely failures. A comedian has a 45 minute show they do over and over, with perhaps one or two new (and often topical) jokes per week. Ask them to do three or four hours a day, and by the end of one show they are running on empty at 30,000 feet and crash.
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