• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

A Good Day for Rhodes, A Bad One for Hartmann

K

kaufcom

It is still too early to make any predictions, but from where I sit, it doesn’t look good for Al Franken’s replacement, Thom Hartmann.

Randi Rhodes announced today on her show that she is now going to be carried live on the following stations:

KRFT in St. Louis
WTDY in Madison
WCPT in Chicago
KPTK in Seattle
WHMP in Springfield, MA
KPTQ in Spokane
KJFK in Reno
WWKB in Buffalo
KBBR in North Bend, OR

These stations reach about 16 million potential radio listeners and account for about 25% of AAR’s total coverage. Now I am assuming that Randi is getting this upgrade because Ed Schultz is being moved up to Al Franken’s slot. What this means is that Hartmann is either going to be pre-empted or shifted to a less desireable time slot.

Randi was very enthusiastic about the upgrade. It confirms the conventional wisdom that she was not very happy about how her show was being time-shifted to accommodate Ed Schultz. I know that Randy doesn’t like big Eddy very much, but she must have some good feelings about him right now.

We have resisted checking the program schedules on a daily basis, preferring to wait until the dust settles in week or so. However, based on what has happened today, it looks like Hartmann’s hope to be AAR’s counter to Rush might be at risk.
 
Thom Hartmann got live clearances in L.A., San Diego, Detroit, Denver, New York, and Ithaca, among other places. He also got live clearances on the stations that carry the straight AAR feed, or just plain forgot that they have a station carrying AAR (I would assume WSMB in Memphis would be one of them). He also picked up Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Madison, Spokane, Asheville, NC and Miami on delay. I'm sure I missed a few.

I wouldn't say it was a bad day for him. Far from it. In addition, several stations had already dropped Franken for Hartmann within the past few months. In Seattle, he's doing very well ratings-wise, and his audience in San Francisco virtually doubled since putting him on in place of Franken.

And Ed Schultz got a few live clearances today, but I doubt he got as many as he was hoping for.

Incidentally, it's WXXM in Madison. WTDY doesn't carry AAR programming. Ever since getting burned by Jones, they've shied away from syndicated shows. WXXM is shifting to more live shows, and also added Rachel Maddow. Hartmann will be on in evenings.

Also interesting to note that Rhodes is the first AAR show to be carried by WWKB. They could possibly add one or two more, since they do have some holes in their schedule.

KRFT is a question mark, since they have no website. They were already carrying Rhodes and Franken. Today, they're also adding the syndicated Steve and D.C. for mornings. Not sure if Neal Boortz is still on the station.
 
Randi is also sitting pretty with today's announcement that XM is refusing to carry Thom Hartmann either, rejecting his show for being too "dull." Ed Schultz will air in his time slot instead, finally giving a potential for a peace treaty between Rhodes (who absolutely despises Ed Schultz) and him over who gets aired when. Randi does very well ratings-wise in a lot of markets where she airs, but her show is devastated by time shifting into timeslot Siberia of dinner time/early evening because of AAR stations running Schultz live.
 
One gets the impression Ed Schultz is a little miffed at Clear Channel for keeping Hartmann on most of their stations instead of replacing Franken with himself. After all, in the fall he gave up a solid slot right after Hartmann to compete with him head-to-head. In December he took a trip to Portland where he was informed that Thom Hartmann was pulling in the good numbers for a Clear Channel station. In January he turned green with envy on his show over the Clear Channel potential. He may now be realizing that he made a big strategic error by not seeing Hartmann lurking in the background.

This would explain his recent angry outburst at AAR and Al Franken, who was threatening to leave AAR for at least a year. The most likely scenario is that Franken was being pressured out of the business due to poor ratings, but AAR gave the impression he was leaving for his own career to save face. [EDIT] He saw a big empty slot and jumped into it, but Clear Channel had other plans.

Neither XM nor Sirius have shown very good business sense when it comes to liberal programming. Clear Channel, on the other hand, looks to become a major player in the liberal programming arena. In any case, there is plenty of room in the genre for both talkers and both styles.


[EDIT-inflammatory]
 
My thinking is that Ed's people have been openly trying to get him on non-libtalk stations and 12-3 is a good placement time for these stations that might be looking to replace someone like Liddy or Joy Brown with Big Eddy. Eddy is viewed with suspician by the true beleivers but if he gets on some lifestyle talkers instead of the local libtalker much of the scuttlebutt should subside. A win-win as they say....
 
The only real, consistent way to beat Rush, which not that many talkers do, is to counterprogram. That means local, lifestyle talk (Ramsey, Dr. Laura) or, in some places, liberal. Schultz makes sense in some places. He's on a number of Rush/Hannity stations in the five-state Dakotas area and does well.

After a spat with the local libtalker, Schultz just cleared another, non-PT station in Phoenix. It's on delay, just as he gets shifted to in LA (evenings) starting tomorrow. But who cares? For practical purposes, it's still a clearance.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom