"CALLERS ARE THE STARS OF THE SHOW"

[smedge2006]

We now pause from the usual ideological battles to consider the work of talk radio consultant Holland Cooke.Cooke seems to believe that conservative talk radio, which has been a male bastion since it got legs twenty years ago, should try to be female-friendly. He encourages talent to replace words like "ass" with bowdlerismsreminiscent of the insipid bubblegum DJs of 1970s AM radio (of which I believe Cooke was one). He tells hosts they shouldn't talk over callers and that "the callers are the stars of the show." I have a sort of mixed opinion of Cooke. I think his trying to attract non-political females of pre-menopausal age to AM radio is a lost cause. Women of childbearing age have more sensitive high-frequency hearing than men of the same age, meaning they hear all the whines and screeches of analog AM radio all the more intensely. Whatever audience for female-oriented talk exists will be snapped up by FM stations that change to the format such as the Link in Charlotte. Women under 50 will not go to AM. All his advice to "target soccer moms" will do in any major market is aggravate the 35+ men who are the backbone of the format. I do think there is more room for caller interaction, especially at the local level. I'd rather hear more local shows with callers than more syndicated filibustering. But you need someone who can make something entertaining out of the raw material of a squawking voice on the phone. A host like Lionel, who came up in a rough-and-tumble market like Tampa, has the requisite skills. But I question whether the generation of whiny Rush-clones, the Bob Lonsberrys of the world, do. They've gotten so caught up in the concept of being pundits in the small pond that they will never understand the electricity you can generate with good caller interaction. Of course, sometimes that means getting into a fight with (!) and sometimes hanging up on (!) callers, which I'm sure Cooke would say is totally unacceptable to the soccer mom who he says all AM talkers should want but who aren't going to listen to AM radio by any means other than coercion. Perhaps all this explains why the only client Cooke ever mentions in his newsletters in WKZO in booming Kalamazoo, Michigan.

 

[kaufcom]

Female talk is a hot topic these days"Talkers Magazine" has had cover stories featuring women in their last two issues and will feature women's talk at their annual gabfest this coming week.Greenstone Media has launched with backing from a former FCC Commissioner and a reasonable budgetEven Oprah is getting into the act.The question is "will it play in Poughkeepsie?"

 

[fred flintstone]

Part of the problem may be the rudeness and calculated insult directed at callers and public figures who hold views different from the host. This is a staple of political talk radio (and political talk TV).

 

[NeroSix]

We now pause from the usual ideological battles to consider the work of talk radio consultant Holland Cooke.

I've known Holland for over twenty years...personally and professionally. Some of his ideas are brilliant; some are the products of recreational "materials". All are just a part of the overall Holland Cooke travelling roadshow. You learn to take the good with the bad...separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.Holland's subtly-nuanced direction to his clients seems, at least on its face. to be a call for "niceness" as opposed to the bloviatory excesses of some talk hosts. Nothing wrong with that; as my Dad once told me about being tactful: "Tact is the art of telling someone to go to Hell in such a way that he looks forward to the journey."

 

[smedge2006]

"Nice" is what talk radio, a few people aside, was until Limbaugh came along. Often it was hard to tell what the host believed in, as many were under orders to play "devil's advocate" with all callers. When Limbaughand company came along, nice went away, replaced not by all-vitriol all the time, but with a brush of vitriol applied to a steak of self-righteousness. Nice failed. You should have a good reason to advocate returning to something that failed. Holland Cooke tells AM stations you can get chicks with it. An AM radio station has about as much chance of getting those women as the proverbial pimple-faced nerd, no matter how it formats itself.

 

[ajhenderson]

He's a moron as far as this issue goes. Women like to talk, not listen to talk. And women love confrontation when it includes them yelling at the boyfriend or husband for not putting the toilet seat back down. The "confrontational" issue is a weak argument.Female talk may be hot, but so is XM and Sirius. 3% of the population means the hotness is overestimated, but nevertheless... female talk (and most female hosts on general talk radio) has/have failed everywhere but Minneapolis (where it's still basically a failure) and Charlotte (where it's really just an AC).Also, Glenn Beck, a host I have always enjoyed to and who is a class act in person, hasn't had the success of Hannity and company, because, one could theorize, he prefers less political talk than the balls-to-the-wall talk-politics-even-when-nothing's-happening talkers because, apparently, people listening to news/talk want nothing but Bush loving or (for libtalk) Bush bashing. Most NT PDs I've talked to said they get this same sentiment from listeners, even extending issues talk to much of the weekend.