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Former WGR OM now heading Clear Channel's talk station fleet

B

Bob1370

Guest
Darryl Parks, who was WGR's OM back in the Rich Communications days when it was a news/talker, is now elevated to Clear Channel's VP in charge of talk programming. He's apparently going to be supervising all the company's talkers, including blowtorches like WLW in Cincinnati, WTAM in Cleveland, WOAI in San Antonio and KFI in Los Angeles. Within this board's territory, that means he'll be watching over the development of Rochester's WHAM and sports-talk WHTK.

He says he'll be actively looking to identify, recruit and develop new talk talent. It'll be interesting to see if that means he'll be looking to broaden the demographic and political reach of his talkers or continue with people who will extend the chain's current arch-conservative branding that skews to older white male listeners but doesn't connect so well with younger demos or 25-54 female listeners. I'm sure people within the business will debate intensively which direction to take--whether to stay with what's gotten them to where they are now, or try to freshen the mix with an eye to the future as the current core audience ages out. The answer to that question, is IMHO the first and maybe most important major decision he has on his agenda. WGR in the early 90s was somewhat conservative but not anywhere near as hardline as a typical Clear Channel talker today--Blue Dog talk kind of describes what it was back then, as I recall. It may or may not necessarily be a good indicator of what his philosophy is now...it'll be interesting to see and hear
 
In Cincinnati, Parks has been aggressively anti-progressive talk. 1530 in Cincinnati was sabotaged by ineptitude (as well as the surprising boredom served up by Jerry Springer). Double audio ran over shows for hours. Parks also shut down progressive talkers in Columbus and Akron. He's just another one of the "fraternity" of PD's in their 40's and 50's who ARE conservatives, who like conservative talk and won't let anything else on the air. Anyone who thinks he'll do anything other than the standard "playbook" is dreaming.
 
smedge2006 said:
In Cincinnati, Parks has been aggressively anti-progressive talk. 1530 in Cincinnati was sabotaged by ineptitude (as well as the surprising boredom served up by Jerry Springer). Double audio ran over shows for hours. Parks also shut down progressive talkers in Columbus and Akron. He's just another one of the "fraternity" of PD's in their 40's and 50's who ARE conservatives, who like conservative talk and won't let anything else on the air. Anyone who thinks he'll do anything other than the standard "playbook" is dreaming.
Click to expand...

"Sabotaged by ineptitude" sounds exactly like the fate of progressive talk in Rochester. Parks must have had a clone at WROC.
 
"In Cincinnati, Parks has been aggressively anti-progressive talk. 1530 in Cincinnati was sabotaged by ineptitude (as well as the surprising boredom served up by Jerry Springer). Double audio ran over shows for hours. Parks also shut down progressive talkers in Columbus and Akron. He's just another one of the "fraternity" of PD's in their 40's and 50's who ARE conservatives, who like conservative talk and won't let anything else on the air."

If that's so, if he isn't receptive to change--well, you know what they say, if you do what you've always done, you'll get nothing more than you've always gotten. The 35-64 white male core of Rush Limbaugh's audience when he started nationally in 1989, which is the same core most commercial talk still reaches, is now 56-85. Limbaugh and his brethren are not attracting enough younger listeners among today's 35-54s to replace the ones at the top end who are "signing off" for the last time, so to speak. Parks has to do some serious thinking about how to replenish the audience as age and nature take their course. The conventional formula isn't going to work now the way it worked in 1990. (Parks wasn't even programming that way in 1990...he got good numbers with a more eclectic lineup on WGR and he'd probably do better with such a lineup on a lot of the stations in his fleet now.)
 
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