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How would Pittsburgh radio have changed if WTAE had kept Rush Limbaugh?

"your bunghole buddy "Realist" throws insults all the time."

How is it insulting to observe that most Pittsburgh radio stations are boring most of the time? That is not an insult. That is merely an observation by a listener. If you really are a radio professional, then you are supposed to be a professional in the entertainment industry, creating entertaining programming that encourages listeners like me to choose to be in your audience. When a member of an entertainer's audience says to the entertainer, "you aren't very entertaining", that's not an insult. That's an observation.

I think you regard negative opinions from listeners as "insults" because it bothers you that there is so much accuracy behind those opinions and observations.

I notice you're real quick to resond to questions about who owns what or who works where. I also notice you've never responded to the observation that most radio in Pittsburgh isn't very entertaining by countering with, "What about so-and-so from the station where I work. He's entertaining."

If I'm wrong about Pittsburgh radio being boring, why not list those local personalities currently on the air in Pittsburgh who do put on a show that's as entertaining as it used to be a few years ago, or even that's simply entertaining at all?

You don't, because it can't be done. So instead, you accuse me of insulting you.
 
"Don't preach to me when your bunghole buddy "Realist" throws insults all the time."-

If that is so, why would you want to stoop to his level, BR?

There's no excuse for this ugliness. If you want credibility and to be welcome in the forum, then I suggest you use a different tone.

Hey- Realist- How does it feel knowing good radio people are not posting on this board because you believe they should promote more with Billboards?

I'm sure Keith Clark is at his desk right now shaking.

"I'll be found out behind my cloak of anonymity! Billboards! I can't respond to THAT!!!!!!

I'll be ruined! RUINED I SAY!"

The power and influence you have, Realist!

I can only be in awe!

::)
 
"Hey- Realist- How does it feel knowing good radio people are not posting on this board because you believe they should promote more with Billboards?"

If the fact that when I advocated radio stations using more promotion to convince listeners to tune them in and included billboards as one of the media they should consider using causes them to stay away from here, then those "good radio people" are more clueless than I thought.

And anyone who extracts from all I said about the benefits of advertising their stations where potential listeners could receive those ads nothing more than "Realist likes billboards" is a horse's rear end.

Anyone who works in an industry that sells advertising airtime who doesn't believe that advertising works is in the wrong industry. Maybe that's why they can't produce entertaining programs on their stations.

Think of the irony. Here are people who depend on selling advertising who don't believe in advertising, and who are also in the business of entertaining people who are totally unimaginative and boring.

Would anyone care to bet on how many of the people who decide which songs get to be played on the air can neither sing nor play a musical instrument?
 
Okay, I'm going to ask for this thread to get locked or something soon unless we can get on the original point.

Let's go with my theory. If Limbaugh always had his eye cast to the biggest signal (and I don't doubt that at all- why wouldn't you?) then why did KDKA wait until he was a household name for several years to pick him up?
 
Why did KDKA wait?

Remember, Westinghouse/Group W was still playing music on 1020 until the early 90s. They had a pretty successful format going on throughout the 80s and into the 90s, and were the go-to station for almost any information in the city.

It would take a pretty big reason to change something that worked, even if it was getting close to its sell-by date.

Case in point: "90 to 6" didn't end until 2001 or so.
 
"If Limbaugh always had his eye cast to the biggest signal (and I don't doubt that at all- why wouldn't you?) then why did KDKA wait until he was a household name for several years to pick him up?"

Does it really matter why they did what they did? Over the years, the management of KDKA has made some good decisions and they've made some really bad decisions. If they only made the best, more perfect and correct decisions, they wouldn't be in the situation they are in now, would they?

So, there are probably a few dozen really excellent reasons why KDKA might have delaying picking up Limbaugh. And there are probably a few dozen excellent reasons why WTAE might have decided to do whatever they had to do to keep Limbaugh.

To get back to the topic of this thread, if WTAE had made the decision to keep Limbaugh and make his show the core of their schedule, then they might have also recruited different talk hosts than the ones they carried. I think they'd have gone after Jim Quinn for the mornings, and gotten someone like Pintek for the slot between Quinn and Limbaugh. They had a winning combination with Myron and then Savran doing sports talk in the evening. I suspect that they'd have installed a more news and interview oriented show in PM drive if they had the other three shows I mentioned.

If they did that, I think KDKA would not have attempted to take WTAE on head-to-head. I think KDKA would have countered a Quinn-Pintek-Limbaugh-News Magazine-Sports Talk block with lighter, more bantering talk/interview format. They'd have gone heavily into seeking out and booking people like Joanna Langford (who used to be a regular on Pintek's KDKA show) for celebrity gossip.

WTAE would have had the political talk and manly sports stuff (WTAE also had the Steelers back then), while KDKA would have become the station that the manly man's wife listened to, except when the Pirates were on.
 
You guys are looking at this backward in a way. Rush was mostly a novelty when WTAE picked him up. He was an unknown outside of Sacramento and a huge gamble for any station to put him on. KD only took him because the price was right (Rush was originally sold to stations for barter) and Mel was looking to chop out some of the big $$ talent contracts he had sitting on his plate in Gateway Center. WTAE was fairly successful at that point and Hearst still believed in local radio.

Jim Quinn was making serious money as a DJ and still considered himself a liberal.

Mike Pintek was still a news guy in Harrisburg. A really good news guy.
 
Well Snafu, I'm not sure.

I mean obviously when WTAE had picked him up he wasn't as big as he is today.

But he still was fairly big and carried live in most markets. We were one of the last to get him.

In fact, I think that by the time WTAE picked him up (1990) he was on the air for two years and had pretty much overtaken Larry King as the nation's top talk show. I'm not sure he would have been a gamble. There was tremendous momentum to take him.

My thought was that if WTAE had built around him they would have grown with him. Hearst could still have done as much local radio as they were doing with him than without.
 
Snafu--

By the time KDKA got Rush Limbaugh, any "barter" need would have vanished. As we said, KD picked him up fairly late on the scene and, thus, Rush's syndication routine was set. They weren't going to change the system just to get KDKA, especially since they already had a (lesser) signal carrying him in the market.
 
If I recall correctly, Clear Channel bought 96.1 and 1250 primarily to get the rights to the Steelers, then they sold 1250. So, if Hearst would have made a strong effort to keep Limbaugh, and managed to hold on to him until Clear Channel bought WTAE to acquire the Steeler rights, then Clear Channel would have also acquired Limbaugh's contract.

And given that 104.7 was never all that great a ratings performer, it's not that far-fetched a scenario that Clear Channel might decide to turn 104.7 into a talker as a new home for Limbaugh much earlier than they actually did.

Granted, this is all speculation, but that's the whole point of this thread, how events might have been different if one thing had happened differently.
 
It's a little more involved than that.

1250 was part of a DOJ agreement between Jacor and Capstar in August 1998. Jacor had just purchased the Nationwide stations and already owned WKNR 1220 in Cleveland. To appease the Justice Dept lawyers, Jacor agreed to swap WKNR and WTAE--Capstar got 1220 in C-Town, and Jacor got 1250 in the Steel City. Jacor sold it to ABC later in 1998.
 
"It's a little more involved than that."

Would that have changed the basics of my speculation? Would that have negated Clear Channel acquiring WTAE with Rush Limbaugh's contract as part of the deal and possibly causing them to switch 104.7 over to talk in 1998 instead of several years later? Or could the events still have happened as I speculated?
 
The only thing I would say about going FM talk in 1998 is I wonder if there would be enough shows.

Of course there would be enough shows in QUANTITY in syndication, but would there be as many in QUALITY?

In 1998 there is no Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck for national syndication.

Instead, you would likely have had Don Imus, G. Gordon Liddy, and possibly Neal Bortz (who yes, was a staple of 104.7 before Limbaugh's arrival).

I love the I-Man, but would the other two hosts have been strong enough to carry the station (along with, let's say, Jim Quinn in perhaps an "after Rush" program in afternoon drive).
 
"The only thing I would say about going FM talk in 1998 is I wonder if there would be enough shows."

If things went down as I speculated, and Clear Channel decided to make 104.7 talk back in 1998 because they had Rush Limbaugh available and wanted to exploit him and keep him away from KDKA, then I think Clear Channel could have also found enough local news/talk hosts to fill up the rest of the day. It wouldn't have been wall-to-wall syndication, but they could have gotten Quinn away from Steel City for the mornings. It wouldn't have been that tough to lure Pintek away from KDKA. And, there were plenty of local talk hosts floating around the country who could have been hired to fill any other slots.
 
Limbaugh was still a barter deal when KDKA signed on. They got Rush and something like 4 minutes an hour to sell. Premier got a better signal and something on the order of twice TAE's rate card when they made the move and it put the show on live in what was then a top 20 market. Pittsburgh wasn't the last top 20 market where Rush went live (but it was close) and it was another three years before he really took off nationally.

Oh, and remember that Premier had right of refusal on any deal. If any of a number of the potential deals that have been mentioned in this thread had come to pass they could have simply yanked the deal with 90 days notice.

The idea that someone would have put talk on an FM in a market this size in the early 90s is nuts. Nobody would have put their neck that far out.
 
I don't know about the Barter Deals and how many minutes KDKA had to sell.

I do know this- Rush went to KDKA in 1992 (Philadelphia was the only other market that didn't have him by then) and by that time Rush was HUGE- not three years away from taking off.

There was the TV Show, the best seller, the guest spot on Hearts Afire where he played Markie Post's love interest . . .
 
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