Imus....really

[RMARTZKE]

really?

 

[musichead1029]

Re: Imus....really??

With the adoption of a throwaway show like Imus, it looks like Merlin's goal is to reduce IQ to a low-cost hands-off router/computer in a closet in preparation for.... a sale? Not an unreasonable speculation based on their overall track record.

Were they considering the format at all while trying to reduce costs, they might try something topical like CC's Quinn and Rose, but that would be needlessly controversial for a property destined for the selling block.

As a historical parallel, think back to 1993, when Malrite flipped 106.1 from CHR to Smooth Jazz to make the station more acceptable for a sale. Malrite was dissolving itself and wanted to divest of 106.1 quickly. Less than a year after the flip (which occurred in March '93 if memory serves), the sale to Pyramid, Star 104.5's owner, was announced. The massive consolidation of the mid-90s was just around the corner.

Merlin spent a lot of money and ended up with little to show for it. IQ will be remembered as one of the company's bright spots, since they actually learned from the Chicago and New York debacles and had time (and the help of CBS and Premiere) to chart a corrective course in Philly.

The replacement of a locally-produced show of so-so quality with third-rate syndication like Imus in the morning drive money slot demonstrates that Merlin has given up on investing any more capital in 106.9.

The eventual sale will be of a license and a stick, since there's now nothing that could be considered 'intellectual property' associated with the station.

 

[John1]

After reading about this here I tried - for about 5 minutes - to listen to Imus yesterday. Having not heard him in maybe 10 years it was pretty much what I expected. His 'mumbling' delivery from his young disk jockey days (I enjoyed the show in the WNBC music days) is now pretty incoherent for someone heading a 'national' morning drive talk show, and without Charles McCord to pull everything together, the show is a group of random voices talking over each other with no fusion or purpose. I guess its good he's not a 70-some year old dj still trying to do Dr. Hargus & Moby Worm bits, but I can't imagine anyone but a die-hard Imus fan from the 1970's listening to this. As bad as when my favorite 1970's 'local' disk jockey Joey Reynolds ended up doing a rambling, unfunny, pointless overnight talk show on WOR a few years ago. Makes it harder to remember back when these people were funny & talented.

 

[FredLeonard]

After reading about this here I tried - for about 5 minutes - to listen to Imus yesterday. Having not heard him in maybe 10 years it was pretty much what I expected. His 'mumbling' delivery from his young disk jockey days (I enjoyed the show in the WNBC music days) is now pretty incoherent for someone heading a 'national' morning drive talk show, and without Charles McCord to pull everything together, the show is a group of random voices talking over each other with no fusion or purpose. I guess its good he's not a 70-some year old dj still trying to do Dr. Hargus & Moby Worm bits, but I can't imagine anyone but a die-hard Imus fan from the 1970's listening to this. As bad as when my favorite 1970's 'local' disk jockey Joey Reynolds ended up doing a rambling, unfunny, pointless overnight talk show on WOR a few years ago. Makes it harder to remember back when these people were funny & talented.

I was one of those die-hard Imus fans, too. When WNBC had the I-man, Soupy and Howard all day, every day I had the radio on all day, every day. That was right before NBC fired Howard and GE decided it couldn't make money in radio. That biggest challenge successful radio personalities face is knowing when it's time to leave. Unfortunately, most of them fail that challenge. I guess it's hard for anybody to admit their best work is behind them.

Part of the problem is radio management willing to throw big bucks at fading talents rather than develop new talents. Imus, Howard and Rush are the last radio personalities because there are no more in the pipeline. Heck, there's not even a pipeline.

 

[Kevin TRC]

Fred's point is very well taken. In my 'hood in the AC area, we hardly have the talk we once had. It seems stations and companies aren't willing to make a local commitment due to the costs involved. However there is a serious need for local talk, in markets as small as AC and as large as Philly. The last new talk show in AC was a rediculously foolish lifestyle show on a music station that gets no callers and is as painful to listen to as watching paint dry. Nobody's talking about what is happening in our backyard anymore. And Fred is right, there is no real pipeline for talk anymore. Sad to see radio has taken such a turn. Fortunately there are good local shows on the internet, which I'm surprised radio hasn't tapped into.

 

[musichead1029]

After reading about this here I tried - for about 5 minutes - to listen to Imus yesterday. Having not heard him in maybe 10 years it was pretty much what I expected. His 'mumbling' delivery from his young disk jockey days....

Yeah, really sad. Either Merlin's got a deal with Cumulus to clear this crud in Market 8, or it's just cheap and easy before an ownership change. Either way, it's painful for the listeners, but I'd guess great news for Chris Stigall.

As bad as when my favorite 1970's 'local' disk jockey Joey Reynolds ended up doing a rambling, unfunny, pointless overnight talk show on WOR a few years ago. Makes it harder to remember back when these people were funny & talented.

Speaking of Joey Reynolds, his short but memorable stint as morning man on the mid-80s incarnation of oldies WFIL along with Jeff Caplan and crew, right before the arrival of Howard Stern (who Reynolds eventually replaced at WNBC for a year) was one of the few truly hilarious morning shows in Philly (Stern was the other). Nice to see numerous airchecks of Reynolds from that era available online to deflect our memories away from the later OR shows.

Can't say I was ever a big Imus fan, and I heard him from the beginning of his WNBC tenure in the early 70s. (I have more positive memories of Richard Belzer sitting in on the slot while Imus was out on one of his rehab stints, and Belzer's radio tenure was anything but smooth.) Stern pegged Imus and DeBella: talented, though not very funny, but the best the markets had to offer until better (Stern and 80s vintage Reynolds) came along and demonstrated how good it could be. It's a shame Reynolds couldn't have hooked up with a strong sidekick like Caplan to keep the WOR shows on track, and a shame Stern didn't graduate to more substantive talk as he aged and his act became repetitive.

We'll always have the airchecks of the golden days. Whether anyone new ever comes along to fill the void will depend on how successful someone is in monetizing an internet media network that can support creative talent.

 

[John1]

Joey Reynolds shows were good in the WFIL mornings & I have a lot of tapes myself from then, although his tenure in evenings on Wibbage 1969-71 were my favorites as he was doing funny bits & conversations between the songs completely different than the rapid pace style of George Michael on WFIL. He came in from WKBW Buffalo with much fanfare. The whole underground top 40 approach of WIBG was perfect to my ears in 1969, with the humor of Ed Richards & John Landecker added & legends Hy Lit & Joe Niagara doing more laid-back conversation that the old days. There was a time even Leigh Richards was Joey's 'foil' on WFIL in between her country years on WRCP & WTTM ('Sarah Louise') & WXTU. The bit that got him fired wasn't even that big a deal; I remember then PD Harvey Holiday announcing the firing & taking over the morning show. After Howard Stern was fired from WNBC & Joey Reynolds took the afternoon show someone wrongly convinced him he had to do a 'nicer' more mainstream show to not get fired from WNBC, but the bits weren't funny & the conversations dull compared to what Howard had done even though Reynolds had been the innovator of 'bad boy radio' years before & the show was mostly predictable & boring, as Imus show had become by the end of WNBC, the same bits played the same time every day repeating the same storylines & jokes. Reynolds shows on WYSP prior to Howard never took off either & that lead eventually to the all night ramblings and conversations with minor celebrities on WOR.

I thought the real innovative years for Imus were 1972 to 1977 when he was exiled to Cleveland & replaced Lee Masters who had been at WBUX & did WRCP fill-in just a couple years before! Imus after he returned didn't seem as funny to me.

 

[FredLeonard]

Lest we forget, Joey Reynolds also had a stint on Wibbage around 1970.

Also, lest we forget, WPHT had Imus in morning drive while they were running all syndicated, all the time. Radio is of the bean counters, by the bean counters and for the bean counters. Syndicated is safe and cheap. Face it, if Scary Larry had scored as a morning show host, we would not be having this conversation. Larry cost money and Larry struck out. Meanwhile, the guy CBS brought in from KC to do mornings on 1210 doesn't seem to be earning back the cost of his show.

 

[John1]

Lest we forget, Joey Reynolds also had a stint on Wibbage around 1970.

Didn't forget, as I said just above the last post, "...although his (Joey Reynolds) tenure in evenings on Wibbage 1969-71 were my favorites as he was doing funny bits & conversations between the songs completely different than the rapid pace style of George Michael on WFIL."

That was where I first heard Reynolds although I'd had heard of him but I don't remember the WKBW evening shows prior to Jackson Armstrong. Like Imus, I preferred Reynolds ad-libbed style within a top 40 format rather than as a mostly or all talk show. Reynolds 'played' with the traditional top 40 audience, especially the young teenage girls, they would call to request teeny bopper songs & he'd do a bit 'breaking' the records on the air as they screamed. A real choice over the "Good Evenin' World, how are ya'" style of George Michael. Many dates were split over do we listen to Joey Reynolds (guy's choice for sarcastic humor) or George Michael (girl's choice for 'much more music') in the car.

 

[joshzz]

FRED LEONARD STATED, "Part of the problem is radio management willing to throw big bucks at fading talents rather than develop new talents. Imus, Howard and Rush are the last radio personalities because there are no more in the pipeline. Heck, there's not even a pipeline."


I absolutely agree. Really, there needs to be an effort to bring in Talk Show hosts that don't have the BIG CORPORATE/REPUBLICAN-DEMOCRATIC PARTY PARTNERSHIP AGENDA. That's a problem in of itself as the big corporations don't want other opinions to be voiced. When it comes to talk radio, listeners live in a dictatorship.

As proof, all the major talk show hosts walk lock step together in wanting more wars in the middle east while over 90% of the American people oppose more war. Even more soldiers than civilians oppose these endless wars.

Why aren't we hearing from real Americans? Instead Premiere Radio Networks provides fake "I agree" callers to Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of cast of hired manipulators of truth.

Americans for the most part are starting to realize the talk shows are all a ruse and their numbers are proof positive their end is coming. The callers to their shows are the very same that call in prerecorded infomercials (it's all fake).

There needs to be a syndicated talk program that actually represents the voice of the people and is hosted by an objective individual not a puppet for the elite.

*********************

 

[phillyarista]

If by "Scary Larry" you mean Mendte, you are way off. He was the only thing that kind of worked in the mornings. So much so that they tried him on his own show, which outperformed the morning show with Al Gardner and Lionel (buddies of Randy Michaels). Had they stuck with Mendte, they would be doing much better. Ask anyone currently who is still at IQ (all ten of us). The morning show took a dive and when they got rid of Gardner, Lionel was getting an asterisk. We still get calls asking us to bring back Mendte. No one calls about Gardner or Lionel.

 

[joshzz]

I'm surprised their are actually 10 employees working at the station. Being it's absolutely a bare bones disaster on-air, I wouldn't have expected that many. I suspect most are sales reps trying to sell "Grumpy Talk" to sponsors. That's a difficult thing to do but if you can effectively sell that, you can certainly work for me.

 

[FredLeonard]

If by "Scary Larry" you mean Mendte, you are way off. He was the only thing that kind of worked in the mornings. So much so that they tried him on his own show, which outperformed the morning show with Al Gardner and Lionel (buddies of Randy Michaels). Had they stuck with Mendte, they would be doing much better. Ask anyone currently who is still at IQ (all ten of us). The morning show took a dive and when they got rid of Gardner, Lionel was getting an asterisk. We still get calls asking us to bring back Mendte. No one calls about Gardner or Lionel.

I'm not surprised no one calls about Gardner or Lionel. Lionel was an odd choice to begin with: WOR's token late-night liberal. Air America Radio's last ditch attempt to fill late morning (against Stephanie Miller) after two TV trash-talk hosts fell flat. The morning drive (from out of town) on a right-wing talk station.

I wonder if those calls to bring back Larry come from Dawn, who may want him out of the house.

Since you have said you are a Larry fan and like Imus, I guess you're OK with the current arrangement.

Alycia is working in LA but nobody has picked up Larry, not even to go back to syndicated tabloid TV. The kindest thing I can say about Larry is every time I see Chris May do a prime-time teaser, I'm tempted to call CBS3 and ask THEM to bring back Larry, he's certainly not as bad as the dweeb who replaced him. Put Larry and Dawn on together and have them do a news a la Regis and Kelly/Kathy Lee thing.

 

[phillyarista]

Larry had to run out of the station everyday after his radio shift to go to his TV gig in New York at WPIX. He does news commentaries that are sent out across the country. I saw oi on Brietbart last week. You can watch them on You Tube just search Mendte. I think he has been there for several years.

 

[crossmymind]

If you worked at the station then you'd know that wasn't true. It's a story Larry Mendte likes to tell. His numbers at 8:30 to 10 were the lead in to Glen Beck. He actually dropped most days 8:30 to 9 then built back up as it got closer to 10. Beck fans. He had a small core of listeners. No different than Lionel. He can dress it any way he wants, but the man knew nothing about radio. He was gone because his ego was much larger than his talent. All his minions can spread the rewritten reality, but its not the truth. No one but Randy Michaels would ever go near someone like Mendte. He blew his shot.
Lionel did no worse than Larry Mendte. No one calls...really? because by the looks of Facebook they are loudly requesting his return. Far more than asking for Larry's return, and NOT orchestrated by Lionel as it is by Larry Mendte. Who begs his followers to call the station.
The mistake of IQ was programming to crazy people. There's a finite ceiling on crazy. I believe it's a low 2 share. Game over.

 

[John1]

Larry Mente's credibility was severely damaged in this market by his own doing. Imagine taking his opinions on NSA spying seriously?

 

[joshzz]

Larry Mendte apologized to Alycia Lane for hacking into her e-mails and spreading rumors that helped get her and ultimately him - fired. What he really did was commit a crime, a felony.

He was damaged goods in Philadelphia and no woman would ever trust him. Though most women don't listen to 106.9, the men that do certainly would hear it from their wives that they don't like Mendte and would be encouraged to listen to someone else.

He would never garner decent ratings in this town.

 

[FredLeonard]

Larry Mendte apologized to Alycia Lane for hacking into her e-mails and spreading rumors that helped get her and ultimately him - fired. What he really did was commit a crime, a felony.

He was damaged goods in Philadelphia and no woman would ever trust him. Though most women don't listen to 106.9, the men that do certainly would hear it from their wives that they don't like Mendte and would be encouraged to listen to someone else.

He would never garner decent ratings in this town.

Oh, right! Geezers who listen to right-wing talk always pay attention to things their wives complain about. If wives' complaints could kill a format, sports talk would be dead and Howard Stern would never have had a career.

 

[John1]

I consider it more of a co-worker trust issue than male-female. If a co-worker was hacking your emails would you trust them even with an apology, and in this context can YOU now take seriously a talk show host who committed this felony when spying is a hot right wing talk topic (no matter what your wife may think). Depends on the person, your own level of forgiveness & probably how much you like the host overall. I don't think Larry Mente ever had a huge success here before the email incidents (not by the tv ratings at least) so he lacks that force that can make people overlook something 'bad' and trust him now. He was really just one of the string of 'average' news anchors that come & go in this town.

 

[FredLeonard]

I consider it more of a co-worker trust issue than male-female. If a co-worker was hacking your emails would you trust them even with an apology, and in this context can YOU now take seriously a talk show host who committed this felony when spying is a hot right wing talk topic (no matter what your wife may think). Depends on the person, your own level of forgiveness & probably how much you like the host overall. I don't think Larry Mente ever had a huge success here before the email incidents (not by the tv ratings at least) so he lacks that force that can make people overlook something 'bad' and trust him now. He was really just one of the string of 'average' news anchors that come & go in this town.

Philly TV is the opposite of Lake Wobegon: All the TV news readers are below average. The old saying goes is you put one foot in boiling water and the other in ice, on average you're comfortable. Average in Philly is the presenters this town once had, and those it has now. Of course, back in the day, Philly TV had real reporters, too, not just Ken and Barbie mic holders.