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Is talk radio dead in Boston?

now I'm not sure of the ratings but isn't new jersey 101.5 successful enough in NJ to have survived a while only difference is there local all day and night,There presentation is much better i think.
 
Í wonder how many times the old "let's-get-both-sides" programming has to fail before folks begin to understand how much of a ratings loser it is. Idealogues have always had the most successful shows. Listeners can't hold much interest in a hosts who don't even believe in what they're going on about. I think what was said about talent earlier makes the most sense.
 
Except many of them don't. They're often well paid actors, if you will.

I've heard more than a few stories of hosts who switched their ideology to fit the evolution of talk radio to a mostly conservative format.
 
Wild and Crazy Radio said:
Idealogues have always had the most successful shows.

No. Entertainers have always had the most successful shows. Idealogues who weren't entertainers were the reason for the failure of Air America to gain any traction, and the same thing is going to happen to Rush, Sean, et al., if they don't go back to their roots and be the entertainers they used to be. No one likes being lectured to by rigid ideologues who see the world as black-and-white, us-against-them and "the 'other' is never right." It's boring and insulting and it's been repeatedly proven that listeners won't sit still for it.
 
I've heard more than a few stories of hosts who switched their ideology to fit the evolution of talk radio to a mostly conservative format.

Who? I assume you're not going to toss out a couple of names of nonentities in the boonies.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
TSB
 
Yes...

Some talk hosts have changed their idealogy but I don't know if it was to meet the demands
of talk radio.Ed Schulz had been seen as conservative in early 90s but went to the left (see
Wiki. on him), but I don't know if he had done so to get a foothold in talk radio--which mostly
leans right. Now if his personal views shifted to the left but he portrayed a conservative on the air, I could see it.

(Some writers have talked of their ideological shifts: Andrew Breitbart --"Righteous Indignation"--from left to right;
David Brock --"Blinded By The Right"--from right to left. Here in town Jerry Williams used to be
seen as a liberal but later became more "anti-statist", "populist", a muckraker against out
of control state and national government. He could have Howie Carr on to talk about hacks
and cronies, Barbara Anderson about high taxes, and even Ralph Nader on to talk about
"the congressional paygrab". Ralph, a native of Winsted CT, always seemed out of breath
when he got on with Howie, probably busy running around etc. Remember the days of
Jerry's show when he urged people to call or write their legislators to demand change
re: New Braintree, seatbelts, police roadblocks? pre-email etc.)
 
I think the piece goes in too many directions. The listeners are old. New fans of the genre are nonexistent. From that standpoint (telephone) talk is doomed. You can't get around that.
 
Yes.

Yes, what? The question on the table is are there "hosts who switched their ideology to fit the evolution of talk radio to a mostly conservative format."

You answer in the affirmation, and then back it up by saying you don't have a clue about motives and then offering up a laundry list of non-responsive filler highlighting folks who either aren't radio hosts or obviously haven't changed ideology to take advantage of conservative talk trends. Huh?

Just wondering, but is some radio-crazed terrorist threatening to shoot your dog if you don't post something to every thread every day?

The noise-to-signal ratio on these boards is approaching 20 to 1, and it has become well-nigh impossible to get a straight answer to simple questions. If you're not part of the solution, you may be part of the problem.

Regards.
TSB
 
Fenway1912 said:
The seeds of the problem in Boston go back nearly 20 years when WHDH was eliminated and merged with WRKO.

Boston is not alone as look at Chicago where WGN has become a trainwreck and WLS isn't much better.
WGN i become a train wreck because their owner (Tribune Co.) is just exiting bankruptcy and does not want to hire quality local hosts. WLS was recently purchased by Cumulus (as were lots of other stations) and is inching its way towards the Cumulus format. However, they both have TONS of local programming.
 
WLS recently lost morning drive's Don and Roma to illness. Rumor was they were going Syndi but as of now they are still L&L with replacements from the weekend (Jake Hartford).

Both stations are pretty bad for clear-ch 50k power Am's.
 
TSBench said:
Yes.

Yes, what? The question on the table is are there "hosts who switched their ideology to fit the evolution of talk radio to a mostly conservative format."

You answer in the affirmation, and then back it up by saying you don't have a clue about motives and then offering up a laundry list of non-responsive filler highlighting folks who either aren't radio hosts or obviously haven't changed ideology to take advantage of conservative talk trends. Huh?

I can offer a couple of names definitely, and there is context to suppose more have become ideological changelings.

Jay Marvin, a liberal in most of the markets in which he worked over two decades, tilted his act to the right on WTMJ in Milwaukee because management told him to.

Mike Siegel, a liberal when I met him in the late 80's, spent the better part of a decade playing a conservative on KVI Seattle. This site is just one that characterized his conservatism as expedient. http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2005/07/mike_siegel_au_.html

Stan Major, who hosted a talk show on a Tampa radio station in the mid-70s, was so ardent a supporter of gun control that he accused gun rights advocates ("gun nuts" was his term) of using the gun as compensation for sexual impotence, in those pre-Viagra times. Later in his career in Miami, he was a conservative.

These were all radio people, not committed think-tankers. There are many more who started out as liberals but claimed to have had a "Saul on the Damascus Road" moment over some hot-button issue. In truth, that moment was probably the station manager telling them they had to change their act. To believe that all those radio host "conversions" to conservatism, or even most, were genuine, is to approach the radio business with an air of downright gullibility.

It was not at all uncommon for hosts in the 70s and 80s, the heyday of local talk radio, to make waves by being the opposite of the prevailing local politics... liberal in conservative towns or conservative in liberal towns.
 
Glenn Beck was a shock jock before he found more fertile ground. "There's GOLD in them thar 'Libs!'"
Dennis Miller lost his bleep after 9/11 and started carrying water for the conservatives.
I'm sure I could dig up more examples with a little research, but this is just off the top of my head.

There are plenty of entertainers who just want to troll the audience and create controversy to get some ink. Talk radio is certainly not immune to trolling; in fact, if I may be allowed to lapse into Foxnewsian, "some say that there is a great deal of trolling in talk radio."

"After the break: 'Is Glenn Beck a wiffleheaded con artist?'"
 
Siegel may actually have drifted right but who knows--he sounded that way doing some RKO
fill ins recently.
Miller has always had a libertarian/conservative (or classical liberal) streak in him. Al Franken:
"People asked me, what happened to Dennis? Nothing happened to Dennis. He's always
had that streak in him". I don't mind the aforementioned Miller...'of course that's just my
opinion...hey I could be wrong.
 
Just wondering, but is some radio-crazed terrorist threatening to shoot your dog if you don't post something to every thread every day?


Regards.
TSB
[/quote]\\\


Every Day? How about every 30 minutes and not just here but any blog or site that discusses radio. I am almost to the point that when I see particular screen names, I just scroll down because it is just a waste of time reading.
 
I may tune in and continue to listen as long as there was a point to the conversation and not filled with a lot of ""maybe this will happen" and "who knows."
 
Glenn Beck was a shock jock before he found more fertile ground.

Which doesn't have much to do with the topic of whether Beck is a opportunistic conservative. Personally, I think he's a jerk, but he's the real deal when he pitches his political views. I don't know his politics during his shock jock era, but he probably doesn't either because he spent the entire time either drunk or stoned.

Miller lost his bleep after 9/11 and started carrying water for the conservatives.

Dennis Miller became a defense hawk after 9/11, and wasn't the only one. But he'd been known as a social liberal and fiscal conservative (the usual shorthand for a libertarian) for decades before he was a talk radio host, and nobody considers him a water-carrier for across the board conservatism. As for being opportunistic, nobody in Hollywood 'pretends' to be a conservative for career enhancement. Trust me one this.

I'm sure I could dig up more examples with a little research, but this is just off the top of my head.

I hope the ones you come up with work better.

There are plenty of entertainers who just want to troll the audience and create controversy to get some ink.

Good point. Too bad it doesn't address the topic of talk hosts who pretend to be conservates so they can ride the wave in talk radio.

Regards,
TSB
 
Don't know what will become of Jim and Margery, with a tryout or at least guest appearance on
WGBH Tue 10-noon but if they get a shift maybe they can continue the tradition of
monthly appearances by Gov. Patrick. If not, he could appear otherwise on the 'GBH talk block,
or maybe Dan Rea, or who knows. Patrick did do one guest shot with Howie appropriately enough on April Fools' Day a couple yrs ago. Howie in today's column says his offer "to provide him with one hour per month on my radio talk show to explain how wonderful he and his administration are" is
still open.

The Halper interview, as before, will be a phone-er.
 
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