Most boring local talk markets

[Don62]

Amazing how some of the bigger cities have some of the most boring talk.

Mostly because there isn't any local talk, just mostly syndicated stuff that doesn't really connect as intimately with listeners as the radio medium does best.

Here are a few nominations from me as to boring talk markets:

-Philadelphia (Only one real talk station)

-Miami.
Only one real local show outside of morning drive. Joynce Haupman on WFTL, 2-4 p.m. What an odd timeslot. Could the powerful AM not put her on in drive time? Her show is probably the most interesting and listener riveting, yet the station runs Jerry Doyle opposit Schnitt and Rhandi Rhodes.

-Tampa
No local shows outside of morning drive. All syndicated. Clear Ch. owns the three most powerful sticks. The only other competitor has a weak signal. Kind of sad for a market that once was on the cutting edge of talk radio with the likes of Bob Lassiter.

-San Diego. Is Rick Roberts on that powerful AM the only local host? Is the market mostly syndicated?


Medium markets:

-Oklahoma City. Most of the shows are syndicated though the leading station has a p.m. drive show. KTOK used to be a talk radio leader.

-Tulsa. Outside of morning drive, everything is off the satellite. The once great KRMG, a 50kw station, sounds weak with little local talk.



Those are some of the markets that immediately come to mind. I could add some others but at least they have hosts, like Omaha and Kansas City.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

In defense of the Philly market they do have four talkers 610 WIP local sports talk, 950 WPEN sportstalk (I believe much of that is from the satellite, and 1210 WPHT their newstalk station which does have a morning drive time local talker (Michael Smirconish) who has generally a good show, then to the satellite for Glenn Beck, Rush, and Hannity. Local isn't always more entertaining. Michael Smirconish's morning show is good, but would an entire day of local yokel really pull in and hold listeners? Their fourth news/talk station is 90.9 WHYY-FM (NPR), which if I recall pulls in a sizable share in the Philly market. They air the NPR Morning Edition, BBC, local talk (Radio Times), NPR news programming, NPR's Talk of the Nation, Fresh Air, and All Things Considered. The local Radio Times can be very interesting and entertaining depending on the topic and guests. So local can do well, but not always.

In the medium market, just 23 miles south of Philly (Wilmington DE #75) which has three talkers, 1150 WDEL news/talk, 1290 WWTX Fox Sports talk/local sports talk, and 1450 WILM news/talk. A year ago WDEL had almost double the shares of WILM. At that time WDEL was local in mornings with a drivetime newscast and a local talker, then to the bird for Rush and Hannity. WILM had local in the mornings too with their drivetime newscast and then local talker, then Mike Gallager (sp) opposite Rush, a one hour local talker and then a local newscast in afternoon drive. WWTX doesn't show any shares doing Fox Sports and a two hour local talker. Wilmington also pulls in 90.9 WHYY-FM (NPR) from Philly with a strong signal ( I've never seen shares for WHYY-FM in Wilmington as the non-comms aren't listed in the sources I've seen).

Things have changed, today WDEL has all live and local during the dayparts and WILM has local in mornings with their drive time newscast, then the same local talker, then to the bird for Rush and Hannity. WDEL's shared dropped to just a bit lower than WILM's and WILM went up, not as great as WDEL's previous numbers, but up (WILM's signal doesn't get out as well at 1k as WDEL's 5k signal). So now WILM has just a slightly larger share than WDEL which lost almost half of their previous shares. WWTX still doesn't show any shares.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better. The speculation too is that WILM's numbers will continue to increase as more of Limbaugh's and Hannity's listeners realize he went from 1150 to 1450 (some may have also drifted to Philly's 1210 which does have a strong signal in Wilmington which also carries Rush and Hannity).

 

[Don62]

I didn't specifically say WPHT was boring, just that it was the only major talk station in the market.
Smirconish is one heck of a talent. He sounds great.

Just that the city - like some others - overall in talk is boring. Not much local, no local charm or local hosts to drive interest, though there are certainly issues of local, state, national and international interest to discuss.

Just cookie-cutter talk fed from a satellite (Miami especially). Hardly anything to get excited about.

Almost like comparing vending machine (automated) food to real, live food served by a waiter in a classy restaurant.

 

[smedge2006]

Philadelphia talk continues to suffer from the implosion of WWDB-FM years ago and the all-newser on steroids, KYW.

Tampa suffers because CC controls all the good AM signals except 820 -- it sold that one to a Spanish company to make sure there'd be no competition. CC also sold 1040 to Genesis. They must have known Bruce Maduri would never have the smarts to know how to take on their juggernaut. Tampa also suffers because it is perhaps the most infomercial- and brokered-saturated market in the country, with the possible exception of South Florida and Las Vegas (before KDWN was sold).

 

[DaleGriffin]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Don62]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better.

[/quote]
Though Beck's big, and a great host, I don't see him as big as the other two.
He's not someone who has to be carried in a particular market yet.
In fact, I think Savage has a bigger audience and may well be on more stations.
Beck I know isn't carried in New York, Houston, Baltimore, Austin, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Little Rock, and is on only on weekends in Boston, San Diego and Kansas City.

 

[Don62]

Philadelphia talk continues to suffer from the implosion of WWDB-FM years ago and the all-newser on steroids, KYW.

Tampa suffers because CC controls all the good AM signals except 820 -- it sold that one to a Spanish company to make sure there'd be no competition. CC also sold 1040 to Genesis. They must have known Bruce Maduri would never have the smarts to know how to take on their juggernaut. Tampa also suffers because it is perhaps the most infomercial- and brokered-saturated market in the country, with the possible exception of South Florida and Las Vegas (before KDWN was sold).

Yup. Real nice of that harmless mega-chain which is always defended as not trying to run or harm radio...

Buy up everything you can and leave only crumbs for anyone else.

That's what the public "necessity and convenience" clause was all about, right?

CC also closed down Progressive Talk in Columbus and replaced it with conservative talk. Funny thing, the liberal hosts got twice the listeners as the successor hosts, but CC didn't want anyone else to mess up their precious monopoly.

 

[Don62]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better.

Though Beck's big, and a great host, I don't see him as big as the other two.
He's not someone who has to be carried in a particular market yet.
In fact, I think Savage has a bigger audience and may well be on more stations.
Beck I know isn't carried in New York, Houston, Baltimore, Austin, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Little Rock, and is on only on weekends in Boston, San Diego and Kansas City.
[/quote]
Whoops. Correction time. About Glenn, he is on in Memphis. He recently said on the TV show that he has a new affiliate there.

 

[smedge2006]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better.

If you are sitting in a studio, competing with Rush or Hannity (I don't buy Beck as their equal either) sitting in a studio, Rush or Hannity will probably win. What you can do as a local host -- and which few do -- is get out of the studio and network with the people. Local talk shows should do a couple of remotes a week -- paid or not. The host should be speaking to groups as his/her schedule permits.

And what of the complaint that "local issues are boring"? The local station can do something that Hannity and Rush can't. They can react to issues -- locals can CREATE issues. John and Ken do this all the time in L.A. The late Jerry Williams wrote the book when he did it in Boston with the seat belt law. Locals can pick fights -- with newspaper columnists, TV stations, other radio stations. Too many "local" hosts don't do these things and miss out on opportunities for visibilities. A local host should keep his chin out, and be ready -- not just to fight a battle, but to start one -- every day.

It takes a certain hunger to be willing to adopt such a strategy, and too many local stations hire the wrong kinds of people for the few talk jobs that exist -- newspaper columnists, out-of-work TV people, etc. Hire people who want to do radio, and who know how to do it, and who aren't afraid to get in people's faces, then back them up. I can guarantee you that if local stations put on these kinds of attention-getting shows against Rush and Hannity, instead of cookie-cutter talking pointers trying to imitate Rush and Hannity, or TV and newspaper people who are clueless to radio dynamics, they would win against Rush and Hannity. If liberal talk stations put on local talkers who were willing to "start a few fires" to get attention, they would be doing much better than they are.

 

[gr8oldies]

Of course, you're talking LA and Boston, not Lima and Dayton. No matter how well done, there's a limit to how much you can call the street commissioner out for not fixing the potholes.

Bob Lassiter comes up often, rest his soul however popular he may have been, I caught his act on WLS for the year he was there and the constant hanging up on people and calling them morons got old real fast. There were certainly times he could rivet one to the radio, but there's only so much that anyone but his most die-hard fans could take.

So give WFLA to different owners...do you really think they'd mess with the lineup they already have?

 

[smedge2006]

Of course, you're talking LA and Boston, not Lima and Dayton. No matter how well done, there's a limit to how much you can call the street commissioner out for not fixing the potholes.

As I said, CREATE issues. That doesn't mean the commissioner fixing the potholes. That's a rework of a Limbaugh talking point used (self-servingly) to denigrate good local radio. If you're conservative, every town has some flashpoint for the illegal immigration issue -- migrants stuffing themselves 10 to an apartment, using the Home Depot as a labor pool, whatever. If I were a right-wing local host, I'd look till I found it, then pound it. EVERY town in America has this issue now, not just L.A.

From a liberal point of view, there are a hundred potential flashpoints on the Iraq war issue, workers getting screwed, jobs going overseas, etc. I think liberal talk lends itself to localism even more so than conservative talk -- if hosts would just wipe the NPR presentation style from their minds.

In death, Bob Lassiter is fast becoming the most denigrated success story in local (and liberal) talk radio. See the interview by his former boss, Tom Tradup, at the link below. Tradup is now the talk boss for Salem Communications, which is proudly and stubbornly failing across the country with pompous, self-righteous conservative talk. Seems some people have an interest in whitewashing -- throwing down the memory hole -- anything that has ever worked in talk radio that came from a left-of-center perspective.

http://boblassiterairchecks.com/blog/2007/07/25/thoughts-on-bob-from-tom-tradup/

So give WFLA to different owners...do you really think they'd mess with the lineup they already have?

If the new owners were Cox, Citadel, or Cume-U-Less, probably not. Bonneville at least is trying to do some different things on some of its stations, despite its overall conservative orientation. If local owners or new-to-radio owners took over WFLA, a different matter altogether, especially if they have some familiarity with the market's talk history and a willingness to adapt that philosophy to 2007. How do you think WFLA got to be where it was anyway? It didn't just pop into the Arbitrons when Limbaugh arrived...

 

[Ultimajock]

http://boblassiterairchecks.com/blog/2007/07/25/thoughts-on-bob-from-tom-tradup/

...interesting to see that Tradup dismisses WGN as being "deadly boring," yet Bob Collins and Spike O'Dell consistently cleaned Tradup's stations' clocks (WLS then, WIND now). Reminds me of the old Nipsey Russell gag about how easy it is to be humble when you're a success, the real trick is to be arrogant when a flop ;-) ...

 

[Don62]

Of course, you're talking LA and Boston, not Lima and Dayton. No matter how well done, there's a limit to how much you can call the street commissioner out for not fixing the potholes.

If local owners or new-to-radio owners took over WFLA, a different matter altogether, especially if they have some familiarity with the market's talk history and a willingness to adapt that philosophy to 2007. How do you think WFLA got to be where it was anyway? It didn't just pop into the Arbitrons when Limbaugh arrived...

I can see an all-syndicated station winning a Marconi or some other award for its talk programming.
"And what does your station do to connect with listeners and keep them tuned in?" the presenter asks.

The clueless PD, who doesn't really know much about talk programming, or never heard a local host, says, "Dude, we just take it off the satellite. No real work at all."

 

[justareporter]

You know I "parachute into" lots of markets every year and look for a local talk show host. Sometimes I actually find a real talent but more often than not these days I find a worn out disc jockey who has migrated to "talk." He doesn't know anything and the last book he read was in 1992 but he is a local name so they figure he can be a morning show "host."

It is usually pretty bad but it makes a point: doing talk is not spinning records or just opening your head and letting everything out. Quite frankly I have heard things from local hosts I really don't want to know abou them incluidng chatter about their past marriages, flings and who remembers what else.

Local talk sho hosts win the market if they are bright, insightful, entertaining and informative. Being local ain't enough...you gotta be good.

In many chases we've pushed away good people cause (as an industry) we pay garbage. This used to be a GREAT paying profession in the medium and large markets and a good one in the small markets.

Maybe it is time to stop eating our young.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Justareporter makes some good points in his post. Just because a former diskjockey (Limbaugh) became the #1 talk show in the country doesn't mean that all former DJ's can or should do talk.

Both national and local talk hosts seem to fall into this pattern at times of giving way too much info on their lives (past marriages, likes and dislikes, etc) TMI and who cares.

I also agree that being local isn't enough, or even being a well known local isn't enough. Any talker local or national should be enjoyable to listen to, have interesting topics, good information, a sense of humor, etc.

The liberal talkers need to find humor and air less frustration so that they don't come across as the angry liberal. That schtick gets old fast.

Some conservative talkers tend to spend a great deal of their show time "hawking" their next "freedom road show", items to buy from their online service, etc, which is basically a commercial. I tend to surf the dial during these self serving spot segments that they try to masquarade as a actual segment of the show.

Both conservative and liberal talkers, local and national would have more credibility and would be far more believable as NOT being a mouth piece or pawn for a certain political party (Republican or Democrat) by trying to find some good on the opposing side once in a while. The other party isn't wrong 100% of the time anymore than YOUR party is correct 100% of the time. So when a Senator or Congressperson from the other side says or does something you can agree with, say so. Be more issue oriented and less bashing of persons on the opposing party mentality. That gives your opinion far more credibiblity than to only comdemn the other side no matter what.

 

[smedge2006]

Both national and local talk hosts seem to fall into this pattern at times of giving way too much info on their lives (past marriages, likes and dislikes, etc) TMI and who cares.

I find quite the opposite. Too often the talk hosts of today show us very little of themselves. They have a tendency to become robo-talking pointers. Contrast this with the aforementioned Lassiter, who described talk radio as a form of emotional harakiri. "Take a knife, cut your guts open, and show the audience what's inside."
Neil Rogers transformed himself from music journeyman to talk legend the night he came out of the closet.
Perhaps in this era there's too much of that in the workplace and society at large -- but I'm not hearing it on talk radio. What I hear instead are disembodied ideologues, espousing beliefs grounded in nothing but blogs and liberal/conservative media. Talk radio does not answer the question "Where are YOU coming from?" There was a time when a lot of it did. The best local hosts did that. Today's syndicated hosts don't, with the possible exception of Michael Savage (inadvertently).

 

[livingfruitvirus]

How did we go two pages talking about the most boring local talk markets and not bring up Atlanta? For market #9, it feels like market #90 around here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better. The speculation too is that WILM's numbers will continue to increase as more of Limbaugh's and Hannity's listeners realize he went from 1150 to 1450 (some may have also drifted to Philly's 1210 which does have a strong signal in Wilmington which also carries Rush and Hannity).

One thing people need to realize is that the radio listeners do not always equate local to good. Here in Atlanta a year ago, we had these English talkers pulling in some kind of a rating:

WGST: Only Rush and Coast were syndicated. Mornings, afternoons and evenings were all local shows.
WSB: Local morning show, followed by syndicated Neil Boortz, Clark Howard, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage (who replaced local host Royal Marshall). WSB beat WGST by five fold in the ratings, and continues to do so.
WGKA: NBS - Nothing But Syndication. It's lucky to make a ratings book.

So the syndie talker beat the local talker at the time by a huge margin. Now some argue that it's a special case because Boortz and Howard were once local hosts on WSB, and Hannity was a local host on WGST which WSB took from them upon syndication, but the fact remains that they've all dropped the local flavor in favor of national issues, and Atlanta still loves them. Eventually WGST gave in due to the losses, and fired every local show, and later restored the morning local show with Randy and Spiff. So now, WGST is local in mornings, followed by syndicated Mike McConnell, Rush, Dave Ramsey, Mark Levin, and Coast to Coast.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that local talk can work, but it's tough to compete with the top tier national talkers (Rush, Beck, Hannity). Even on the less powerful station they are still doing better.

Though Beck's big, and a great host, I don't see him as big as the other two.
He's not someone who has to be carried in a particular market yet.
In fact, I think Savage has a bigger audience and may well be on more stations.
Beck I know isn't carried in New York, Houston, Baltimore, Austin, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Little Rock, and is on only on weekends in Boston, San Diego and Kansas City.
[/quote]

Beck's also not on in Atlanta, but the people I know who wanted to hear him just bought XM radios.

 

[smedge2006]

One thing people need to realize is that the radio listeners do not always equate local to good. Here in Atlanta a year ago, we had these English talkers pulling in some kind of a rating:
.... the fact remains that they've all dropped the local flavor in favor of national issues, and Atlanta still loves them

Boortz does a half hour from 8:30 - 9 that is Atlanta-only, and his 9-10 hour is mostly heard in a handful of southeastern cities -- primarily on the Cox O & O's in Jacksonville (almost Georgia) and Orlando. So there is some opportunity for localizing or semi-localizing. Also, his affiliate list is so concentrated in the Southeast (particularly for live clearance) that discussing Georgia politics covers a significant portion of his audience, especially in the first hour and a half. Most of his listeners have to change planes in Atlanta if they don't already live there. Clark Howard also gets major promotion through his appearances on WSB-TV local news. Howard and Boortz feel like Atlanta -- at least in Boortz's case, the sprawling, suburban, MARTA- and Cynthia McKinney-loathing part of Atlanta. By contrast, on my last drive through the ATL two years ago I didn't get a strong local vibe from the GST 9-noon show at that time. Boortz's show may not be Atlanta-centric but it is to some extent Georgia-centric, especially in the early hours.

WGST is a sad and singular case, its long decline well documented in other posts on this board.
I think a local talk host in an underdog situation needs to be a good self-promoter as well as a
good host.

 

[MikefromDelaware]

Both national and local talk hosts seem to fall into this pattern at times of giving way too much info on their lives (past marriages, likes and dislikes, etc) TMI and who cares.


I find quite the opposite. Too often the talk hosts of today show us very little of themselves. They have a tendency to become robo-talking pointers.

Limbaugh talks extensively about his golf outings, his love of cigars, and his cat, when he was married the lovely Marta, now he mentions dates he goes on, etc.

Glenn Beck gets into long commentaries about his alcoholism, his ADD, etc.

Mike Gallagher talks about his wife alot on his show and what stupid thing he did that ended up in them having an argument. Then he calls her up on the phone and gets into with her on the air (this frankly seems like a set up as I can't believe his wife really wants to discuss some of the stuff on the air to millions of listeners, but who knows with the pay checks he's bringing home maybe she's willing to debase herself in this manner on nationwide radio, sort of the Jerry Springer thing on radio).

But you get my point. I don't tune in to hear about their personal life. I'm just not interested in their personal lives. I feel the same way about the Hollywood folks too. Our media both radio and television focuses too much attention on the celebrities and their problems, etc. I may be in the minority, but I just tune it out and switch stations.

 

[smedge2006]

Glenn Beck gets into long commentaries about his alcoholism, his ADD, etc.

Beck is over the top. He doesn't realize that talk hosts who are alcoholics do better work when they stay alcoholics, even if they end up dead a lot sooner. He was far more melodramatic with this stuff when he was local in Tampa than he is in syndication. It took him awhile to get the tone right. Anyone else would have been fired midway through the "gestation" period, but he had a charmed life at this point and the suits gave him time to "grow." But I have less problem with his personal moments than when he gets into his unified conspiracy theory rants, the Muslims and Mexicans uniting to bring down America convergence baloney.

Limbaugh's breezy mentions of dates and romps in the Dominican don't qualify as the kind of gut-ripping radio I'm talking about. They don't tell you where the host is coming from. They're not put in context with the issue at hand, they are simply throwaway lines. That's not bad in and of itself, but it's not what I mean. Limbaugh NEVER pulls down the mask -- not when he revealed his deafness, not when he went to rehab -- never did I get the feeling that he was showing vulnerability or expressing common human fear of decline and mortality. The talk hosts who are greats in my book displayed their faults at length, but were able to talk about them with a matter-of-fact attitude and a degree of detachment.

Mike Gallagher is simply stupid and tone-deaf when it comes to good talk radio. Listening to him is like hitting yourself with a ball peen hammer covered in foam rubber. Painful, but not sharp enough to feel any sort of vindication of one's suffering.

Their personal lives now are not very interesting, especially when tales of Palm Beach golf dates distance the host from the "common man" and undermine the whole raison d'etre of talk radio. But how they got to where
they are now... a gold mine if someone knows how to prospect it. See Shepherd, Jean.