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Saturday Night Syndicated Wasteland

FTL_Ian said:
Tammy Bruce has left syndicated radio. Rusty Humphries no longer does a live Saturday night show. Alan Hunt is leaving his Saturday night show within the next couple of weeks to focus on his new weekday program...

Who is left besides Free Talk Live and TRN's "Science Fantastic"?Even Science Fantastic ends at 8pm, so it's not in full competition with FTL's 7-10p ET timeslot.
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Well you can now strike off Science Fantastic. It's moved to a pre-recorded format as Michio Kaku can't fit it into his schedule anymore. The "Open Mic" hour, once dedicated to live phone calls, now just answers recorded voicemail questions. There is a nice benefit to that though since the vast majority of his affiliates either run it later or delay it to Sunday.
 
He's not syndicated, but check out Nick Digilio on WGN most of the overnights on weekends. Sometimes other times after Cubs games and such.
 
Gravity Driven Universe - Finding God In Physics with Roy Masters if you are looking for talk.
 
livingfruitvirus said:
Well you can now strike off Science Fantastic. It's moved to a pre-recorded format as Michio Kaku can't fit it into his schedule anymore. The "Open Mic" hour, once dedicated to live phone calls, now just answers recorded voicemail questions. There is a nice benefit to that though since the vast majority of his affiliates either run it later or delay it to Sunday.
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Thanks for the clue. Any idea when this changed?
 
FTL_Ian said:
Thanks for the clue. Any idea when this changed?
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It was live all three hours up until mid-March, when Kaku began shooting season 2 of Sci Fi Science. Then it was 1/3 new pre-recorded for a while and 2/3 reruns. Then it was live again for a couple weeks, then May through August it went back to the 1/3-2/3 format with the occasional all-rerun show. Then August it went to 2/3 pre-recorded 1/3 rerun, now it's just 3/3 pre-recorded as of this weekend. Up until now the open mic hour has just been old hours. He's done with the TV show, but it looks like he got used to not having a scheduled 3-hour appointment with TRN each Saturday.
 
Gregg said:
Well, Salem's talk network runs BMX Radio. The show airs Saturdays 9 - 11pm ET with Stephen Baldwin, who found religion as his movie career fizzled...
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In addition to becoming one of the Z-list "celebs" on "Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest..." But I digress. ;)
 
livingfruitvirus said:
John Batchelor is apparently doing a Saturday night show now, from 9 PM to 1 AM Eastern. Both shows are interview/commentary type shows, and don't take calls.
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His show is on seven nights a week, so Batchelor has had a guest host essentially filling in on some occasional weekend nights for the past few months. I can't remember off the top of my head who the guy's name is.

That was born out of necessity, as the Saturday night show came first, then it was expanded to Sunday nights, and then Batchelor took over Curtis Sliwa's weeknight syndicated show. [sarc](Seven nights a week? Wow, great programming strategy, Citadel!)[/sarc]

How in the hell that guy hasn't suffered burnout yet, I don't have the foggiest idea.
 
Firebird said:
Bob Earley on WNIR is live and local 7:00 to 10:00pm on Saturday and Sunday.

www.wnir.com
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And oddly enough, WNIR used to air syndicated programming in that time slot - and still does after 10 PM.

The landscape is so bad, Saturday night syndication-wise, that they run recorded weekday shows on weekend nights. I believe TRN's Laura Ingraham is on at 10 PM weekends now.
 
A few months back, last time I checked, our local news-talk station used to run almost 2 times more Coast to Coast hours on the weekend than they ran Rush all week. I imagine they aren't alone, because they quit being the leaders long ago.
 
Ian used to do "C2C Live" many years ago, Saturdays from 9p-1a... but that was when Art still did a live show from 1a-5a right afterward, on Sundays. Ian gave it up after Art's most recent retirement, and assumed his time slot. "Somewhere in Time" was launched to compensate for the loss of Ian's 9p-1a show.

By far, the oddest time I ever heard an Art Bell replay was back in the summer of 1997, when WTAM/Cleveland re-fed his old Sunday night show, "Dreamland," on Saturday MORNINGS from 9a-12pm. That was shortly before Jacor took over the station.
 
Weekends are a wasteland for news/talk.

One of the primary reasons is the bulk of news/talk stations are still AM, and most AM stations run sports on the weekend. Several people without the radio background or guidance (Tammy Bruce and Monica Crowley come to mind) didn't realize that by having a syndicated show in the afternoon, most of their affiliates would be carrying football games or baseball games and they get preempted most of the time. It's hard to do a live callin show with no affiliates carrying the show live (ask Dennis Miller about his first few months on the air). Only for a few months in late winter / early spring is a syndicated show going to have clearance on a regular basis, and you can't build a loyal audience like that.

The only live syndicated shows on the weekend with traction are Kim Komando who does her show Saturday morning before the sports get started, and Bill Cunningham late on Sunday evening after the sports are mostly over (the former Matt Drudge time slot).. Even so, Rush "best of" Weekend show draws twice the streaming audience of Kim Komando or Cunningham's live shows.

The sheer amount of toxic informercials on the weekend is further going to degrade any hope of developing an audience for live talk on the weekends. People get used to doing something else with their time and move their car radio to FM or investigate Pandora or podcasting.
 
Even if smaller/medium market stations aren't carrying sports PBP, many of them fill out their weekend schedules with FSR, ESPN and SNR.

It's much easier to "plug in" a continuous sports radio network feed, which is otherwise compatible with your other weekend programming, than it is to affiliate with a new 3 hour talk show...even if that's generally compatible with your weekday programming.

Am I right, Ian? :)
 
That was always a problem for "The Weekend With Mike McConnell" once football and basketball season started. It was possible at one time to hear him on WLW, WTAM, WHLO, WSPD, WTVN, WHAS and WOWO but once football season started, he wasn't on any of them and sometimes he wasn't even on originating WLW.
 
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