77 year old Don Imus had a contract that Cumulus Radio cannot justify in bankruptcy, so this is the end of the Imus show in syndication. On WABC-AM in New York, syndicated Chris Plante moves to 10 AM to noon, and Sid Rosenberg and Bernie McGurk move to the 6-10AM time slot. Bernie was The Imus Show executive producer and sometimes sidekick on the show.
Search
Previous Blogs
-
Recent Posts
Recent comments
- Fred Stiening said The outage for the past couple days was partly related to this issue, but not completely The blog is back restored as it...
- Fred Stiening said I was notified this morning that they resolved the problem and the current extract appears to be correct. It will proba...
- Fred Stiening said I surrender. I looked through all the reasonable ways to connect radio stations with their licensee. I have now change...
- Fred Stiening said No response. No Surprise.
- RebelSansClue said I hope to God that it’s the staff of the prison doing the listening. Didn’t think prisoners had access to i...
- Fred Stiening said I poked around in the SEC filings, and their claim is they are one of the two largest “scaled” radio broadc...
Popular Posts
The 15 most visited posts in last 60 days:- Audacy files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
- Garbage In, Garbage Out
- Who streams from here?
- GDPR Notice
- The future of Salem media
- The End Game for AM radio
- Where are they now?
- Alex Jones is baaaack!
- The Decline of the Dickey Empire
- What is the SIPC?
- John Boehner on SOPA
- 16 tons of student debt
- Silent Station List
- IMG_0954
- Meet Cathy Hughes
Archives
Login
Just this morning I am listening to Chris Plante on “New Stalk 980” from Connecticut and they are still running their commercial AS I TYPE THIS with Don Imus saying in his own voice to join him each day to listen to his morning show. Someone should sent out a memo to Cumulus station “New Stalk 980” that the show is ending. lol
I’ve listened to the ending of episodes of the Don Imus show when I have tuned into “New Stalk 980” a few minutes before the Chris Plante show at 9 AM and actually heard them stream a few seconds of local news from WABC by mistake before cutting away to their local feed.
It is interesting that many stations carry Plante only from 10-12 and miss his first 9-10 hour. That first hour is carried by WXLM WGOW-AM and WMAL and possibly others.
The 10 AM start time is because many affiliates needed a quick replacement when Dennis Miller unexpectedly ended his Westwood One syndication. I think he usually did the show from California, which is really hard to do in morning syndication, especially if you want guests “in studio”
Interesting. I stopped listening to WABC a year or so ago when they inserted a pre-stream ad on their streamtheworld stream. As a frequent station changer with an internet radio and its preset buttons, WABC became unlistenable for me.
I reviewed the http://www.wabcradio.com and saw that Curtis and Kuby have split up again. It appears that Ron has left the building. I find it hard to listen to either one of them individually but together, they had a certain chemistry and really put their show first and politics second. It truly was an NY Odd Couple. Someone had shot Curtis, intending to kill him, and Kuby was the shooter’s defending attorney. WABC insisted that they do a show together and they became real life friends and often talked about dinners in each others homes.
In fact, Curtis is in Chicago today to attend a stage play telling the story of how he was shot, or maybe he is starring in it – not sure. Curtis is the master of trickonology.
His new partner, which I discovered about a week ago while updating conservative talk programs is Rita Cosby, who I know best as the replacement for Steve Malzberg back during the final days of the WOR Radio network, carried on about 5 stations. I think she may appear on Fox News, but I don’t subscribe to it.
Not really related, but last night we watched Oliver Stone’s movie “Talk Radio”. It was produced in 1988, just in time to collude with Democrats as the Reagan Era was coming to an end.
While Alan Berg was the inspiration for the script, apparently Tom Leykis was the real life source of his perception of talk radio. Leykis is not bashful about what he thinks about right wing radio, which helps to explain the totally inaccurate picture of talk radio portrayed in the movie.
Tom Leykis is also winding down his career. After sitting out three years after the “Free FM”debacle, he started a subscription streaming service. He intends to pull the plug when the subscriber count falls below 1,900 – as of last night, he had 1,959 left.
I hadn’t finished the comment because we were late for the pedicure appointment.
About the last thing a news talk station wants to do is give up morning drive for a syndicated program, since morning drive is the only profitable time of the day. As a result, Imus was mostly heard on country music stations and sports stations.
It is not unusual on tiny market radio stations for the “news person” to pre-record “today’s news” at 6 AM, and just have the automation fire off the same news report all day long, as if nobody could tell the difference. The same “reporter” probably does the news on other stations on the same cluster, using a different name. Welcome to Radio.
I haven’t heard it recently, mainly because I don’t listen to the big markets very often, but it used to be that the national talk show hosts would spend the hour before the show with a few minutes of chit chat with the local hosts that preceed the show in the big markets.
Ditto for local TV news. National network news anchors sit at a desk and spend about 30 seconds interacting with the local news teams from NY, LA, Chicago and other big O&O stations telling them what his top stories were going to be… a “warm handoff” as they are called. For example, the WABC-TV 7 will cut over to David Muir and ask him what he has coming up on the network news and he would say hello to the local anchors by name.
My local FM talk radio station in Tucson (KQTH) started carrying the 1st hour of Chris Plante about a month ago… so our morning (8-11 am) is a barrel of laughs.
Probably coinciding with Daylight Saving Time.
In fact, they cut an hour from the Dave Ramsey show… they run Ramsey’s show twice a day @ 2 hrs anyway. I think Scripps actually looks at the ratings and ‘adjusts’. Arizona doesn’t observe DST change, so everything shifts 1 hour anyway. There’s been some shuffling in their programming since James T. Harris’ show (our local ‘black avenger’) was canceled in mid-December. Now, all shows from 8 am – 6 am (22 hrs) are national syndication. Only 2 hours of a local host, from 6-8 am.
As you alluded, the same weather report is repeated all day and night, into the wee hours of the following day.
My impression is that the “endorsed local provider” in the area handles the arrangements necessary to get the show on the air. The FCC has rules about undisclosed sponsorships, so it probably is something much more subtle.
When Clear Channel told him he needed to pay for his infomercials masquerading as advice shows, he left and heavily changed his focus to getting the show on Christian stations with the carrot of organizing churches to sign up for his courses with the requirement that members continue to tithe their 10% while getting out of debt.
We certainly prefer a full 3 hours of Chris Plante over the Ramsey infomercial. As soon as we hear Ramsey’s lead-in music, we switch to AM for the last 2 hours of Rush. I think KQTH-FM realized Ramsey’s ‘show’ was a net loss vs Plante’s 3rd hour… and I wouldn’t be surprised if the station or Scripps is looking to replace Ramsey’s slot.
Imus walked out on his final show on Thursday – leaving before the end of his first hour, with his headset next to the microphone, squealing feedback into the network feed. Nobody can’t say Imus wasn’t a class act.
Once a nappy headed hoe, always a nappy headed hoe.
Nobody doesen’t like Sara Lee. 😉
Once you have had Sarah Lee, there is no going back.
Feedback into the network feed… Bravo Imus, BRAVO!
Maybe he was just very emotional but he has done radio since 1968. You unplug your headphones before putting them down. It also suggests he suffers from the DJ disease of hearing loss from wearing headphones with the volume cranked up.
So here is the audio of the final segment
https://youtu.be/e5CWXIxvSTs
I had hoped it was his ‘salute’ to Cumulus, with 5-10 seconds of screeching feedback across the land. 😉 However, I found an audio clip and it was incidental, not intentional. At 50 years on the air, he can be emotional…
That was my reaction too. I could hear him getting choked up from the memories and knowing that his day will change suddenly after a 50 year long habit. I could feel he was overwhelmed by that rather than any animosity toward Cumulus or anyone else.
I actually feel bad for calling him a nappy headed hoe.
I was not a fan but have heard the show a dozen or so times going back to the 1970s when he was on WNBC. I didn’t dislike him but generally didn’t find his humor stuck a chord with me and neither did his politics.
He will be 78 years old in a few months. I wish him well.
Tom Taylor may have injected his own opinions on how he characterized the events. The “walking out” was more like “I don’t want to cry on the air”
I heard glenn Beck the other day. He is still on the radio. He was attacking Trump and the idea of troops on the border with Mexico. He was saying how wacko Rosanne’s new show was and her being pro-Trump. The ‘hyena’s ‘ are still on there as well. 10 minutes and I was annoyed.
i am so glad I found Chris Plante ! Thanks CC !
best
parrott