Tammy Bruce is pulling the plug on her weekday syndicated program, and moving to 100% podcast. Monica Crowley lost her last major weekday affiliate. Michael Reagan is now doing one hour a day on Donald Wildman’s radio station.
Why have they failed when Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are prospering? There are two main reasons that come to mind – having actual radio experience and having a syndication partner with clout.
Tammy Bruce had no radio experience at all before going national on TRN (at least none that I”m aware of). Her claim to fame is being a former leader in NOW who is now a lesbian Conservative. She obviously hasn’t had any training in how to talk on radio, and relies heavily on her producer to tell her what to do. Talking about her pets and looking at the Drudge report substitutes for show preparation.
Monica Crowley thinks she is doing a TV show on the Playboy channel. Why she thinks portraying herself as a blond dominatrix dressed up in leather and stiletto heels will appeal to Conservative men or women just baffles me. Because she didn’t understand how radio works, her weekend radio syndication is on in the afternoon, which means most of the year her show is preempted by baseball or football games.
If Michael Reagan’s last name wasn’t Reagan, he never would have gotten a show in the first place. Michael drove his career in the ditch by dredging up memories of some now-dead guy down the street who molested him as a child, writing a book about that, and making that his “cause”. We didn’t do it to him, we can’t make it go away, and hearing a host “playing the victim” for moths on end is not why people listen to talk radio. He also could never get past every caller wanting to tell him how much they admired his step-father (adoption is another of his causes). [Ron Reagan Jr on Air America doesn’t have that problem :)]
In the up and coming area, Mark Levin is another who lacked any radio experience before becoming nationally syndicated. But at least he brings solid Conservative credentials to the table (he served as chief of staff for A.G. Ed Meese during the Reagan presidency) and he has a record of activism outside of radio He’s syndicated by Citadel (ABC), which still carries clout – for now. But he came very close to driving his show in the ditch by writing his book about his dog dying and spending weeks talking about it, and then having person after person calling in and talking about how their beloved dog died. While it made Mark softer and more human, it is still really bad radio. He’s picking up momentum though.
Rush, Hannity and Beck all knew they wanted to be in radio from an early age, and worked those jobs that pay nothing in small town radio – making their mistakes and learning how modulate their voices and learn how the board operator does their job in a place where it didn’t matter if you made a mistake.
Dennis Miller is another person with no prior radio experience who “saw the light” and now sees his way back to relevance by becoming a neocon (in the actual meaning of the word – a former liberal who has an aha moment and suddenly realizes they’ve been wrong all their lives). He will always have a niche following wanting to discuss those SNL days from 35 years ago, but he’s never going to “break through”. He’s on the wrong syndicator to be doing Conservative talk (Westwood One). CBS is owned by one of the biggest flaming liberals in the country. CBS stations wouldn’t carry the show, and WestWood one doesn’t have a lineup of other Conservative shows. He’s carried mostly on Salem Radio, but at really bad times like 2 in the morning.
Roger Hedgecock is Conservative and has “paid his dues”. He’s gaining momentum, but he has two major strikes against him – his syndicator is a minor player in the business, and more importantly – he still is behaving like he’s a local talk show host. His home is San Diego, and much of his time is focused on California and the problems of the Governator – which is only of limited interest to people in Kansas. Roger is also competing against neocon Michael Savage and Mark Levin. If he had gotten the 6-9 PM (eastern) time from Premiere rather than Jason Lewis (who?) – he would be 1000% further along in getting national recognition. I don’t know why that didn’t happen. I am aware he somehow got himself on Rush’s list of “people who will never guest host my show again”. I can’t imagine what happened – perhaps Rush blocked Premiere hiring Hedgecock, maybe Premiere and Roger never talked to each other. Hard to know from the outside.
I know nothing about the business side of talk radio. I certainly can imagine that a host’s training and character development are important. Those probably take decades to develop and hopefully perfect.
That leaves me, as just one listener, seeing program content and the talk show host’s personality, as being important.
A host who is relaxed, clever, jolly, and well informed attracts me. Currently, Rush’s substitute host, Mark Steyn wins this award. Earlier, another of Rush’s substitute hosts, Walter “E.” Williams, was similarly endowed. Of the regular hosts, Rush used to be similarly fun, and is my next choice. However, over the last few years Rush has lost some of his jolly good humor, and now often projects a degree of impatience. This shows indirectly in that he is talking faster and faster. No one can project humor while talking very fast.
Next in line would be Neil Boortz, John Gibson, and Mike McConnell, but each for somewhat different reasons. Neil is pleasant to listen to, is well informed, and usually maintains his sense of humor. John obviously is a lightning rod for Blacks. He handles them cleverly, though he often temporarily gets pretty intense as a result. It is the character of the Black callers that John draws out that I find interesting. McConnell responds remarkably fast and is usually on target with his responses to callers, without ever getting emotionally involved with them. He is very relaxing to listen to.
Liddy is next in line. His show is sometimes extremely interesting, but just as often is incredibly boring. Still, he never loses his cool.
That leaves a collection of average hosts: Crowley, Ingraham, Bruce, Hedgecock, Lewis, etc. They are all well intentioned, I’m sure. But, something is missing. Hedgecock is the most promising, partly because he has lived a lot more of life.
At the other end of the spectrum are the emotionally intense and confrontational, though usually reasonably well informed, hosts; Savage, Hannity, Levin, and to a lesser extent Beck. I can’t listen to any of them for long periods of time. I’m sure there is a large segment of the population that enjoys, even craves, their emotionalism.
That is one evaluation of the talk show world, as seen from one listener’s perpective, and as seen by looking in from outside the talk show world, for whatever that is worth.
Art: How about Jerry Doyle? I think he’s one of the most promising of the up and comers in conservative talk radio. He’s smart, funny and well-prepared. Producer gets good, high-quality guests all the time. Sometimes I think the hosts don’t understand that some of us want lots of guests with lots to say. I know most conservatives hate NPR but the prevailing format of NPR shows work for me — the guests are the stars and the hosts facilitate via asking good questions, taking good callers (not crazy or dumb ones), etc. Sometimes the Biggies in talk turn into bores. going hours at a stretch, with just them talking (no guests) and sprinkling in a few callers. I want to learn things from a wide array of guests and callers when I listen to radio! What do you think?
What I love about Glenn Beck and Neil Boortz is that they call out both parties. Often Sean and Rush are more forgiving of the Republicans than the are of the Democrats. We are in this mess because both parties have dropped the ball of what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Until one of them has an “aha” moment. More people will become independent and eventually there will be a replacement phase, where party wont matter, they all will get the boot.
To me this is what make as a radio talk show artist good. They call a strike, a strike and a ball, a ball. Don’t be a puppet for a party, stand up and be an American first. Lou Dobbs would be added in this group as well.
I love Dennis Miller’s show and hope it works out for him and he can stay on the air for years to come. His experience in the entertainment biz is a part of what makes his show and his insights so interesting. He can slap around Andrew Sullivan over waterboarding in one segment and shoot the breeze with Jimmy Fallon in the next and it’s never a bore.
I haven’t heard Jason Lewis in syndication yet, but he was pretty brilliant as the local drive time host in Charlotte a few years ago. I thought he was okay as a fill-in for Rush with his one fault being that he tried to imitate Rush’s schtick too much.
Levin is great until he yells, and at that point I have to turn him off. His voice is just too annoying for that.
Is it possible to be a Single Consertive Independent Progressive Patriot ??
This may be slightly off topic.
Mark Davis at WBAP in DFW (0630-0900 PST) deserves to be listed here. He: is conservative; is articulate; thinks well; thinks fast; can be politely confrontational, when appropriate; and is entertaining.
This article is about “people who call themselves Conservatives” who have failed at talk radio syndication (or have failed to gain any traction yet). There are seveal hosts mentioned as constrast as to why being Conservavite isn’t enough. Mark Davis has “paid his dues” in local radio, and doing quite well. Other than filling in for Rush from time to time, I haven’t heard him express a desire to go into national syndication.
Fred Thompson is another that probably could be added to the list – he’s only been doing it for a few months, and still picking up affiliates, but he’s definitely learning on the job and got the job based on name recognition, not radio experience.