TRN will be debuting its big gamble next week. TRN will be taking on Rush Limbaugh head to head with an “all news” show, similar to the one they currently produce from 6-9 AM called “American’s Morning News”. TRN currently doesn’t have a Noon-3PM (ET) program – they have tried feeding the prior night’s Savage show, but no more than a handful of stations ever gave it a try.
The strong hint in this story (and backed up by my own listening) is that the advertiser boycott of TRN shows has hurt them severely. TRN appears to be betting their future on a national “all news” format, thinking that advertisers won’t be scared of it – since the shows won’t have controversial opinion (odd, America’s Morning News has more opinion than many opinion shows….)
Doing a competitive news format for radio (without being a parasite just rewriting newspaper copy) is VERY expensive. CBS is the only company big enough to do it currently – but they also own a large number of TV stations they can use for material and coverage of breaking events.
CNN headline news never caught traction on radio. Financial News has no traction (other than Bloomberg’s own stations, but he has billions to spend on building his empire). Other than morning drive, people are not going to turn on a radio to get the news – they’ll turn on the TV (except for niche audiences like blind people).
Even though TRN has done an impressive job of lining up stations to play America’s Morning News, it’s only drawing about 2% of the national audience coming here to listen during the hours it is on.
The pattern of the TRN talk show hosts lining up second jobs suggests to me they may have been given the word last fall to have a “Plan B” ready for when/if TRN can’t sustain the opinion talk syndication. In radio, “talent” can’t typically take a second job without the explicit permission of their primary job.
Remember the Alinsky rule #13:
1) Pick the Target [ow ow…. isn’t that inciting violence!]
2) Freeze it
3) Personlize it
4) Polarize it
Part of the Alinsky method is that once you identify a target and begin the attack, people or entities that rush to defend the target become secondary targets that are added to the list of things to be eliminated next. It’s very methodical. Premiere is foolish if they think TRN being in trouble is a good thing. Clear Channel runs the only remaining large national ad rep firm.
I have this odd feeling that we’re going to hear the dulcid tones of Jeff Kuhner next Monday, but that’s only a hunch. So far as I know, he doesn’t currently have a regular show anywhere.
I wonder how many people actually have a Jerry Doyle ‘premium membership’ ?
An ongoing mystery is why Savage never mentions the premium service. The logical inference is he doesn’t get a piece of the revenue.
Jeff Kuhner, did’ja say? I like him quite a lot, frankly. Same guy writes for Washington Times and has or had a gig on WTNT in Washington, right?
Had – that’s why he is the main suspect :) WTNT was recently sold to Salem Broadcasting, so he lost his gig. He’s in Washington DC area, sort of maybe works fo the Washington Times, and is obviously known to TRN.
Since TRN is trying to sell this as “straight news without opinion”, I think that’s gonna be pretty hard for Mr Kuhner to carry off – if my hunch is correct.
The America’s Morning News programs has a lot of issues. Back about five years ago, Bonneville (WTOP, et al) and the Washington Post tried a similar idea that went nowhere but into the toilet. Why?
– Virtually all big city newspapers are morning papers. Reporters who work for morning papers mostly work in the evenings – the newsroom of a morning paper is close to completely empty at 7AM. You can’t just grab reporters as they walk by – an extremely naive understanding of the radio business.
– people at newspapers view Radio people as parasitic scum, for the most part, and rightly so. Radio rewrites newspaper stories and uses them without attribution… they run “Swap Shop” shows whose only purpose is to drive away ad revernue from the papers… they compete for the same advertisers
– The Washington Post expected their reporters to spend their time doing radio interviews without being paid for their time. Their collective bargaining agreement had no provision requiring them to do that.
– in the case of the Washington Times, they have struggled all the time the newspaper has been there to be recognized as an objective news source (albeiet on the Conservative side)… John McCaslin, and especially Melanie Morgan were incapable of keeping their “news hat” on and stuffing their Conservative Opinion hat in the closet, which was clearly a source of irritation to the Times reporters they put on the spot on the air to express political opinions.
I wrote about this a while back, having worked for a summer for Social Security as in intern in the early 1970s. Up until that point, SS#s were not issued at birth (Barack Obama was allegedly born in 1961). They were generally issued only when a teenager wanted a job that required one. A computer check was made overnight to make sure the person didn’t already have a SS#, and if that came back clean, the next SS# on a preprinted card in sequence was typed up and then that SS# would be sent that night to connect the application and the # that was issued. The first 5 digits would identify the exact office that issued the card.
No proof of anything was required to get a card – you filled out the registration form, you got a card in the mail a few days later (or sooner if the employer wanted the card “now” and the person was willing to pick it up the next day). Note that the Social Security card says “Not to be used for identification”. As an intern, I had access to the blank forms and could have just typed up one fake card after another. There was on control over the forms for replacement SS cards.
Probably either he or his mother just made up a random number. Employers are supposed to ask to see the SS card, but I doubt many do. These days, employers get their data kicked back if the Social Security # doesn’t match a real person, but even that system has as many holes as expensive Swiss cheese. Non-compliance with tax laws is a major issue in certain communities – something that the government doesn’t like to talk about.
I shouldn’t be shocked at Masters’ latest attempt, but turing his back on the core of TRN’s business – hot, opinion radio…is the network’s death knell. Damn shame too, TRN was about the only place you could hear independent, conservative talk radio. He’s going in the exact wrong direction, as usual.