When Dennis Miller left syndicated radio on Westwood One, someone came up with Jonathan Brandmeier as a replacement. He was well known in Chicago mostly an entertainment radio talker, talking about movies, TV, celebrity gossip. He had his own band in Chicago that would play at clubs.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to take a mostly apolitical guy not known outside of Chicago and have him play the role of a meat eating Conservative to a national audience. It didn’t work. Saying you really like Elizabeth Warren’s politics and calling Donald Trump a racist xenophobic would be a red flag to anyone paying attention.
By mutual agreement, Westwood One will be dropping Johnny B in early 2017 when his contract runs out.
Another problem the show had was its time slot. The syndication business has aligned to 3 hour shows at 6/9/noon/3/6/9 ET. That meant either airing only two hours (no rational person would drop Rush for a total unknown) or carrying the show on delay, mostly in the evening. There is a pretty fundamental rule in syndication – if your show is based on callers calling in, they have to be hearing the show live. Even his home station WLS-AM didn’t carry the first two hours live.
Up the road an hour North behind the Cheddar Curtain, Milwaukee’s Charlie Sykes is taking a less amicable exit from WTMJ-AM, kicking Conservative Talk radio in the teeth on the way out
http://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/television-radio/2016/10/04/charlie-sykes-leave-wtmj-radio-show-december/91542572/
“Conservative” talk show host Michael Savage was reading from a story about Tim Kaine published by Frontpage Magazine – but claimed that he didn’t know who publishes it. I knew without looking it up – David Horowitz. Horowitz is an actual neocon – he was a very prominent Marxist activist who had a dramatic political reversal – exposing the Marxists in government and especially education. He has been leading the fight against speech codes designed to silence Conservative opinions.
Already today, Savage has mocked his Conservative listeners again as being stupid nitwits.
Here is the story he was reading from
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263803/tim-kaine-radical-leftist-wrapped-inside-moderate-discover-networks
Alex Jones went on an interesting screed about the real motives of the neocons and why they want war with Russia – it was probably nonsense, but I filed it away for future reference. More of what Jones predicted years ago has become true.
Typical of Michael the Screaming Skull Savage. Used to like his show at one time, now he always sound enraged and going off the deep end. Same goes for Mark Levin. A pity Levin is a very knowledgeable individual, just his constant screaming turns me off. Even Rush has turned me off. I tend to listen to Gallagher, Plante, and Prager. I might not agree with them 100% but listening to them does not increase my blood pressure.
Once upon a time, Rush used music to break up his deliberately repetitive monologues. I suspect that was causing royalty payment issues with BMI, ASCAP, SESAC and Soundexchange. News Talk stations generally only have incidental licenses that cover occasional brief periods of music that just happens to be in the audio, not the focus of the audio.
The President/GM of WGN-AM in Chicago just quit
Johnathan Brandmeier – if that’s who we are referring to. A classic voice from the 80’s when I lived in Chicago. He was a more family-friendly variant of “shock jock”. Johnny B and crew lit up the air waves every morning with male immaturity and off-color humor. I enjoyed it all and I miss that type of harmless banter.
I could swear I added his last name when I wrote the post. Sometimes the iPad has a mind of its own
Johnny B just did his last live Network show for Westwood One. He could have kept working until February when his contract ended. Being the Conservative Republican that he pretended to be, I’m shocked he didn’t want to be at the press room on January 20th celebrating President Trump