The Charlotte City Council found out that the cost of building the city’s “world class” bike trail is underfunded by $77 million, a 200% cost overrun. Unspoken is the section that may never get built is the section through the crime infested North Side.
People buying the luxury condos on the South End see the bike trail running by their building, probably unaware you can’t actually get to your job in Uptown using it. There is no bridge over the expressway that encircles Uptown, so the trail just ends abruptly.
You have to go onto a busy street that has a bridge and then wander around the convention center to reconnect to the fake section of the bike trail the tourists see
I hope Fred & Countess are doing well. Have not been here in a while, but the site was heavily used by me for years. Hope 2019 is good year for you both.
Off topic – I have been listening to the Blaze in the morning, but these two clods have gone way off the reservation. If I want “fair and balanced”, I have Fox News.
Can anyone recommend a morning show that has some redeeming characteristics?
I second Baldy – best of health to Fred and Countess!
Great question, brand75. I like when contributors make recommendations myself because it leads to interesting listening.
At 6 AM ET, I like WMAL’s show but they added a pre-roll commercial that plays every time you start the stream. It is ok if you stay with that station for a long time, but not if you like to change to other stations during commercials. Hugh Hewitt has a good show on the Salem Radio Network including WPGP 1250 in Pittsburgh. I also like the Chris Stigall Show on WPHT Philadelphia. Fred today suggested the morning show on KPRC in Houston – it sounds interesting, especially since I used to live in Houston. I look forward to listening to his recommendation.
9 AM – I am mostly on Chris Plante unless he has Steve Malzberg as a guest host, then I switch to Glenn Beck or wait until 10 AM for the Mark Simone show on WOR.
I’ll also put in a plug for the new The Ben Shapiro Show – Weekdays 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM on most Cumulus stations (many delay the show until the evening). He is very smart and an original thinker rather than someone that reads the standard talking points or just reads headlines from Drudge.
Thanks CC 🙂 I will check these out. I am not a Hewitt fan, but I will give a listen to the others.
Stu and whoever make my head explode with their arrogance and stupidity. I would rather watch Captain Kangaroo, but Bob Keeshan is passed these many years.
Pat Grey is Glenn Beck’s long time friend, and from my perspective Beck’s puppet master. Pat keeps pushing the “science is the enemy of religion” narrative, that the universe is only 10,000 years old, the Mormon apocalypse narritive where Glenn believed he and Ted Cruz were fulfilling prophecy. The point at which Beck asserted that to be a “good” Conservative you had to support the government of Netanyahu and walk around with an Israeli flag lapel pin, I jumped off his turnip truck completely. To the degree that conservatives require that I share their religious beliefs, the less I support their agenda.
I have had a similar experience with Beck and Co. Very very often they turn to the abortion issue and their crusade against it. I’m over 60 and have been hearing the arguments on both sides since the early 1970s. Nothing has changed. Either you believe that a fertilized cell is fully human life and eligible for all the protections under the Constitution that you and I have, or you don’t. The other side sees “birth” as the gateway to those rights.
After nearly 50 years, I don’t think I will hear an argument for either side that I haven’t heard before…. and I don’t consider rehashed discussions as a good use of my time.
I like to point out to my conservative friends that crime rates in the US dropped quickly starting around 1990 – roughly 16 years after there was a dramatic drop in unloved and unwanted children. A declining murder, rape and theft rate is a good thing.
I’m not a Hewitt fan either. In another post here yesterday, I called him “Color, Color It”. I was trying to be polite. In real life, I call him “Douche, Douchebag” lol
He promotes too hard. I can’t tell you how many times I heard him over enthusiastically promote that Martha McSally was an A10 pilot or that Rick Grenell would be a great gay Ambassador. I’ve seen each of those two on TV, and in my opinion, they are deep staters and not very supportive of the President.
Mr Hewett had also not been a fan of the President. He regularly promotes MSNBC and its liberal hosts and took pride in asking Trump a series of trivia questions to try to trip him up during the primaries.
Hewitt is a lawyer focused on existing processes and procedures and buried in a mountain of detail. He can not see the forest from the trees. He lacks “that vision thing” that the Bushes lack. He is a Tim Cook rather than a Steve Jobs.
Having said all that, he does a live show from DC and has good political guests that are on topic. Most other shows don’t.
I prefer Mornings in the Mall on WMAL but sometimes just want to hear something different and I find Hewitt.
Yes the “nuclear triad” question since Hewitt is stuck in the Cold War. As a general rule, I think lawyers do boring radio – Hewitt, Bennett, Ingraham, Medved… their training causes them to view “right and wrong” and “legal and illegal” as equivalents, which creates the mindset that any wrong behavior will be solved by a new law. To a carpenter, the solution to every problem requires a hammer.
CC, WMAL has dropped the pre-roll ad on starting their stream.
It seems they dropped those substituting ads during Chris plante.
He was great last Friday, Not bad today tuesday Jan 22.
best
parrott
lol. I am laughing because great minds think alike. I noticed that myself today and was about to write in to announce it. Every day, I had started the stream, got the pre-roll, then switched to WXLM or WGOW. Finally, someone in management got a report showing they were losing listeners.
FWIW, I put together a spreadsheet of stations carrying Plante. There are many that carry only 2 hours and also many that carry all three but delay them and play them in the afternoon or evening. There are even some that play a best of show on weekends. WPIC play 3 hours some days and 2 hours others.
Here is my complete list of stations that play all three hours live each Monday-Friday (7 stations) :
Calls Freq City, State Program schedule web page:
WAAV 980 AM Leland, NC http://www.980waav.com/schedule/
WEEB 990 AM Southern Pines (Pinehurst), NC http://www.weeb990.com/WEEB990_Programming.php
WGOW 1150 AM Chattanooga, TN http://www.wgowam.com/full-show-schedule/
WMAL 630 AM Washington, DC http://www.wmal.com/full-show-lineup/
WPRV 790 AM Providence, RI http://www.790business.com/790-business-on-air-schedule/
WWCK 1570 AM Flint, MI http://www.supertalk1570.com/on-air-schedule/
WXLM 980 AM New London, CT http://www.wxlm.fm/2015/06/09/shows/
That is the legacy left by Dennis Miller. He decided to do his show from 10AM-1PM (ET). Not knowing much about radio, that schedule cost him many potential affiliates who were not going to drop Rush, and stations that already had syndicated shows from 9-noon.
The first couple weeks, he had no live affiliates and could not figure out why he got zero phone calls. The result is Plante picked up those affiliates from Westwood One (owned by Cumulus) who were locked in to a two hour commitment.
Plante is doing the show now from 9-noon, and I’ll adjust the times and retest them. You may be aware that I do not trust radio station website schedules.
Westwood One apparently did a poor job of pursuing the former Laura Ingraham affiliates.
For bonus points, what thing is shared by every station in that list?
Before you conclude victory over pre stream ads, keep in mind they are chosen specifically for you and based on the time of day/week. In the past, there were examples where it was clear the station was suspending ads during a specific show, possibly to make the show look bad to the prior “management by spreadsheet” operator.
LOLOL
Aside from WEEB, they are all clearly Cumulus and using the same website template. WEEB may be Cumulus too, not sure.
They are all Eastern Time Zone stations.
BTW – WIQO 100.9 FM Forest, VA is also all three hours live – I didn’t pick it up from my spreadsheet filter because I had marked it as having an out of date program schedule on its web page.
I spot checked all of the above and they were ok. I did not spot check the delayed 3 hours stations recently and suspect KPRL 1230 AM Paso Robles, CA not longer streams the stations – Plante is not mentioned on its web page. My spreadsheet was a working list to investigate to avoid pre-roll commercials.
Can we use ‘LOL’ now ?
parrott
An interesting observation. Since I started listening to WMAL again once the pre-roll ads stopped, I have noticed a lack of paid commercials. Instead, they often run a short clip of Chris Plante humor in place of a paid commercial.
I suspect they were losing advertisers and decided to try to get revenue with the pre-roll ads… or perhaps the pre-roll ads caused them to lose enough on-line listeners that they were unable to sell the ads they once sold…. another possibility is they raised rates and now fewer people are buying ads.
For those who sleep until noon, KOIL-AM is a non-Cumulus station that carries the entire show from Noon-3PM. The station is in Omaha, so you might hear ag news like soybean prices and the daily hog slaughter reports
I’ll add that one to my spreadsheet. The ones I have for all three hours daily but delayed are:
Calls Freq City, State Program schedule web page:
KCMO 710 AM / 103.7 FM Kansas City, MO http://www.kcmotalkradio.com/full-programming-schedule/
KDZR 1640 AM Lake Oswego (Portland), OR https://thepatriotportland.com/programguidedaily
KPRL 1230 AM Paso Robles, CA https://www.myflr.org/1041tucson/
WTMA 1250 AM Charleston, SC http://www.wtma.com/on-air-schedule/
Chris Plante’s call screen person, takes a lot of calls from people in the Chattanooga area. He must have a good many people listening to him around there. Thanks for the list CC. This is good.
I wish WFIR Roanoke would drop Beck and pick up Plante.
Jackass cumu-lost station in Radford VA. WRAD should drop repeats of Dave Ramsey 9am-12pm every day, and carry Plante live ! There is a good opportunity there.
Looks like I have a 9am meeting this morning , oh well. I’ll miss the first half hour of Plante. ‘Round & Round’ .
see you guys later
parrott
Kilmeade picked up most of the Laura Ingraham affiliates. He is too “establishment” for my tastes.
Armstrong & Getty do a morning show in California that can be OK, but is mainly focused on California. I wrote to the contact person for their national syndication and did not get a reply.
I find Mark Simone (currently on WOR in New York) very entertaining. He is very good at backing liberals into corners with logic and facts.
For a change of pace, there is Listen to the Mrs on WSGW in Saginaw Michigan
Saginaw is an interesting place. Probably worth a listen. I knew it as an artist’s colony of sorts. It used to be a booming lake port, but the Interstates took care of that.
In some situations, hitting refresh in a browser will bypass the video ad.
On the Amazon Tablet with Chrome browser, an annoying feature is showing up – when you switch tabs, it suspends the ad and resumes when you switch back
Windows 10 does that with the Solitaire game. Before you can use the software you paid for…. and you probably paid for that Solitaire game within Windows many times over as you bought upgrades since Windows 3.1… you have to watch an ad. If you switch focus to another Window to browse, the ad stops and waits for you to switch focus back the Window with the ad. The ads are hardcoded too and no blocked by standard ad blockers.
I am not missing Chris Plante tomorrow !
Right to life march and ‘Clown Posse Pelosi’ Denied fun trip to Europe with ‘Inchworm’ also known as Congressman Schiff (D) Kalifornia , Ha Ha !
They had to do the walk of shame off the bus.
Way to go President Trump !
I am sending Pink Hat Warner a email tomorrow. Screw the IRS
best
parrott
Maybe Trump will cut off the heat in the Congressional office buildings.
Turn off her cell phone. lol
oops- hope that’s not hate speech. lol
Trump should have let her fly to Egypt on the plane, then ordered it home without her – and add her to the terrorist watch list. Is she going there to collude with the Muslim Brotherhood? I remember her visiting Assad in Syria during the Bush administration over the objections of the State Department.
Certainly her first stop was to meet with globalists in Belgium, plus a day-trip to a few French wine regions, then to catch some sun-n-fun in Giza with the pharaohs, and finally a quick 1 hour photo-op stopover “visiting the troops in Afghanistan.”
I’d like to know why she, or any Congress-critter, has access to government travel outside the country? Traveling and meeting with foreign governments is the realm of the diplomats and ambassadors… and all those specious ‘NGO’ sponsorships.
Likewise, the idea of the Press Corps being allowed to fly along on such junkets (or Air Force One for that matter) is nauseating.
Yeah, they sure do waste money.
After seeing this these ‘crazies ‘ back in charge of the House again, I see that ‘RINO’s Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, over in the Senate, did nothing the last two years.
parrott
CC: WMAL stream must have blew up this morning, OR they are getting ready to mess it up. They are playing two clips from Mornings in the Mall, yesterday Diamond & Silk, Two Chris clips, and a Larry O’conner clip, with wounded warrior something, and a Dr. Sanjay Gumptha health thingy.
Chaos.
I switched to WCHV , they are talking Budgets and energy .
annoying
parrott
WMAL has brought back the pre-roll commercials. I just now switched from WGOW with Chris Plante talking to WMAL and WMAL has a pre-roll commercial about remodeling. I switched back to WGOW and Plante is still talking to the same caller. Switched back to WMAL again and the pre-roll commercial restarts. Back to WGOW and Plante is still talking to the same caller.
re WMAL, we have a saying here in the CC household, “WMAL’s Joe had deed, but SRG’s Parrott’s got game.” LOL
I am going to stick my neck out and guess the reason for the return of the preroll ads is the beginning of a new month. Advertisers might budget by a monthly spend
All right ! : )
pre-roll was gone again today. WMAL was normal today. Strange
Yesterday, I had switch to WIQO Lynchburg again.
Have a good one !
parrott