Today at Noon (ET), former Arkansas Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee takes to the radio airwaves of Cumulus Media. While the Obama “fellow travelers” (Think Progress, Media Matters, Huffington Post, Daily Kos) are trying to set up a “war”, that seems unlikely. The motivation of the Dickey family who run Cumulus is simple – they are frugal to the point of being counterproductive. They are locked into carrying Limbaugh on the former ABC radio stations for now, but are laying the foundation to drastically cut back what they are paying Clear Channel for programming.
Unlike Dennis Miller, Doug Urbanski, Lou Dobbs, Monica Crowley, Geraldo and others, Mike Huckabee is not entering national syndication as a radio novice. Huckabee got his first job in radio at age 14 doing news reports at a local station. After college and his religious training, he went to work for a TV evangelist as his communication director. When Paul Harvey died in 2009, Huckabee stepped in to his shoes to do a similar (but shorter) daily syndicated short form newscast.
Cumulus claims they have 140, 170 or 200 affiliates for this show. So far, I’ve located 21 – most are carrying the show in the evenings for less than three hours, reflecting a cautious wait and see attitude.
KSFO-AM in San Francisco (owned by Cumulus) will be carrying the entire show live. WOR in New York (not Cumulus) will be carrying the show from 8-10 PM (but NOT streaming the show. KLIF-AM in Dallas Fort Worth will be carrying the first two hours live.
Everyone plays games to inflate affiliate counts – does it include simulcasts? Is it the entire show or only a weekend best of? Are they there launch day or just have agreed they might carry the show in the future to keep a competitor from having it?
http://streamingradioguide.com/radio-show.php?showid=9212
Let the fun begin!
Art, this one’s largely for you, though anyone else is welcome to play. What seems out of whack with this radio station page?
http://wor710.com/pages/12544014.php
(Hint: It’s not the lack of Huckabee, we have to cut them a break on that since he hasn’t even aired yet.)
This is a brand new web site today, which I discovered this morning.
The arrangement of photos seems pretty random, except they pushed Savage down to the very bottom. They have never streamed Savage, and aren’t going to stream Huckabee.
Savage also lost his 3rd hour today.
Rita Cosby seems to have vanished – she replaced Steve Malzberg (who showed up on WMAL against last week doing a fillin). Don’t know yet if she will continue to be on WOR Network without being on WOR-AM
I think Savage has been two hours (minus 15 minutes of Brian Williams) going back to when they aired Smerconish from 8-10. Rita hasn’t been on WOR-AM since David Patterson started but I have heard her online as well as on a Florida station a few times.
And it was the Savage pic placement I found funny, stuck way down at the bottom between two doctors who probably pay for air time. Come to think of it, maybe TRN pays for Savage’s airtime too.
That seems likely to me – I suspected that was true of Beck as well. My guess was the pictures are arranged in the order of how much the program director likes them.
If I went out in my car, I can hear WOR, but since they don’t stream Savage, it’s not in my brain – but what you said sounds right.
So what do we think so far? I heard bits and pieces while scurrying around trying to find those other 150 stations carrying the show 🙂
The woman producing this show is based in Los Angeles and had previously been Fred Thompson’s producer.
I heard the open and it sounded kind of like a reading of Cumulus’ press releases about the show. Thought it was ironic that Rush began the week with a rather dry jag on economics as Huck was starting out.
Ross Mitchell – the announcer from Coast to Coast – does a morning show in Reno on a station owned by Cumulus. His voice seems to be showing up now on Cumulus programs
The “ratings” score here was Limbaugh 431, Huckabee 11
Can you feel the excitement? Lew Dickey is looking to attract an audience that wants “safe” talk radio – younger people, women and racial minorities.