One of the most successful so-called “progressive” talk stations in the country – Clear Channel’s KPOJ-AM in Portland Oregon – has dumped Fat Eddy and the other Friends of Obama. Even though it is one of the most successful, the ratings have been drifting downward below the 1% share which is where stations are not economically viable. Those college kids just don’t listen to AM radio.
So what do you replace them with? Sports of course! With NBC Sports Radio and CBS Sports radio coming online, look for a lot of marginal talk stations to be talking about the big game after they stop playing “holiday” music in December.
Even the racially segregated Radio One is getting in on the act. One of their FM music stations in Cincinnati will be switching to CBS Sports Radio on January 2nd (WMOJ-FM). They have already switched to computerized “holiday” music.
http://mojocincy.com/
I have no clue about the inner workings of the radio business. Thanks for keeping up with the personalities, changes and trends.
Art/Fred,
I wasn’t sure where the best thread on your blog would be to post this:
Tonight (Tuesday, November 13th) one of Jim Bohannon’s scheduled guests is Holland Cooke. I was not familiar with Mr. Cooke before today when I saw his name on Bohannon’s site. Do you know anything about him Art?
He seems to have a long track record in the radio industry and he does a great deal of trend watching/consulting. His blog posts seem to echo many of the themes covered on this blog.
Here is Mr. Cooke’s blog:
http://hollandcookemedia.wordpress.com/
and a recent article about trends in radio:
http://www.radio-info.com/2012/11/02/now-that-youre-in-sales/
Lastly, here is Bohannon’s website, where you can listen live starting at 10pm Eastern, or you can listen to his free archive of the show anytime after Wednesday.
http://jimbotalk.net/
Hopefully the interview with Bohannon will cover many of the topics that have been followed by Art as of late.
Don’t know his work. He’s writing on radio-info.com (now controlled by Talkers magazine)
He writes like a “sales guy”. He lives on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. His politics are very transparent. Glenn Beck may be a lot of things, but “shock jock” isn’t one of them. He clearly has no problem expressing opinions about things he knows nothing about… Unless he thinks a person being religious is “shocking”.
He’s likely the same type of consultant who told Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s that he would fail trying to do Conservative talk syndication at noon.
Glenn Beck isn’t even on the air in New York City. The comment about Glenn not talking about Sandy shows even more how parochial his perspective is. People in Nebraska don’t give a damn that people in New York City can’t get a taxi.
Thanks for your insights. Like I said, I never heard of him before today.
I heard most of the hour. He was last on the air himself in 1982 in Rhode Island. He worked for a number of years at WTOP, the all news station in DC as operations manager.
They talked very little about radio – the main thing they agreed in was that Apple should be forced to turn iDevices into FM radios
I’m not a Jimbo fan. I don’t dislike him, I just find his style irritating. While he does take calls, he feels a need on every call to rephrase the question – often converting a pointed question into a nerfball.
He also tends to argue with his expert guests rather than listening to them. I don’t want a George Noory who asks one open ended question and then let’s the guest talk non stop for 15 minutes, but Jimbo’s constant challenging often interferes with me understanding the perspective of the guest.
He also does a lot of authors on book tours answering the same 5 questions over and over until they’re bored silly and just start making up answers to see if the interviewer even read their book or is listening.
Bohannon has a negligible streaming audience. Most people are probably listening on their clock radios as they fall asleep.
The first thing I would want to know from a radio consultant is a client list of people who have paid them in the last 5 years. My guess is WGBH (NPR in Boston) and perhaps Emmis or WRKO
I would say your assessment of Jimbo is fairly accurate. I go through phases where I enjoy his show and others where I can’t stand to listen to him. I agree 100% about how he treats caller’s questions at times. Re-phrasing and completely altering a caller’s question is just as obnoxious to me as ignoring callers and spending your entire show talking to your in-studio ‘amen chorus’ of buddies.
When he was younger he wasn’t as obnoxious and impatient with callers. Perhaps it is just the wear and tear of doing pretty much the same show for 30+ years.
One thing I do like about him is that he is not a left or right echo-chamber (a la Sean Hannity or Ed Schultz). At least on his political leanings, Jimbo seems to hold a variety of positions that would cause discomfort to either the Dems or Reps. I guess that is one of the main reasons that I keep giving Jimbo a try sometimes.
Kptk-am in Seattle is another so-called Progressive stations about to lose its programming. It hasn’t been confirmed yet by CBS, but since it is owned by CBS, it seems very plausible that it will switch to the CBS Sports Radio network in January.