Laura is doing her show now from the facilities of Radio America, the syndicator of Roger Hedgecock. She now is the owner of her own show, similar to the arrangement Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have – she is now her own boss.
About 2/3 of her affiliates have already made the switch. I’m testing them as fast as I can 😉
It is what we used to call catchascatchcan with regards to where’s Waldo (Ingraham) and where she isn’t.
Tanraros show was not bad. Jason and the listeners didn’t talk much but really, she is not bad. The show may just catch on in time-if the stations can give them the time is another story, I presume. $ is King.
I’d like to give her show a try. It is not carried where I live so I have to find it on the net. The TRN website did not even have her listed as a host yet.
Andrea Tantaros is a cohost of Fox TV “The Five” and quite good. Some of the stations I tested had Laura and some were Andrea. I find her well informed with a radio voice far less shrill than Laura. Think I, too, will give the show a few days. She managed to get Grover Norquist for tomorrow (Thursday) and Amb. Bolton today so she’s got some clout.
I am looking forward to listening to her. I agree, Ingraham is pretty shrill at times and I have said so. But the absolute worst is Hannity. I simply cannot stand the guy.
She has been paid by the Republican party to influence public opinion. She isn’t just a person who likes Republican principles (whatever those are).
I only caught a few minutes, but I heard her announce that she is done being a mouthpiece for the Republican party. I believe that no more than when Rush says he is “done carrying water for the Republicans”.
Have you been listening to Rush lately?
Only a few snippets. Rush goes after the Republicans for a while, but then gets with their program when the election gets close. Charlie Brown – “I’m not going to let Lucy fool me again – this time she won’t pull the ball away….” ARRRRRGH!… [thump]
He was critical of Romney early and his whole campaign after the nomination. The one thing I did not hear Rush criticize was the snubbing of Ron Paul throughout the whole race and at the convention. I think it was the reason voter turn-out was so low. If that one aspect of the entire presidential race was handled better, especially if Romney had given Ron Paul fair and even-handed treatment, IMO, Romney would have received another 6 to 8 million votes and may have carried a few more states. May have been enough to get elected.
Now, Rush went with Romney because he repeatedly said he would repeal Obamacare, which has some very, very bad stuff in it.
Rush picks up the populist mantle when it suits him. As you pointed out, he cheers the team on when it’s election time. Didn’t he say he was tired of carrying water after the 2006 election? Whatever. He’s shrewd, but disingenuous. I could say the same thing about Mittens, but Rush actually wanted to be a radio host.
Probably 15% of her stations were carrying a local show. My guess is that a few program directors and station managers start their vacation on Thanksgiving and didn’t know she had left and are scrambling to sign new contracts
Laura had a contradictory message today – she is going to focus more to spend time with her children. At the same time, leaving TRN was mostly about wanting to “own her brand”. You don’t build a brand by renting a studio and working 3 hours a day.
Rush and Beck hired a business manager, built their own studio (not in their house) and offices, hired their own call screeners and support staff, started a streaming / podcast service, built a video stream, started a paid newsletter, developed merchandising, set up personal appearances (Glenn more than Rush), built up a solid group of advertisers they have created personal relationships with….
Is she ready to do that?
Doubt it, Art.
I am listening to Andrea Tantaros this morning. She is doing a good job.
Sometimes when listening to Ingraham I get the sense that I am back in high school and she is one of the cool kids making fun of everyone not part of her clique.
She had a woman on yesterday who wrote a book about diet and exercise. Laura did ask for her reaction to the study just released that being “normal” weight or less shortens your life, contrary to the perception that being overweight is unhealthy. There was no response and Laura didn’t follow up. She’s one of the hosts (Mark Levin and Savage as well) that go on frequent rants about how they hate fat people – usually the day after they take a plane flight.
I get the same feeling. She does have a rather high opinion of herself and I always hated it when she started speaking in Russian as though She knew it and no one else did -so proper homage must be paid. And almost always she would qualify everything. Like saying: I do love so and so…BUT. Drove me nuts. If you hate the SOB-tell us! Also her “interviews” tended to be monologues with one note sung: me, me, me.
Two days in a row with a book author. Publishers love to make the arrangements including writing a list of “suggested question”. Good for hosts that don’t do show prep, bad radio
It seems that Ingraham kept a lot of her stations when she made the switch. I look on Andrea Tantaros’s page on your Streaming Radio Guide and many of the stations still seem to be carrying Ingraham in the 9 – 12 slot. Any word on how Andrea Tantaro is being received in the market?
When Ingraham left in December, I moved those affiliate to an unnamed TRN host. I really didn’t expect her to resurface that fast and more importantly for that many affiliates to switch that fast.
We now know that TRN was being repped by Dial Global and TRN threatened a lawsuit that Dial Global was steering stations to Dial Global’s products. To switch that fast, stations had to have compatible satellite gear and the ability to shuffle contracts quickly which makes me think Dial Global was involved (I have no facts yet to back that up)
Clearly a majority of the affiliates saw a known host with an unproven syndicator (but led by a known radio executive) as better than an unknown host with little if any prior radio experience from a known syndicator. Not being a lawyer, my guess from afar us that Ingrahan leaving let stations out of their TRN contracts for that time period which made them highly motivated to not just sit around and let their contracts be extended
As to the show itself, no idea. There are at least three things you need – the show needs an audience, you need national advertisers that want to reach the audience, and the stations have to make money. Ratings matter, but they alone aren’t enough.
I have a job and updating the affiliate list is not my top priority. If you find Ingraham in a station where Tantaro, there should be an icon to suppress it, which speeds up my becoming aware the schedule needs tweaking.
In the end, all that matters is there is one of each that works. Stations don’t matter any more.
What does that icon look like? I’ll be glad to click on it.
It’s a red !. You might have to be logged in to see it – I’m not sure.
I made another pass today (all of the ones listed were verified last week) and about half of those (especiallyWTNT) have switched to Ingraham. The live affiliates list is down to 4.
Bummer. She is doing a nice job from what I have heard today and earlier. Nowhere near as abrasive as Ingraham.
It’s a little early to draw any conclusions about audience, but for the first week
Glenn Beck – 1,023
Ingraham – 504
Tantaros – 82
CBS Sports in comparison
Jim Rome – 233
Doug Gottlieb – 2
John Feinstein – 1
America Loves Sports!
I am listening to Andrea Tantaros now. She is doing a nice job. I hope her list of stations grows.
In the past few months, her syndicator (TRN) lost Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham, and appears to want a fight to the death with Dial Global, the company that sells their shows to radio stations. The future of her show is much more in the hands of TRN than whether her show is good.
Not working in radio, I don’t fully understand the incentives of why radio stations choose syndicators, but without Savage and Ingraham, TRN’s negotiating clout is greatly dimished. If you’re running a radio station, what would you give up to get Rusty Hunphries, Jerry Doyle and Phil Hendrie?
Just my 3 cents worth…
I am certainly not an insider but I am a listener. I have virtually stopped watching the garbage that my TV gives me except for sports.
In my humble opinion there is really a rising superstar and a great show on that no one seems to listen to. Barbara Simpson in SF on the weekends really does a nice job and Dana Loesch, out of St Louis is the younger version. I hope for the best for them both but being younger and on more- Dana I hope. will be the next one to take the dive into National Syndication. If not, shame on the Executives in radio. I’d like to buy stock in her, if that were possible. But, then again, maybe I’m just infatuated with those big brown eyes. 🙂
I stopped watching TV in 1996. I refused to pay for the cable in CT so there was basically one station with a usable signal. I turned it on the morning of Sep 11 2001 as I was hurrying up to get to work at NASDAQ and see what the commotion was – arriving to CBS just as the second plane hit. That’s the last time it was on, and I tossed it when TV went digital.
Because of my long absence as a TV viewer, I haven’t been the frog slowly boiled, but get the whole transition of the last 15 years at once, which makes the hypnotic pull of TV all the more annoying. I won’t go to a restaurant that has TVs lining the walls.
This morning, I was watching a clip of GBTV discussing Alex Jones having his breakdown, and it was incredibly annoying… The flying football cameras, the switching between shots every 4 seconds. They’re doing that because that’s what they know keeps people from turning away. Another article was talking about how video streaming has 2 seconds to begin the show of people will click away from the web site.
Young people having a two second attention span is not their fault. Sesame Street and the Electric Company started picking up the pace and it just keeps going faster and faster. Add in some medicines to mess with the wiring of the brain and bad things happen.
As a blogger pointed out, there is not a peep out the media that almost all of the mass killings were done by people taking antidepressants. You would think people would notice the pattern.
The trick that annoys me the most is when that have a large TV in the room with a static image on it, and then have someone with a hand held camera walk around it to see it from different angles- it creates the illusion of motion and keeps people watching a static image. CNBC’s Squawk Box in the morning does it before and after most commercial breaks.
A little more upscale to to actually zoom in to a static image, or with a zoom, pan the static image.
Most upscale of all is to cut out flat images from the static image and superimpose them on the background with the flat image having a simulated motion across the flat background.
There you go, Art, without paying $100/month for 180 months, you are all caught up now and have $18,000 in your pocket that the rest of us don’t. 🙂