After Paul Harvey died, ABC Radio turned over the “Good Day!” Franchise to Mike Huckabee, although they did away with the 15 minute show at 11:45 AM ET. Instead Huckabee fed a 5 minute news show that stations could run in place of a regular top of the hour newscast.
Huckabee was then sold to Citadel then Cumulus. After Cumulus took over Citadel/ABC about two years ago, cost cutter Lew Dickey approached Huckabee about starting a 3 hour show to kick Rush’s ass. The former Republican governor of Arkansas and Presidential candidate was so excited by the idea he agreed to do the show starting in 3 or 4 months. He would be paid based a a percentage of the profits.
So how is it working out? Tom Taylor reports that Huckabee is coming up on his one year anniversary and is talking publicly about not renewing his contract. Huckabee is tired of getting up at 4:30 am and it is cutting into his social life, working from his home studio in Florida and not making any money.
His show is almost exclusively heard on around 40 Cumulus stations, but not the former ABC power houses WABC and WLS. His show began the first day with a staged caller which was extremely obvious and caught by people in the radio business – the VP of programming for Cumulus called in pretending to be a listener and telling Huckabee what a great show he has and what a brilliant idea it was for Cumulus to hire him. Cumulus had no experience in radio syndication prior to buying Citadel/ABC and it shows. It’s hard to talk your competitors into paying you for an unproven product.
So how is it working out? With the normal disclaimer that stats here don’t necessarily correlate to full national audience using scientific methods, during the Noon-3PM period, Rush has 58% of all of the non-music radio audience. Jim Rome is #2 at 8% doing sports talk at CBS Sports. Huckabee? Less than Ed Schultz or Alex Jones.
In raw numbers, that worked out as 1,321 listen attempts for Rush, 19 for Huckabee. Hispanic Jewish American moderate Geraldo Rivera, brought in by Cumulus to kick Glenn Beck’s ass from 9AM to Noon ET had 14 listeners for the week.
These weekly raw numbers are roughly what they used to be daily. That’s partly due to the fact I’m working and not paying as much attention to manicuring the data and my “audience” migrating to Tunein, but a lot of it is post election audience drop off.
Another radio industry watcher Jerry Del Colliano has been hinting for several weeks that Cumulus is seriously talking about completely dropping talk radio as a format. WLS and WABC probably would do well reverting to 60s music from their heyday with Mark Simone spinning stacks of wax using the turntable and reverb machine. Oh hold on – Simone now works for Clear Channel at WOR.
Not to worry – Sweetjack is kicking the ass of Groupon.
The FCC is actively talking about removing or at least relaxing the rules against foreigners owning or operating US radio stations. Lew can maybe have a graceful exit by selling out to China Radio International, Russia Today, or allow Al Jazerrah to acquire his company and merge it in with Al Gore’s CurrentTV. Of course, the only music allowed under Islamic law is that which honors Allah. Allah Akbar,
Now once we get EMF (Klove and Air1) to edit all their songs replacing “Jesus” with “Allah”, the world will be at peace. God was called Allah in Aramaic, after all. It’s not like it is a big deal.
A comment about Tunein – I used it because it is part of my Logitech internet radio, and it is also an Android app on my phone. Tunein itself blocks streams depending on your IP address. When I was overseas, the Tunein link would not work almost all US stations, but a direct station link sometimes would.
The other issue I have with Tunein is that for their PC website, they often play a commercial before starting the audio stream.
The only time I go to Tunein first is if I am specifically interested in a station in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Arizona, another US location that does not use Daylight Savings Time, or for stations outside the USA.
Here are some interesting internet traffic statistics:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-07/syria-traffic-goes-dark-country-disappears-internet
There are too many Conservative hosts that do the same show that Huckabee does. It could disappear entirely and listeners wouldn’t even bat an eye. That’s why Rush is still on top…it’s personality FIRST, then politics. When will programmers learn this?
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about Huckabee just sounds wrong. His voice sounds so unemotional and controlled and like he is reading a TelePrompTer even when he is just talking to people. He seems like a person who is under some kind of mind control, like he lives in a trance or a self hypnotic state. I really can’t describe it any better than that.
I don’t know him and can only comment on the “vibe” I get from him. He comes across to me as insincere. His comments and motions seem measured and cautious rather than from the heart.
That may be because he is a man of god and trying to do and say things that he thinks god would approve of rather than from his gut. As a politician and entertainer, I think it comes more from trying to please his audience.
Either way, most people don’t like to listen to someone they perceive as phony.
I thought about it a bit more and realized its the same basic tone of voice and attitude that ministers have. They make up theoretical stories and state them as facts and then invoke their special relationship with God to teach you the meaning from their parable.
Refreshing my memory, he is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and learned the TV evangelism business as a young man working for James Robison as his media advisor. I knew all of the above and wrote about it when Huckabee wanted to be President.
Huckabee predicts Obama will be impeached over Benghazi. Who is lying now?
Politico has now picked up the Will Huckabee quit radio?” story
The rebuttal at the end is totally disingenuous. Cumulus (or Huckabee) claims his show has grown from 50 to 225 affiliates. I count 71. Their own web site only says 194 and doesn’t provide a list. I’ve written multiple times about how syndicators exaggerate affiliate counts – list stations that don’t exist, stations that used to exist and dropped the format, stations that only carry the weekend show at 2 AM.
Once upon a time, Media Matters claimed Glenn Beck didn’t have 400 affiliates. After several days of data gathering, I was able to determine Media Matters was wrong, and Beck did really have 400 affiliates, but then you get into definitions whether a simulcast is two affiliates or one
Huckabee does have a map showing his stations. Based on my semi random poking, his list has duplicates, and skews more to religious stations than news/talk. His affiliate in the “Chicago DMA” is WJOB in Hammond Indiana, a 1k non directional station with great coverage in Gary and South Chicago. In New York, his show is on WOR from 8-10 PM. No affiliate in Los Angeles, San Diego… Seattle on a religious teaching station, Denver on station that doesn’t list it on their web site, in Houston on KSEV (listed twice) at 10 PM, in Dallas on Cumulus owned KLIF (listed twice), no affiliate in Saint Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston – for Charlotte NC, he is shown on the Rock Hill AM/FM combo 3 times, Atlanta lists WCFO twice…
The page cites ratings of an 18+ AQH of 96,000 – meaning that across the entire country, in an average 1/4 of an hour, 96,000 people 18 years or older listened to at least 5 minutes of the noise.
I would add that I don’t think Huckabee is that bright. He is no dummy but I have learned almost nothing from listening to his show.
Glenn Beck on the other hand is very bright. I think he is a phony libertarian because the market niche he thinks that presents to his business, but nonetheless, I learn things when I listen to Beck, and he “connects the dots” that others on radio do not connect.
Rush and Sean seem more sincere to me, although I can’t stand to listen to Sean.
Huckabee should quit, he is kind of boring and I never got behind his political/religious view points, he often rehashes other hosts opinions and does not bring anything original to the game. Like most failed politicians that venture into talk radio for a short time we kind of get to know them and often glad they never made it into higher office.
Do not disagree with the posts above. I’ve listened to the guy and found him to be OK, but nothing I need to tune into, especially on a regular basis. Sorta like a Geraldo. He made a bad decision or 2 in his political life, but having said that he would be preferable to what we have nowadays in leadership.
CC, to listen to some radio hosts one does need a bit of discipline to keep ones hands away from the ‘off’ button. I do listen to Sean, now and then, even Levine too, heck I can listen to Maddow and Schultz. I listen to and read a lot of stuff, and I’m still sane, I think?
Sometimes the off button is the best answer, especially if accompanied by a walk and some fresh air. I have seen Maddow and Schultz on tv and watch from time to time. I tend to agree more often with Bill O’Reilly but his constant talking over people and interrupting is not my preferred way to relax in the evening.
I haven’t seen the new daily Chris Hayes show yet, but liked the live weekend shows he did early in the morning. He would get smart guests – usually 4 of them at a time, each with different views around a table. What was striking to me was that most of them were smiling and laughing and sometimes patting each other on the shoulder when they said something opposed to one another – genuinely having fun and enjoying the conversation. I like that much better than the Republican-Democrat face-off shouting matches on so many political shows.
Shout out to Kim Komando’s show. It is light-hearted, entertaining and informative too…. not everything needs to be about politics.
I don’t know if it still exists, but there used to be a very entertaining guy on some station in Texas – I’m thinking it was Sunday night – he was an older guy and played music from his German music collection. He is/was kind of similar to the guy in New York city (Danny Stiles) that used to play from his exhaustive collection of mostalgia music – someone who just lives to play music and that’s all the reward he wanted
If you can remember it, please post it. Vin Scelsa is that way. In my opinion, he never forgets a song after hearing it only once. He has a show in SiriusXM but does one public radio in NYC as well. Here is a great description of a unique show:
http://wfuv.org/programs/idiotsdelight
My favorite is when he gets new bands into the studio and sometimes blows their minds. The 20 year old kids will have some great innovative new original songs. Vin will ofter say “do you know the song ‘xyx'”? from many decades ago? And point out how a guitar riff from a the new song sounds like a piece of the old song. He will startle everyone by playing them back to back to show the connection. Amazing brain and unique radio show.
The one thing I liked about Joey Reynolds who used to do overnights on WOR was he loved broadway and musicians, but if you came on his show you were going to perform live. If you handed him a CD of your song, he would throw it in the garbage can and probably throw you out of the studio
As a kid, I listened to Joey Reynold’s top 40 show on WIBG 990 Philadelphia. Wonder where Joey is now.
When he left WOR, he had plans to do a similar show on some local cable TV channel in New York
Randi Rhodes’ WAPP connection:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?457019-Randi-Rhodes-guesting-with-Vin-Scelsa-tonight-%28Saturday%29-at-8PM-Eastern
Can’t wait until the cancel Geraldo, he does not belong on conservative radio and always side with big government and belittles his callers.
The flaw there is – Cumulus doesn’t want “conservative” talk. Cumulus still has Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh because their existing contracts from when ABC owned those radio stations haven’t run out.
While Geraldo was on Fox and is pro-military (except when he was giving reports during the opening day of the Iraq invasion telling everyone where he was and where his units were headed), he is mostly a pro open borders Hispanic advocate. That leads into why people would think the Conservative opinion is to oppose increased immigration.
John Batchelor is a self described Princeton progressive Rockefeller Republican. Savage is a confused botanist turned radio host when he didn’t get a professorship at UC Berkley. Don Imus is confusing to people because they associate people who have a ranch out west and like guns as conservatives. Ted Turner owns a huge chunk of Montana and he clearly isn’t one. The overnight guys are pretty convincing Conservatives, but there are no ratings from midnight to 6 am, and Kew Dickey is sleeping. Hannity is stuck in the middle between Clear Channel and Cumulus – he’s owned by Clear Channel but got a special deal that gives Cumulus control on the former ABC stations.