Blazing Saddle Redux - Brian

Blazing Saddle Redux - Brian Lambert, the most unbroadcastworthy broadcast critic ever, has an excellent if typically-blinkered (but oh, no, never politically biased) piece on the departure of Jason Lewis.

Read the whole thing. Especially interesting are the insights into the politics behind the departure:

"Many close to the in-house politics of AM 1500 suggest the fundamental issue was the fact that having both Joe Soucheray and Jason Lewis on the roster made for one too many bulls in the company pasture, and that Lewis knew the Hubbards would always be more comfortable with Soucheray."

Sources of my own at KSTP tell of years of conflict between Lewis and Soucheray. For at least half of his stint at the station, Lewis had to fight with Soucheray for the scraps and leftovers in the promotional budget. For most of the mid-nineties, getting the Hubbards to spend any money promoting anyone but Soucheray was like pulling teeth.

Lambert also cut to the big reason why Jason Lewis is so good at doing what he does, and why everyone who loves to argue politics can't do a good talk show (partially including yours truly); it was a show. Lewis was able to separate the parts of his brain that thought about politics and programming; when he was on the air, he was thinking with the programming side. That's why I'd have trouble, perhaps, trying to do a show like Lewis's - to me, the politics is an end unto itself. I was a good comedy producer and sidekick (for Don Vogel) because it was all just a show, not much different than the user interfaces I design are work product, not personal passion (as much as I love doing both). It's a distinction lost on most people who haven't been there.

Not to say that I couldn't, y'understand...

Anyway - very much worth a read. As is much of what Lambert writes, when he's not insisting that liberal bias is a figment of the conservative imagination...

Posted by Mitch at September 26, 2003 09:47 AM