Enter Konrad, Redux
A commenter last night prompted me to check; indeed, Steve Konrad has been hired as the program director at KSTP-AM.
I worked with Steve from 1990 through most of 1991 at KDWB; Steve was producer of the "Steve Cochran Show", KDWB's morning juggernaut at the time; I worked a crappy grunt DJ job at K-63, the oldies station. We both interviewed for the job at KSTP (then called "executive producer", so as to not make the occupant feel excessively powerful). In fact, the two of us came down to the final two for the job, in late July of '91.
The final interview was with the consultant who was pulling the strings at the time. His theory - they key to talk radio success was irreverence! Humor! Taking nothing too seriously, and poking pointed fun at everything! Political talk, said he, was pretty much a dead issue. To him, Rush Limbaugh was a success not because he was conservative, but because he was irreverent (the old "Abortion Update" bit, with the vaccuum cleaner sounder, made him laugh up a lung).
Naturally, and correctly, he figured that political talk was my main interest - and that Steve was probably better suited to run a station programmed for sarcastic yuks (although I not only pointed out my background with Don Vogel and Geoff Charles, but in fact pointed him to a tape of Vogel - which led to Don's second hitch in the Twin Cities, the following year). The consultant was responsible for the likes of Turi Ryder and Bob Schumacher and Barbara Carlson, as well as Bob Yates' last couple of years at KSTP.
The consultant was wrong about political radio, of course (and a source acquainted with him tells me that he now realizes it, which is almost as good as getting the gig would have been under the circumstances; yes, I would rather be right!).
In the years that Steve's been off and about, did he get the conservative-talk-radio religion? Or is he part of KSTP's master plan to build a less-political, more-local station in the wake of Limbaugh, Hannity and Hendrie's departures?
The next six months are going to be interesting.
Best of luck, Steve. Although the NARN will continue to pimp-slap KSTP all over Saturday afternoon.
Figuratively speaking, of course.
Posted by Mitch at
September 15, 2005 12:38 PM
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Humor never has been your strong point, Mitch. Humor does sell with talk radio - and is part of Rush's appeal. I think your example of Rush's abortion minute is an excellent case in point. Satire historically has been very effective at making political points that straight ranting doesn't.
This sounds like sour grapes.
I've switched over from NARN to KSTP (after listening to David Strom) several times because NARN was just parrotting talking points from the Bush administration. The KSTP host (Joe OBrien) was talking about local issues in an intelligent way. He was ripping on Chris Coleman by the way - very deservedly so. This week folks were talking about the John Roberts nomination and I was interested in hearing the take on this, so I stayed with NARN this time.
Posted by: Eva Young at September 17, 2005 02:29 PM"Humor never has been your strong point, Mitch."
Oh, great. I have a lesbian monomaniac dissing my sense of humor.
I may never go out in public again.
" Humor does sell with talk radio"
It does indeed, says the guy who grew up in radio and spent the best year of his life producing comedy radio.
But that's not what the consultant was talking about.
"This sounds like sour grapes."
Yeah, there's a shock. You're completely wrong, of course - my life moved WAY on from there.
You need to stop trying to assume you know...well, anything.
"I've switched over from NARN to KSTP (after listening to David Strom) several times because NARN was just parrotting talking points from the Bush administration."
If a conservative said something in the woods that agreed with the Bush Administration, and no liberal was there to hear it, would it still be "parrotting talking points?"
Posted by: mitch at September 17, 2005 07:36 PMAre you kidding, Eva?
Mitch has written a lot of side-splittingly funny stuff. Unlike you, the humor is intentional.
I think you're the one with sour grapes. You obviously are pissed off that Mitch has 15 times as much traffic as you do.
Posted by: Cathy at September 17, 2005 10:20 PMCathy:
Was Mitch's comment here an example of Mitch's side-splittingly funny stuff?
Posted by: Eva Young at September 17, 2005 11:00 PMPerhaps you could show us any example of your shining sense of humor, Eva?
Mitch is funny plenty of the time, assuming you're wired for humor.
Posted by: Geoff at September 18, 2005 11:02 AMHey, Eva, I notice your curiously silent about Mitch article about your ethical terpitude from the other day. Since usually you respond to every mnetion of you with a couple of posts, I am just wondering why your so very very quiet about this?
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