Shot In The Dark: Talked Out

December 20, 2005

Talked Out

As we've noted earlier, there's a big shake-up in the local talk radio market. From the top:

Clear Channel is flipping its Cool Jazz station, 100.3 FM, to an all-talk format.
As part of this, they exercised their prerogative of ownership, and claimed Rush Limbaugh for the new station once his current pact with KSTP-AM is up.
KSTP has released a new schedule that looks like it has a shelf life of about eight months; Kris Krok's contract has a few months left (and lousy ratings), Sean Hannity will be going to Clear Channel in the fall of '06, and Tom Mischke in late-afternoon drive stands out like a Brooks Brothers suit at a Cradle of Filth concert.

Now, Paul Demko at City Pages confirms a story I've been sitting on for a week: KTLK, the new Clear Channel station, has its afternoon drive planned:

Local politicos Brian Lambert and Sarah Janecek are the latest additions to the programming lineup for Clear Channel Radio's new FM talk station, KTLK-FM (100.3). The pair will host a weekday show when the station launches next month.

Let me be the first to say it: the show will go out of the gate with three strikes against it.

Strike One: Talent.

Sarah Janecek is a friend of mine. She also has some radio experience; frankly, I think a Sarah Janecek Show would be a good bet in its own right. If I had a radio station, I'd air her.

However, Janecek will have a handicap right out of the gate; her co-host. I know Brian Lambert, of course; long before he brought comical new meaning to the term "liberal bias" during his hitch as broadcast critic at the Pioneer Press, he worked for the late Twin Cities Reader as a media crit. Several times, in that capacity, one program director or another tried him out on the air; one of my first days at KSTP-AM saw Lambert trying to fill in for Don Vogel; the results were excruciating. OK, it was 20 years ago - but none of his broacast efforts since then have been a whole lot better; his brief stint as TV critic on Channel Five reminded me of Sam Malone trying to be a sportscaster; his time as a weekly sidekick on the late, unlamented Nick Coleman show (anyone remember that?) on the local Air America affiliate (or that?) showed that he's developed into someone who can snark along to someone else's lead; he's a capable heckler, which is damning with faint praise.

So let's just say that Lambert's a "developing" radio talent.

Strike Two: The Concept.

Janecek:

"For a long time I've thought that a person who is right of center, moi, and a person who is left of center, Brian, would make a good talk radio team," says Janecek, co-publisher of the Politics in Minnesota news service.

First things first; anything is possible. Twenty years ago, almost anyone would have poo-poohed the notion that talk radio would be a conservative medium. Anything can happen.

Problem is, the "Odd Couple" format has been tried. CNN's "Crossfire" was a groundbreaking experiment when it aired twenty years ago. Back when it starred a couple of genuinely intelligent people who actually had something to say, and could surprise the audience once in a while (like the original cast, Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden), it could be interesting. So it could work, under the right circumstances.

And you don't want to say "nobody else is doing it", because twenty years ago, hardly anyone was doing puerile shock-radio above the local level; today, Howard Stern is just the foremost practitioner of a multi-billion dollar genre.

But look around the country; name a political "Odd Couple" that's remotely successful. Can you?

No. And the limitations of radio militate against such shows. Radio has limited bandwidth, when it comes to perception and cognition; a voice on a tinny speaker is pretty much all you have to go by. What prompts you to listen to that tinny voice?

It takes something you can sink your teeth into; something that provokes a visceral, emotional reaction. The most successful talk hosts pre-Limbaugh (Morton Downey Jr., Joe Pyne, Tom Leykis, Bob Grant) usually pushed the anger button, back in the days when the "Fairness Doctrine" meant politics had to be approached obliquely. The most successful hosts since then - Limbaugh, Hannity, Medved, Bennett, Ingraham - have had their own coherent messages (need I explain?) that the audience could sink their teeth into, pro or con.

On "Odd Couple" shows, the message skitters back and forth, depending on the whims and debating skills of the hosts (Hannity and Colmes, I think, only succeeds because Sean Hannity so completely dominates Colmes; it could as easily be called Sean Hannity and a Hockey Puck); there is no coherent message; it's just a couple of people arguing. And most of the audience is perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

Strike Three: The Mix

Leave aside the individuals involved, or the concept they're working with, for just a moment. Sarah Janecek is female; Lambert is a guy.

Strike three.

In this englightened, PC age, it's considered nekulturny to say so - but on the radio, men and women just don't mix.

Yes, men and women can interview each other - the host-guest relationship is different than host-host. And yes, some of the most successful teams in radio are mixed-gender; Howard Stern/Robin Quivers, Tom Barnard/Teri Traen, ~~Janeane Garofalo/Sam Seder~~, and others. What do they have in common? The odd-gender-out character goes along with the dominant character in the show; Teri Traen is female, but has developed the ability to work in a locker room totally aimed at 25-50-year-old guys. Ditto Robin Quivers.

But men and women acting as equals in a head-to-head argument-based format never works. Part of it is the "unified message" issue that brought us "Strike Two". Part of it is invisible to the audience; men and women's styles of argument and means of dealing with each others' styles almost always cause problems behind the scenes. It's not inevitable, but it's prevalent.

Not that I don't wish Sarah Janecek the best of luck; I just think the concept is fundamentally flawed.

Which is a great opportunity for the Patriot and Hugh Hewitt, if they play the card right.