Category: Talk Radio
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21
It was 21 years ago today that the Northern Alliance Radio Network launched. Most of you remember the backstory – because a whole lot of you were there for it. I was in the middle of a very difficult year employment-wise, I took the lessons of “Spanky and Our Gang” to heart, and I went…
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Promotions
I’ve been in Twin Cities radio off and on for a good chunk of the past three decades. And truth be told, this is the first time I’ve seen a promotional campaign that says… …that someone is still alive.
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Mark from Saint Louis Park
One of the great lessons Don Vogel taught me when I was working as his call screener was that there are four types of callers on radio talk shows; “Mark from Saint Louis Park” was one of the great callers over the past decade or so at AM1280. How great? He’s the only regular caller…
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Rush
Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park, emails: I miss him. He is referring to Rush Limbaugh and his annual “True Story of Thanksgiving” Rush has been gone for two years now. But someone else needs to carry on the tradition. Spoiler alert below
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Two Plagues
Call me a curmudgeon if you will. I don’t care. If caring about the classic art and craft of doing radio makes me a curmudgeon, then I’ll get a “Curmudgeon” face tattoo and wear it with pride. Figuratively speaking. Face tattoos are a horror. Anyway. There are two plagues afoot in the world of radio.…
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Drew Lee
In the radio industry I grew up in – especially the one I came of age in, in my later twenties, at places like KDWB – competition in radio was a constant, ugly thing. Especially in big-market music radio, getting ratings was mortal combat, a bloodsport where morality and ethics (and, often as not, sobrieity)…
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For The Record
Matt McNeil is a talk show host, of sorts, on AM950, the Twin Cities putative “progressive” talk station. [1] Now, McNeil has a habit of blocking everyone on social media that can beat him in an open debate on logic, reasoning and facts – which is, to be fair, pretty much everyone. He was, in…
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While Making Your Afternoon Listening Plans
Please tune in to AM1280 this afternoon from 4-6PM for a special broadcast about Critical Race Theory in Minnesota, and what you and I can do about it. It’ll feature: Kendall Qualls and Alfrieda Baldwin from “Take Charge Minnesota” Catrin Wigfall from the Center of the American Experiment Rebekah Hagstrom from “Education Nation”. We’ll be…
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To Coin A Phrase – It Was Twenty Years Ago Today
It was 20 years ago today that AM1280 The Patriot – the station that I’ve been on for the last 17 years – changed to its current, conservative talk format. For starters, if you’ve followed the history of AM radio in the Twin Cities (as one does), that’s a pretty amazing number. The 1280 kHz…
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Talent, Being Paid Back With Interest To God
Word’s out that Rush Limbaugh has died of lung cancer. He was 70. I never met Rush, but I certainly ran into a key part of his legacy, up front. I was 25, and had gotten riffed from my first talk radio gig, at KSTP-AM. I was down – but not out. I had what…
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The Old School
Two bands I’ve never much cared for are Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. Part of it was punky contrarianism; they were both very popular when I was in high school. Naturally, I had to zag away from the zigging crowd. And yet if I had to pick three guitarists whose style mine most resembles,…
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Who’s Got Two Thumbs…
… And is scheduled to appear on the Joe Piscopo show, on AM970 The Answer in New York City at 7:25 central time/825 Eastern today? Um… OK, you can’t actually see me pointing my thumbs at myself, so the joke doesn’t make much sense. Anyway, as this is written I am scheduled to appear on…
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Limbaugh
I got caught up in one of KSTP-AM’s constant rounds of staff reductions on April 4, 1987. I was 24, and very much in love with the idea of finding a career in a medium I’d discovered less than two years before, talk radio. Especially the conservative wing of it – as a newly-minted Reagan…
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This Should Bring Out The Left’s Psycho Ghouls
Rush Limbaugh confirms he’s been diagnosed with lung cancer: “Ladies and gentleman, this day has been one of the most difficult days in recent memory for me because I’ve known this moment was coming in the program today,” Limbaugh began. “I’m sure you all know by now, I really don’t like talking about myself, and…
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No Mystery
“Garage Logic” is signing off for the last time next month. It was not mutual – Soucheray’s salary while KSTP’s have spiraled has to have been a pig in a python for the once-wealthy station – but it sounds amicable enough anyway: It’s highly unusual for a broadcast personality to be fired, but given another…
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Otherwise Occupied
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The lead article in the August issue of the Midway Monitor is about Frogtown Radio WFNU 94.1 being on the air. It’s low-power community radio, covers a 5-mile diameter reaching from Har-Mar to the river, from the U of M to the Capital. They want to give the diversity…
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As It Happens, Ideal
Limbaugh inks another long-term deal with iHeartMedia. Under the circumstances – the NARN hasn’t quite put me in a position to make a run for Limbaugh’s gig – the timing actually works out well.
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Question
Questions on reading the City Pages’ “reporting” on s the departure of Jack Tomczak from KTCN If a conservative caucasian male orders a pizza in the woods, and no “progressive” media hack is there to hear it, is the conservative still “angry?” Quick – name any person of color that’s ever worked for the City Pages. Interns, and…
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The Stench Of Death
You walked in off of First Avenue in Jamestown, the sky still dark at 5AM, turned your key and tugged on an aluminum door frame that fit a little tight in its jamb, and stepped into a building that dated back to before 1900; on the main floor was White Drug – the first Whites…
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Radio Daze
It occurs to me – even though we’ve got all the internet we want these days, I’ve never gone out and looked up a lot of the people I used to know in the radio business. Of course, from my first, probably most “famous” gig in Twin Cities radio – KSTP, thirty years ago – some…
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Breaking News
Bill Bennett is leaving Salem’s syndicated morning show, and Hugh Hewitt – who’s been doing afternoons (evenings on the East Coast) for a decade and a half, will take over the broadcast. That leaves an opening in Salem’s weekday lineup. Have your people call my people, Salem.
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Death Spiral
Pacifica Radio – the nation’s “oldest leftwing radio network” – has entered a death spiral: Founded in 1946 by conscientious objectors from the second world war, the network was an influential outlet for Beat poets, Bob Dylan and Vietnam war protesters but has in recent times suffered from dwindling ratings, in-fighting and financial hemorrhage. The…
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To Be Fair, Most Of Us Had Forgotten Brian Lambert Was Still Being Published, Too
Someone pointed it out in the comment section; Brian Lambert interviewed Jason Lewis in the MinnPost earlier today: MP: But even The Patriot [AM 1280] is now all syndication. They used to have local bloggers with shows ripping the feckless liberals and all the usual stuff. Now, it’s all mailed in. JL: It’s the only…
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While Out And About This Evening
Don’t forget – tonight is “A Meal With Mike”, a chance to get together with AM1280 mid-morning guy Mike Gallagher. Tickets are $90; sales end at 5PM sharp. Here are the details; hope you can make it! Brad Carlson and I will both be there; hope you can be too!