Eating The Seed Corn
By Mitch Berg
Brian Maloney – talk host, Cap’n Ed’s golf buddy and one-time NARN guest – notes that talk-radio legend Bob Grant is returning to WOR.
Grant was one of the few conservative talkers who got his start back during the days of the original “Fairness Doctrine”. Of course, he worked in New York, a market that was big enough that a big-enough station could actually afford to air overtly partisan programming in absolute, “Doctrine”-kosher balance. Medium-to-smaller stations avoided the hassle and kept their programming straight down the boring middle; as I’ve related, my own talk alma mater, KSTP-AM, only aired me because I convinced my boss, Scott Meier, that putting a conservative on the air could help head off complaints about Geoff Charles’ left-leaning style come renewal time.
Oh, yeah – he’s 78.
About which Maloney wrote the best point in his piece on the subject:
In the big picture, talk radio is still failing terribly at building the next generation of talkers who can move it forward. As it now stands, the medium appears to be milking its oldest hosts until their final days.
Well, I blame Limbaugh.
Back when I got into the biz, talk hosts progressed through the business more or less like everyone else in radio – disc jockeys, play-by-play guys, programmers, news reporters – did; they started in small markets, worked their way up through larger and larger markets, and if they had the talent and the drive and maybe were just-plain dysfunctional enough, they might eventually make it to the Bigs.
Then – simultaneously with the death of the “Fairness” Doctrine – came the proliferation of relatively cheap satellite technology and bandwidth. And with that came programming – also prolific, and cheap.
Like, free. Rush Limbaugh didn’t charge his affiliates to air his program; he reserved a spot or two in each commercial break for his own advertising, which his own sales staff sold. Limbaugh lived off the ad revenue; the affiliates got a major-market mid-day host, and a damn good one, for free.
Which meant that small talk stations in New Bedford, Framingham and Fall River Massachussets and Aurora Illinois and Santa Rosa California and Hammond Indiana didn’t have to spend $20K a year to hire (to pick a random example) a 25 year old kid with a graveyard shift show under his belt to run the mid-day show anymore.
Most of the big local hosts – the Jason Lewises and Joe Soucherays and even Tom Mischkes, in Twin Cities’ terms – had at least a toe-hold in the business before the onslaught of free satellite programming. The few excecptions – Dan Conry, for example – are exceptions precisely because of this phenomenon. There really is no “talent pipeline” in talk radio anymore. Seriously – if I got a wild hair and decided to try to get back into the business, even assuming I could get hired somewhere, I have no idea what station out there could anymore.
It’s that way pretty much throughout the business.
So Maloney is right to ask:
When they are gone, does radio’s most important format simply shut down?
Well, money will find a way – and talk radio is nothing if not a money machine.
But it’s kinda sad to realize that the closest we’ve seen to a “talent pipeline” in talk radio in the last decade involved Kris Krok going from KSTP (Twin Cities) to WSB (Atlanta).
That’s a pipeline of a different sort altogether.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Back when I got into the biz, talk hosts progressed through the business more or less like everyone else in radio – disc jockeys, play-by-play guys, programmers, news reporters – did; they started in small markets, worked their way up through larger and larger markets, and if they had the talent and the drive and maybe were just-plain dysfunctional enough, they might eventually make it to the Bigs.
And given that, other than the news reporters, it speaks volumes about whether a guy like Limbaugh was EVER qualified to pontificate on subjects about which he was no expert, not by a darned site. And how many, exactly, of guys like Limbaugh ever were serious reporters? My money is on zero. Oh, they may have had brief stints, getting a per copy stipend, or some such, but I’m unaware of even ONE of them who did anything like reporting seriously. Hewitt.. yeah, he was a speech writer for Nixon if memory serves… and then worked for Cato or Brookings or wherever, I’m sure he’s eminently qualified. Not
Limbaugh, well outside of being a slovenly good-for-nothing up until 1980 – I’m not really sure what he did.. Nice hero there.
Perhaps Savage – except he’s flat out nuts – or maybe Medved, and that’s possible, don’t know, but then again, Medved is the guy who said the responsibility of Chistians ISN’T to love their enemies… so if he was ever a reporter, apparently it didn’t include learning about things on which he so frequently comments.
On the left, Miller- no, she was a comedian
Franken – same
Bill Press – he’s like Hewitt, Washingtonian through and through
Randi Rhodes – don’t know, don’t care, she’s awful, worse than Savage, and THAT says a LOT – although it seems like her gaffes are from being a blithering idiot rather than because she’s a maliscious propogandist.
No, the avenue for talk radio is bad, probably always will be, because the fundamental talent needed, outside of a decent radio voice, is training in how to keep a show moving and exciting, not in actually being brilliant or clever about issues. If that were the requirement, Limbaugh would have never succeeded, he’s clever and brilliant, about spin, not issues. This is the man who claims that cows produce more air pollution than do humans, that more area is currently forested in North America than when Columbus landed, that likened himself to Norman Schwartzkopf in appaerance, I suppose MAYBE in that they were both then greying, balding and a little pudgey, but ole Norman was fit, Limbaugh’s pasty, puffy face was about as chiseled as a jelly-donut.
True leadership means you motivate people to do things they might not otherwise do. Talk radio, in it’s best incarnation, should do that, it should be Woodie Guthrie, Walt Wittman, or Will Rodgers, calling us to a concience mandate that the government can’t or won’t address, rather than being step and fetch it for the administration, for companies who already have a major voice, or for other equally capable special interests. It should sell because it’s true-isms resonate – not as a salve to the concience that it’s all the Government’s fault – but as a call to action to address the needs of the people. If Limbaugh EVER managed that, I’ve not heard it – so losing leaders like him is no loss, and it is a forgone conclusion that the next batch will likely be just as putrid given the breeding ground they cut their teeth in.
and yeah, Krok sucked like a $1000 Hoover.
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
If that were the requirement, Limbaugh would have never succeeded, he’s clever and brilliant, about spin, not issues.
Wrong. IF he were that transparent, he would not be as big as he is. The whole “republicans are idiots for listening to the idiot” is simply bullshit. The market works and he is so popular because he offers so many people something of value. The market works and Air America failed because they offered nothing of value to almost no one.
This is the man who claims that cows produce more air pollution than do humans
Wrong. Get your talking points straight. The UN claims that. Limbaugh merely repeats what they are saying.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=warming
that more area is currently forested in North America than when Columbus landed
I will ask to see a link documenting that Rush made that statement. For as vocal a critic base as he has, he’s not stupid enough to put that kind of a fact out that would so enrage the environmental lobby without thoroughly vetting it first. Any moron with 30 seconds and an internet browser can find this on Google:
“Today, forest growth in the United States exceeds harvest by 37%. More than 730 million acres of forest cover the U.S. – that equals two-thirds of the forested area present when Columbus landed in America. There is now 28% more standing timber volume in the U.S. than in 1952.”
http://www.akforest.org/facts.htm#renewable
Your bleating about Rush and the rest of the talk radio hosts as having whatever negative aspects you paint them with, is simply nothing more than blatantly obvious rage at the fact that Rush and his compatriots are the main reason the conservative/Republican political ideology went from 30 years of withering under democratic control like a beaten puppy, to having a powerful voice and sometimes majority status in Washington. It started after Reagan got rid of the original Fairness doctrine, and really took hold with the 1994 Republican Revolution. The mere idea of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine is a movement that is SO transparent, it makes Saran Wrap look like 3 inches of lead.
You (collective) have lost your media monopoly. Grow the hell up and quit whining like a 3rd grader.
That said, I agree. Krok could suck a golf ball thru a garden hose.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
True leadership means you motivate people to do things they might not otherwise do. Talk radio, in it’s best incarnation, should do that, it should be Woodie Guthrie, Walt Wittman, or Will Rodgers, calling us to a concience mandate that the government can’t or won’t address, rather than being step and fetch it for the administration, for companies who already have a major voice, or for other equally capable special interests.
And it has done that. It just so happens you don’t like the conscience mandate it addressed, nor the administration it supported (and to a lesser degree still supports) or the companies and special interests it AGREES WITH. That entire paragraph I quoted could just as easily be turned around and directed at the mainstream/drive-by media and the blatant (and questionably legal) support they give the liberals/Democrats.
It should sell because it’s true-isms resonate – not as a salve to the concience that it’s all the Government’s fault – but as a call to action to address the needs of the people.
In chronological order:
1) Harriet Myers (Hugh Hewitt’s lockstep party line support not-withstanding – that’s one thing I disagree with him on, he’s too much of a party over principle guy)
2) Dubai Ports
3) The most recent immigration bill that went down in flames.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
1) Harriet Myers (Hugh Hewitt’s lockstep party line support not-withstanding – that’s one thing I disagree with him on, he’s too much of a party over principle guy)
2) Dubai Ports
3) The most recent immigration bill that went down in flames.
4) Immigration
5) Spending
6) Bush’s rapprochement with Kennedy on the 2001 Education bill.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Oops. Doubled up Immigration.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Without talk radio and the blogosphere to inform those who eschew MSM news coverage, all three of those things would have sailed thru whatever processes were needed to get them enacted, to the detriment of this country’s very survival.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
You have to be a MSM reporter to understand current events? How would someone from a journalism school be more qualified then someone who seeks out facts, even if he is seeking out facts to support his opinion?
Ever listen to Hugh Hewitts interviews? He is a very good.
Ever read the Mpls paper unsigned editorials? Facts are no important to them.
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm
MSM? Quick, answer this. Did any MSM source, while ridiculing Dan Quayle, mention that the public school teacher handed him the card with the word “potatoe” on it? Wasn’t that relavent to the story?
Or ever newspaper in the nation carried the “bullet shortage caused by the Iraq war” story this week. Yet bloggers dug into and it isn’t true. Demand by police forces are way up, so their sources have delays (not shortages) in delievery.
Did any MSM source report the story from Seattle….where the disabled Iraq war vet was in a July 4th parade, marching as part of a Republican contigent. He was bood by people in the crowd, and called “murderer” and “baby killer” and many other things. That was only reported in National Review Online. Don’t you think that is an important story?
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
that more area is currently forested in North America than when Columbus landed
This is what Rush wrote, on page 165 of his first book, submitted without comment:
“We have more trees in this country today than we did than when the Declaration of Independence was written. The wackos will tell you that’s impossible. Haven’t they heard of fires started by lightning that no one could put out? Today, we put out a lot of fires that used to burn areas the size of Connecticut.”
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
It wasn’t just lightening, Paul. Those Noble Savages who lived East of the Great Plains routinely burned huge areas of woodland. They saw it as good land management and it helped in their hunting. Reference the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which is an excellent read.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I knew that, Kerm, but I was focusing on what Rush wrote.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Also without comment: the Declaration of Independence was written 280 years after Columbus landed. That’s a lot of time that land can be cleared, both by natives AND settlers for hunting and agricultural purposes. It might very well be that there was less forested land in 1776 than there is today. Forests that were harvested have only relatively recently started to be replenished. Nowadays just about every paper company replants more trees than they harvest. This is called good business usage of a renewable resource.
I want to see where he said or wrote specifically there was forested less land in Columbus’ era than there is in ours.
IF PBish is confusing the two, well…