End Of An Epoch
By Mitch Berg
Tom Barnard is going to retire.
Eventually:
Tom Barnard, the most popular, powerful broadcaster in Twin Cities radio, announced Tuesday that he plans to quit his KQ92 morning program three years from now.”I just don’t fit into the show anymore,” Barnard said late Tuesday night. “The corporate climate is not what I signed up for.”
It’s possible Barnard meant it as a toss-off – but it caught my attention.
Tom Barnard is a veteran of the classic radio industry; the “don’t pack a lunch, you probably won’t need one” world of bouncing up and down the dial, your employment subject not only to your own talent (Barnard’ always had it) but the whims and vagaries of a group of managers who largely got where they are because they’re deeply dysfunctional.
That’s not a group slur, by the way; the skills required to succeed in major-market radio management – especially among general managers and high-profile program directors – are often indistinguishable, to regular people, from personality disorders. Major-market radio has always – at least in my cognitive lifetime – been like working for a bunch of hyperactive teenagers; results have to happen now; no excuses are accepted. A new program director usually had a window of six months – sometimes a year, sometimes three months – to show big results, and had absolute power to get them, and no real impetus to expend much in the way of social grace or ethnical qualms about how they got them.
That was in the seventies and eighties – the world Barnard is used to.
And now it’s getting bad!
(Disclosure: Salem Radio, for whom I do the Northern Alliance program, is broadly an exception. Most of the people I’ve dealt with at Salem Twin Cities have been fairly functional, complete people. It’s almost like not being in radio at all…).
Barnard, 57, who for decades has dominated local morning radio like no other broadcaster in the country, casually mentioned retiring during Tuesday’s show, but he confirmed later in the day that it was a serious announcement.
I did kind of catch that when I had the show on in the bathroom yesterday morning. I’d wondered if I’d heard that right.
I’m not sure what’s behind his decision. I’d like to think that it’s because he’ll be sixty, he’ll be coming off a quarter century of dominating morning radio in a major market like nobody in modern radio history (not even Howard Stern has ever gotten the kind of numbers Barnard has gotten for almost a generation now), he’s socked away a ton of money, and he’s realized that big-market music radio is not just a treadmill, but these days is a treadmill on the lower decks of the Titanic, and he wants to do something he enjoys after a long, successful career.
Now, what will this mean, and what does it say, about the radio market in the Twin Cities?
More later this week.
September 30th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’ve known the guy since the 60’s. Thought he was a piece of s**t then and my opinion hasn’t changed any overtime. I never understood why listeners were attacted to him. There have always been far better options.
September 30th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
You could fill the Convention Center with all the would-be competitors that Barnard has dispatched over the years. And that includes Stern.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Scott – could’t speak to Barnard’s personality. I’ve known a lot of people who’ve worked with him over the years, some of them with the same opinion you have. I guess at least part of the subtext of this post relates to the personalities that have always had a leg up in the business – and the irony that Barnard, whatever the truth about his personality, is noting how ugly things are in the biz these days.
D – Yep. It’s hard to explain, not only to people outside the business, but even to some people inthe business in other cities where the kind of market domination Barnard has hasn’t been seen in a couple of decades, if at all.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
With a morning commute of under 3 miles, it isn’t worth the effort.
I did listen to The Morning Show for a few years, but that was almost 20 years ago.
Love him or hate him, he dominated the morning airwaves and he has earned his retirement.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Maybe the guy has a contract negotiation coming up and the announcement is just a way of putting pressure on management? I know nothing about the guy, but who retires three years from now?
September 30th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
“who retires three years from now?”
Obama’s on track for that.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Tommy B. in his own words (via his Facebook page):
My reference to “corporate” Bullshit in the Startribune is aimed squarely at “radio ratings research”. Two years ago they came to radio stations and said, in reality, you are going to have to change the way you do radio and here are the new rules. My reaction was “some dopes are going to tell us how to do radio and they’ve never done it themselves?” A recipe for disaster.
I love K.Q. and it’s audience and will do my best for the station, but being told by some bland research company what I should say and how I should say it to fit THEIR format is not the radio I love.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Clown,
Possible, and I thought about that. I don’t know his contract status (I don’t follow that part of the business especially closely anymore). It wouldn’t surprise me; Barnard is nothing if not a canny player.
Who retires three years from now? Remember Cronkite? He gave us a couple years’ head start. Now, Barnard is no Cronkite in the big scheme of things – but in the Twin Cities, guys who pull 20 shares on morning drive are a big deal.
Barnard IS huge. He’s semi-retired from the voice-over business; I remember when I was in the racket 20 years ago, when his morning show was taking off while he was still one of the biggest voiceover guys…in New York. Agencies would fly him to NYC a couple of times a week to do spots, movie trailers, imaging, the works.
Like Limbaugh and Stern, when he leaves the biz, there will probably never be another like him.
September 30th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Mitch and K-rod…You are correct, give the devil his due I suppose, he has kicked the snot out a lot of his competitors over the years. Would have been interesting if Benard and maybe someone like a Don Vogel could have gone head to head. My gut tells me that Don would have smoked him in that kind of contest…..God rest his soul.
September 30th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Good luck with that, Mastur, but you might want to have a back-up plan. Maybe you could move to Paraguay?
September 30th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I’m a fan. The show is at its best when it first comes on at 5:30 and for an hour after that. Before the lame call in game shows and uninteresting interviews. When Barnard is talking about news and sports, that’s when the show is at its best.
September 30th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
The fact that Barnard is #1 doesn’t say much for the collective IQ of the metro area. The Twin Cities may well be the only remaining market where a “morning zoo” is being aired.
September 30th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I’m guessing AC would be a huge fan; huge.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Barnard is right, the show hasn’t been the same the last few years and I quit listening all together earlier this year and started listening to Chris Baker on KTLK in the mornings. (sorry for the FM reference Mitch) Maybe it’s just a factor of getting older but the KQ bits seem to have taken on more of a sophomoric tone and it seems you can hear the frustration in Tom’s voice, especially putting up with Teri. Baker is still relatively new to the market but he seems to be having fun. He’s probably wishing Tom would pull the plug a little earlier for the sake of his own ratings. That said, up until this year I listened to Tom every year he was on the air including two alcohol-laden trips to Las Vegas for their live broadcasts. The guy was a force and a talent that probably won’t be repeated in ANY market.
September 30th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I don’t know Bernard personally but I had a pretty pleasant interaction with him at a “92 couple” wedding at the Mall of America back in ’94 when I asked for his autograph.
That said, I was a loyal listener in the late ’80s through around 1995, but the mid ’90s is where they lost me with a string of “listener stories” on their porta potty mishaps- from that time on, I couldn’t even think about breakfast with that morning show on.
Though I sometimes bemoan the loss of various stores, bars, and restaurants even when I’d rarely visited them, I’m not really sorry to see Tom go.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:31 am
Doesn’t Barnard do a lot of his show from Florida? I think I read that, but I’m not sure.
I’ve listened to KQRS in the morning since it was the “Tom and Dan” morning show. I’ve listened to TB since he was the Catman on “The Cat and Kincade.” I think I might me thinking of a life that doesn’t include getting up in the middle of the night to go to work.
How has the morning drive time changed over the years. Is there enought money to pay him to do 2 or 3 hours during a later mornng time slot.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:47 am
I suspect the three year notice might be a way to see if he can do things his way… plus, I suspect it might be a way to help the show’s B-list folks.
After all, Terry Traen is not going to get her own show… but if she does, it ain’t going to last long.