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 freelancers who wrote single articles (generally on race-related issues) don’t count.
- On the off-chance that you do find a person of color at the City Pages; be honest. they went to Macalester, Saint Olaf, Carlton or the U of M journo proglram. Right?
- When you refer to “angry white men on radio”, I’m kind of curious how one includes the dryly funny, constantly-wisecracking Tomczak (and the incisive, cynical Mitch Berg) but not the eternally red-faced Ed Schultz, the toxic Mike Malloy, the just-plain-wierd Nick Coleman, Matt “Who’s He?” McNeil, the incoherent Mike McFeely, or pretty much every other liberal talk show host?
Why, it’s always almost like a chanting point I’m on our unimaginative lefty friends; they referred should talk radio as “angry white male radio” with almost the exact same geometric precision as which they referred to Donald trumps speech as “dark”.
Of course, Tomczak’s departure highlights the elephant in the room for conservative talk radio. While conservative talk is one of three formats in all of terrestrial radio that still can make money (sports and Spanish radio also make a buck or two), the industry ate its proverbial seed corn over the past 20 years; the local stations in smaller markets where young talk radio talent used to come from mostly went all-network decades ago – a process that accelerated as the bottom fell out of the revenue pool around 2008. The likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Levin and the rest wiped out a generation of conservative talk radio’s “farm team”. And as the likes of Rush, Hewitt, Prager and Beck start to age out, who’s going to replace them – whether on the radio or online?
IHeart Radio – formerly Clear Channel, which owns “Twin Cities NewsTalk” – has been a key player in this; they’ve relentlessly pushed their properties to cut costs; with talk stations, that means “go network”.
“Does the business model for any terrestrial radio work?” is a legitimate question – but it’s a moot point if there is nothing to broadcast after Rush retires.
“[A]s the likes of Rush, Hewitt, Prager and Beck start to age out, who’s going to replace them?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENy_fXaFQWg
“Does the business model for any terrestrial radio work?”
For AM? Probably not. The fidelity is so low that talk is the only thing that works.
For FM? Probably a bit longer than AM, but not long. Looking at my kids, even FM is probably going to go away soon. Right now they all download or stream their music, and with AUX inputs to the car radio they don’t play FM stations to avoid the commercials.
And I’m just as bad. The only time I listen to the radio is in the car, but even that’s going down fast as I’d rather listen to audiobooks than the idiocy that’s on most FM stations, and the AM choices I have where I live are terrible.
Radio used to be a life-line for me, but I usually only listened in the car or in the bedroom as I got ready to go to work.Now that I work from home, getting the daily weather and traffic info every 8 minutes isn’t as important, and no need for anything to entertain me when I “commute” from the upstairs to the downstairs.
When I drive around now I’ve grown bored with the sports-talk and don’t care for the national conservatives ; both the sports and politics seem to be nothing more than rehashes of the same arguments over and over. Musically, the Cities 97 should be renamed “the Cities 7” because it seems like that’s the number of songs they play. Mostly now I’m plugging my phone into the car stereo, trying out the new Pandora membership or shuffling through the 1700 songs I have on iTunes. Even traffic and weather are now available on my phone with a single touch, and no commercials. My grandkids may never even know there was such a thing as AM and FM.
I believe most of it has to do with the length of commute. In Twin Cities, people are captive for 30 minutes at most. In Houston, when schools are in session, average commute is probably 1 – 1.5 hours. So here, talk radio will likely survive longer. It cannot fail when we have Michael Berry for 5 hours a day, and he is still fairly young. You should look up Trumpkin Tom sometime – priceless.
jpa;
The average commute in Houston is STILL 1 – 1.5 hours? Things haven’t changed much since I left in 1989 then.
My office was downtown, so I took I -10 to Hwy 6 to Almost Sugarland.
Syndicated talks shows don’t ask for a retirement plan. Just sayin.’
There has been some interesting writing on how the boycott of Limbaugh negatively affected talk radio in general. I notice he is no longer up for the big payoff anymore, and has been getting routed to the tiny stations in the markets where he used to be carried by the big stations.
I don’t know – or seriously care – about the staff at City Pages. I believe their term angry white man was meant in jest. But since you raise the issue, I plan to call them on Tuesday to ask how many women and people of color they have had on staff in various writing capacity.
I believe your numbers are BETTER than the guy just ousted, which is why I thought you had a good chance at being considered. As to the serious aspects of ‘angry white man’ that pretty much matches up with what you write — claiming to be victims when you’re not and generally being factually deficient and fact averse, and appears to describe pretty well your audience here of Mitch-bots.
It has long puzzled me that you never received the MN GOP patronage of your pal David Strom, (graduate of Carleton btw) but after seeing some of the offensive comments, particularly as regards sexuality and beliefs about other peoples sex lives from the Mitchbots last week, it really doesn’t surprise me so much anymore. Rather I can see how it would be far too potentially embarrassing for them to have those comments resurface in connection with any inclusion of you. Much like those which were racist FB posts and offensive tweets by others associated with the MN GOP (frequently carried on City Pages) have been embarrassing.
It just remains to be seen if that is as true for a station that previously hosted another angry white man or not — if you go for the job.
I’ll get back to you on that City Pages diversity thing; meanwhile it appears there is precious little diversity of any kind here, or tolerance for anyone not old white crabby and flabby.
There has been some interesting writing on how the boycott of Limbaugh negatively affected talk radio in general.
Boycott: People who never listened to him, continued to not listen to him. Woo hoo.
I notice he is no longer up for the big payoff anymore,
Um, where did you “notice” this?
and has been getting routed to the tiny stations in the markets where he used to be carried by the big stations
That’s a hopelessly general statement.
I believe your numbers are BETTER than the guy just ousted, which is why I thought you had a good chance at being considered
Why, thanks – but I’d honestly not work for the kind of money iHeart is offering.
Ask anyone who is a major Limbaugh critic and you’ll find someone who listens to music 24/7.
Boss, I live in Katy and work more or less downtown (30mi). I-10 (including toll and feeders) is now about 9 lanes each way and jammed packed. School’s still out, so I got to work in about 45-50 minutes. Yesterday’s commute home was about 1.5 hours.
” I notice he is no longer up for the big payoff anymore, and has been getting routed to the tiny stations in the markets where he used to be carried by the big stations.”
DG, you probably missed this tidbit in your “fact checks”: http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/02/media/rush-limbaugh-renews-talk-radio-contract/index.html
Why, thanks – but I’d honestly not work for the kind of money iHeart is offering.
The money in tech is addicting. I always told the undergraduate engineers I taught that if they thought they’d like to get a Master’s about the only way they’d get it is if they went straight to it after graduation. By the time you get out into the real world for a bit, the money is too addicting to give up and go back for the vast majority of people.
Heck, I’d love to become a full time professor. But to have a 65% reduction in salary isn’t something I think my wife would like much. I started at the average salary of a tenured, full time professor decades ago, and the disparity has only widened.
To answer your diversity at City Pages concerns:
“I can assure you City Pages’ writers aren’t all middle class white guys. If I look to my immediate left and right there’s are female writers who aren’t caucasian. And that’s just in my peripheral vision.
Cory “
Photos or it didn’t happen.
If it’s true, I’m gonna guess it reflects Alan Dershowitz’s classic observation about Harvard Law School’s faculty: “your idea of diversity is someone with different colored skin, or a skirt, who believes exactly what you do”.
“Why, thanks – but I’d honestly not work for the kind of money iHeart is offering.”
Not to put to fine a point on it but based on the fact that the 1130 morning show is now co-hosted by a daily rotating list of people talking for free*, is what iHeart is offering that different** than the Salem gig?***
*As the Trumpster has decreed, free media to promote your cause, activity or candidacy is worth something. But given that iHeart mainly runs PSA’s on the streamside instead of For-Revenue commercials, I’d have to imagine you are getting what you paid for.
**Not including the days at Gander Mountain and the free State Fair pass.
***Have I told you lately how much I love and appreciate this small, yet prominent regional blog? Well I do.
“If I look to my immediate left and right there’s are female writers who aren’t caucasian.”
Yup, there is the spelling of a lefty writer.