{"id":372,"date":"2007-01-24T14:38:42","date_gmt":"2007-01-24T20:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2007\/01\/24\/the-shorter-minnesota-matters\/"},"modified":"2007-01-24T14:46:42","modified_gmt":"2007-01-24T20:46:42","slug":"the-shorter-minnesota-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=372","title":{"rendered":"The Shorter Minnesota Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I Hate Bush more than you do!”<\/p>\n

“No, I <\/em>hate Bush more than you <\/em>do”.<\/p>\n

“Well, I think he’s dumber than you think he is”<\/p>\n

“No way, duuuuude”<\/p>\n

I listened to local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke on “Minnesota Matters”, the local Frankennet affiliate’s (for now) attempt at a local show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let me step out of “conservative host” mode for a bit here, and switch into “guy who loves good talk radio” mode.<\/p>\n

My earlier observations about the show<\/a> still hold true – “Minnesota Matters” is no worse than any Twin Cities leftyblog (heh heh) and makes for better radio than anything Janet Robert has tried before…Which is, of course, damnation by faint praise. But faint praise is more than Janet Robert’s FrankenNet affiliate has earned in three years of existence. Limited, qualified, muffled, mildly-chuckled kudos to all involved.”\u00a0\u00a0 I’ll stand by that.\u00a0 Fecke was the audio version of his blog (see paragraphs 1-4, above – it’s not a bad synopsis of Fecke’s oeuvre<\/em>); he passed on his Straight-from-George-Soros-but-since-I-don’t-have-the-smoking-gun-showing-that-even-though-the-group-that-paid-Fecke-shares-office-space-with-Soros’-Media-Matters-For-America-there’s-no-financial-connection-whatsoever-and-you’re-an-idiot-to-wonder-because-I-ASSURE-you-there’s-no-connection-nosireebob talking points with the fluency you’d expect from someone who’s spent the last several months being paid to do the job;\u00a0the interviewer was passable.<\/p>\n

But what killed the show was the callers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Good talk radio doesn’t need callers anymore than good food needs coriander.\u00a0 Both serve as accents, spices, variations on the theme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don Vogel – for whom I started in talk radio as a call screener – explained the art of call selection once upon a time.\u00a0 There are four kinds of callers:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Great Callers.\u00a0 These are the people who have a point that is like a jet-pack strapped to your show’s back; they rocket the show ahead of itself, add something to the proceedings that make the whole thing more entertaining, gripping and valuable.\u00a0 A good screener flags the great <\/em>callers and gets them on the air pronto.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Boring Callers.\u00a0 Instead of a jet pack, a boring callers straps a bag of spoiled meat to a show’s back; they agree, maybe, but not only do they add nothing to the conversation, they sap the energy from the conversation.\u00a0 They weigh things down, destroy any momentum, and stink the place up.\u00a0 Their calls should be politely declined.<\/li>\n
  3. Crazy Callers.\u00a0 Crazies are…well, crazy.\u00a0 Their calls can be a dead weight or <\/em>a godsend.\u00a0 Picking which is which is what separates a good screener from a bad one.<\/li>\n
  4. Ordinary Callers.\u00a0 They have good questions and input.\u00a0 You air them, if you need them, after the Great Callers and the good <\/em>Crazy Callers, just so that the Ordinary Listeners don’t feel intimidated.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The show – like most Air America shows – sounded like the same person called over and over again, with the same point (or “point”).\u00a0 The were desperately dull.\u00a0 One might have sufficed; the show, such as it was, would have benefitted from their absence, believe it or not; you can be <\/em>in the fever swamp without sounding like you’re marinading <\/em>in the fever swamp.<\/p>\n

    At any rate\u00a0– the show would have done well to ignore the boring callers – most to all of them – and just talked.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Note to Janet Robert:\u00a0 I’ll check back in a few weeks to see if you’ve implemented any of this.\u00a0 Enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    “I Hate Bush more than you do!” “No, I hate Bush more than you do”. “Well, I think he’s dumber than you think he is” “No way, duuuuude” I listened to local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke on “Minnesota Matters”, the local Frankennet affiliate’s (for now) attempt at a local show.\u00a0 Let me step out of “conservative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}