The last couple of weeks have seen big news in the local talkradio community – albeit for very different reasons.<\/p>\n
This week, former KSTP host and cult object Tom Mischke will start an internet-based<\/a> talk show, affiliated with formerly-readable boutique freebie ‘zine The City Pages<\/em>.<\/p>\n David Brauer at the MinnPost writes:<\/p>\n Of course, Tommy Mischke is a rare bird; for two decades on KSTP-AM, he somehow blended content and advertising in a way that generated fierce listener and advertiser loyalty. But when Mischke was fired<\/a> from AM1500 and disowned<\/a> commercial radio, few thought he could replace his radio income on the Internet.<\/p>\n Without getting into specifics, let’s just say he did amazingly well. But it didn’t happen without help from a much-mocked legacy medium: print.<\/p>\n Internet advertising alone wouldn’t pay the freight for a 2-4 p.m. weekday show (beginning March 4 at citypages.com<\/a>). But advertisers did pony up enough for a print-web combo that Mischke secured a one-year deal. He’ll also do a weekly column in the paper.<\/p>\n The benefit for City Pages? It was able to get around a corporate hiring freeze because most costs were covered on Day One, and its reps now have a new selling opportunity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To someone who’s been in media, off and on, for most of his adult life, it’s a bit of a departure.\u00a0 In traditional entertainment media, the “owner” of the show bets long – produces and airs a program (including hiring and, indirectly or directly, paying the air and support talent) based on the potential for ratings and the money they might <\/em>bring.<\/p>\n Mischke’s model is different; he’s bringing his advertisers – some of his big backers from his long-running KSTP show – with him.<\/p>\n Will it work in the long term?\u00a0 Does internet narrowcasting draw enough ears to make it work?\u00a0 Has the City Pages<\/em> – a fairly pathetic shell of its former self, journalistically speaking – got the mojo to serve as the fiscal and demograhic bedrock for a cult figure like Mischke?<\/p>\n Given the singular history and qualities of its namesake, the “Mischke Model” may be tough to replicate, and its long-term success remains unknown. But it does show how old and new media can be woven together. The Strib, PiPress \u2014 hell, the local edition of the Onion \u2014 might’ve pulled this off. Perhaps they can rig up something like it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Perhaps they can – yes, indeed.\u00a0 We’ll come back to that.<\/p>\n I am, of course, a big Mischke fan.\u00a0 I’m a fan, of course, because he’s a real original, wildly creative, and just plain fun to listen to.<\/p>\n For a good chunk of the Twin Cities intelligentsia, of course – the likes of Garrison Keillor, Brian Lambert and, if I may be so bold, David Brauer – Mischke is more than that.\u00a0 He’s a thumb in the eye of the “establishment” in talk radio, standing defiantly against the tide of conservative programs. And in some respects, I can even go along with that; while I disagree with whatever politics Mischke likely believes, I much preferred “The Mischke Broadcast” to the likes of Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck; Mischke clobbered the lesser ranks of conservative hosts in all ways that matter to the likes of Keillor, Lambert, Brauer – that is, everything but ratings and revenue. Brauer’s point seems to be that to get anything “interesting” on “the air”, one needs to get creative.\u00a0 Outlets like City Pages<\/em> are floundering; shows like Mischke’s, long KSTP run notwithstanding, have always been fish out of water in the radio industry.<\/p>\n And there might be something to that.\u00a0 Outlets like the Pioneer Press <\/em>might do well to ally themselves with other media outlets; a content and advertising alliance between, say, the Pioneer Press<\/em>, AM1280, and one or more internet content and video operations (like “The Uptake” and “True North”, to pick out some random examples) would provide some interesting cross-media possibilities, not only for advertising and opinion content but – cue the drum roll – journalism.<\/p>\n So, if you take Brauer’s piece at face value, it’d seem that “interesting”, “creative” media’s future is going to depend on a concerted do it yourself effort.<\/p>\n Unless – Brauer doesn’t go into this in his piece on Mischke – you operate in a format that’s actually succeeding, even despite the current advertising economy.<\/p>\n Salem Radio Network’s ad inventory is reportedly pretty well sold out. \u00a0 Rush Limbaugh’s salary is greater than the Paraguayan military budget<\/a>. And long-time local radio fixture Jason Lewis is, as of last week, in the big show<\/a>: That’s worth a separate article.<\/p>\n Anyway, the lesson – as filtered through the lens of the “progressive” “alternative” media, is this:\u00a0 the current media landscape requires creativity to survive.\u00a0 Unless you’re a huge success, in which case we ignore it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The last couple of weeks have seen big news in the local talkradio community – albeit for very different reasons. This week, former KSTP host and cult object Tom Mischke will start an internet-based talk show, affiliated with formerly-readable boutique freebie ‘zine The City Pages. David Brauer at the MinnPost writes: Of course, Tommy Mischke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,71],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-talk-radio","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294","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=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53006,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions\/53006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?”<\/p>\n