While nobody’s issued an official explanation for why KTLK-FM – the Twin Cities’ Clear Channel talk station – decided to tube all their weekend talk shows in favor of an endless stream of music that sounded like the “Classic Rock” playlist on someone’s IPod, I think I know why.<\/p>\n
The Northern Alliance beat them.<\/p>\n
While the 100,000 watt FM juggernaut sports Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Jason Lewis during the week, even they <\/em>were not enough to put KTLK-FM over the top against the 5,000-watt AM1280 The Patriot on the all-important weekend time slot.\u00a0 Against lavish expenditures on talent, salaries and promotions, AM1280 not only continued to clobber KTLK on the bellwether weekend time slots, but expanded their lead.<\/p>\n AM1280’s lineup – led by the Northern Alliance Radio Network (NARN) – continues to clobber the ratings of the much larger stations in head-to-head competition.\u00a0 KTLK’s retreat is only the latest confirmation.<\/p>\n From this point, the question isn’t so much “why did KTLK put their 100,000 watt tail between their legs and scurry from the weekend talk market”.\u00a0 It’s “how long will WCCO and KSTP-AM take to do more or less the same?”\u00a0\u00a0 WCCO’s 50,000 watts lumber along, and KSTP would do better running “Soucheray and Reusse Sportstalk” reruns than whatever it is they’re doing\u00a0now.<\/p>\n Yes.\u00a0 Yes, it is<\/em> good to be king.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why, yes.\u00a0 I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek.\u00a0 Mostly.<\/p>\n Which doesn’t mean it’s not true.\u00a0 Possible.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0<\/p>\n At any rate – after five years, we’re entitled to an endzone happy dance, aren’t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While nobody’s issued an official explanation for why KTLK-FM – the Twin Cities’ Clear Channel talk station – decided to tube all their weekend talk shows in favor of an endless stream of music that sounded like the “Classic Rock” playlist on someone’s IPod, I think I know why. The Northern Alliance beat them. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talk-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181","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=5181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}