Re: Fwd: BRW: 'RKO lets morning guy Ozone go

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 10:14 PM 8/26/2003, SteveOrdinetz wrote:
>  Aaron Read wrote:
>>That said, though...anything COULD happen.  I think if WRKO was really 
>>serious about doing it and providing Chris the freedom he'd demand, and 
>>if Mary could be brought on-board, it could work quite well.   It would 
>>mean quite the sea change to WRKO's overall theme of loud right-wing-ish 
>>talk show hosts, though.
>
>But would his schtik work on commercial radio?  Public vs commercial is 
>kind of like PC vs Mac...each has it's audience, but neither is likely to 
>win over the other.  Makes about as much sense as putting Rush on NPR.

That's a very good point.  The amount of listenership that stays with WRKO 
going into and out of a Chris Lydon show would likely not be very 
high.  You get people tuning in to Chris, and then leaving when he's done.

The question here is - does that matter?  Are there enough Chris listeners 
out there that would make his timeslot valuable enough that WRKO wouldn't 
care if the listeners only tuned in during his show?  I think there's more 
"personality loyalty" with WRKO than with NPR as well.   Meaning that you 
already have a high number of people who tune in just for one (or two) 
specific hosts and don't care about the rest.  The ratings may or may not 
back me up on that one.  It's just a hunch.

As for whether Chris's old audience will follow him to WRKO....at this 
point I honestly don't know.  Had this happened in the summer of 2001 I'd 
lean towards saying it would work; Chris has a lot of pretty rabidly 
devoted fans.  But it's been over 2 years now...I think everything's kinda 
"moved on".

Still...at a lot of offices...there's roles that PC's are good for, and 
roles that Macs are good for, and the two can co-exist quite nicely...


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Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA