Recommended Reading

[Scott Fybush]

At 10:01 PM 3/19/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>I wasn't commenting on the content of the shows or the actions of the 
>hosts but the way that the stations are marketed and positioned.  When I 
>have tuned in Air America on its Portland station, I was surprised that 
>the station itself was so directly positioned by an ideological and even 
>partisan label.  I had never heard a station positioned in that way --
>individual shows and hosts certainly, but not whole stations.  (I accept 
>Garrett's point about Salem's talk stations.)  I wonder how such a clear 
>label on a whole station will impact sales?  I bet WGAN's sales would drop 
>if they started positioning themselves as the conservative station.

I've been reluctant to jump into this conversation, if for no other reason 
than that I'm completely politicked-out after last year's election season. 
I have had zero desire to listen to ANY political talk radio, left, right, 
or center, since November. But...

While I can't speak for WGAN, having not been in listening range for 
several years now (I'm long overdue to get back up Maine way), I can speak 
for Rochester, where news/talk radio for many years has pretty much been 
limited to the 50-kilowatt torch of 1180 WHAM.

Like WGAN, WHAM continues to position itself in the market simply as "the" 
news and talk station, taking advantage of its huge signal advantage (it's 
the ONLY AM that fully covers the market day and night) and universal name 
recognition. But outside of its news-focused morning show, an hour of news 
at 5 PM and a sports talk show from 6-8, the rest of WHAM's schedule now 
leans in a very predictable and mightily one-sided direction, with Glenn 
Beck followed by a very conservative local host (who makes no bones about 
his orientation, and whose frequent fill-in host is the county GOP 
chairman) followed by Limbaugh, with Savage bringing up the rear from 8-11 
PM. (There's an inexplicable hour of Dr. Dean Edell after that, followed by 
Coast to Coast AM overnight.) And the station's on-air imaging, while not 
overtly partisan a la Air America or the Salem talkers, has been showing a 
decided lean towards the very self-conscious display of patriotism that's 
seemed to be on the rise among right-leaning media in recent years. (The 
legal ID after 9/11 emphasized "Rochester, New York, U! S! A!," which 
seemed a little belligerent to me for a station with a whomping signal over 
the lake into Canada, there's a daily noon broadcast of the Star Spangled 
Banner, etc.)

It's no coincidence at all that a lot of people I know refer to the station 
as "WGOP," or that many of my friends whose politics lean to the left (or 
even to just left of moderate) have stopped listening to the station in the 
last few years. It's actually somewhat unfortunate for the WHAM news 
department, which is staffed by some fine newspeople who do their job 
without any political leaning one way or the other, but whose work is 
viewed with some suspicion by many in the community by association with the 
political tack that WHAM's talkers take.

There's a "progressive talker" in the market, too, an Entercom station on a 
1 kilowatt directional AM signal with almost no promotion and no heritage 
in the community to draw on. It doesn't do well in the ratings, which is no 
surprise.

WHAM continues to do well in the market almost by default - there's simply 
nowhere else to go in drivetime for a local all-news product on commercial 
radio here, and there's certainly a loyal audience for the station's talk 
offerings. But there's no way the station could ever draw the ratings it 
once did, in part because it now also turns off the significant portion of 
the market that holds opposite political views (Democrats still hold a 
slight edge in voter registrations in Monroe County) or that doesn't care 
for hard-line political talk of either stripe.

I just wonder whether it doesn't end up being a mistake, over the long run, 
to transform the image of a legendary full-service station like WHAM from 
"all things to all people" into "WGOP." It's not hard to understand how it 
happened - it's not as though there were many other successful models for 
talk until recently, and WHAM's hardly alone in going in this direction, 
joined by other legendary stations up this way like WGY, WBEN and WSYR - 
but you've got to wonder whether WHAM could ever again be perceived as "the 
station for everyone," as it once was. To bring this back around to Boston, 
I think it's fair to say that WRKO in 2005 also lacks the broad spectrum of 
political views that made WRKO in 1990 so interesting to listen to. It 
really was "THE talk station" then. Today it's "SOME PEOPLE's talk station."

(The worst such example, in my recent experience, is WOWO in Fort Wayne, 
which has gone from being the market's full-service voice to being a very 
predictable political talker, complete with Fox Radio News and a local news 
operation that believes any story that can't be told in 28 seconds or less 
isn't worth telling. Even in a conservative market like Fort Wayne, WOWO 
has alienated a significant percentage of the market, and it's hard to 
imagine them coming back any time soon.)

Or perhaps it's simply that there's a huge dearth of talent out there who 
can craft interesting talk radio without the crutch of taking an unyielding 
political stance and brooking no opposing views. The stations that still 
employ such talkers do well with them - look at the ratings of stations 
like KGO, KMOX and WGN, or at the numbers David Brudnoy pulled on WBZ - but 
perhaps there just aren't enough such voices working their way up the 
pipeline, or perhaps there's just no demand for them. (Sorry, BillO...)

What I'm getting at is this: I have no beef with partisan talk radio that 
identifies itself as such. I think there's a place for Air America and a 
place for Salem's talkers, and for everyone in between. But I'd rather see 
them on stations like WKOX/WXKS and WTTT, with no established identity to 
tarnish, than on legendary stations like WHAM or WOWO (or WPRO, or WGAN, or 
WHYN) that have the kind of market heritage that a long-sighted owner might 
not want to damage for the sake of a political trend that, while lucrative, 
will surely pass sooner or later.

I suspect I'm not the only one - on whatever side of the spectrum - who's 
burned out on political talk after the venom-fest that was 2004. We know 
that news-talkers of all stripes did exceptionally well in the most recent 
ratings thanks in no small part to election season. How big will the fall 
be when the next set of numbers hits? (And to what extent will less 
partisan talkers like WBZ-at-night, WGN or KGO avoid that drop?)

Interesting times...

s