bye bye Boston's progressive talk

[Bob Nelson]

WTKK is locked in to a long term Imus contract. Following him is
Barnicle, then Eagan
and Braude, and Bill O'Reilly. If they wanted to dump any of them,
you'd have possible
slots for Miller and Hartmann or Schultz. Severin is from 3-7 pm and
he has a long term
contract.

I'm not sure how long Michael Graham (7 pm) has left in his contract
or how he's doing in the ratings. After that is Laura Ingraham who I
think does a great show--it was hilarious last
night as she did "sound bite contests" (Barbara Walters imitating her
dog, Wolf Blitzer
making weird noises, Roseanne, et al), then they have the syndie John
and Jeff overnight.
Yes, probably a longshot. (And an aside here: I'm sure one's politics
will affect how
one feels about the entertainment value of a show. Liberals might tell
you they don't
find Ingraham entertaining at all while conservatives would say the
same of Franken.)

WRKO has Scott Allen Miller's morning show, then that 9-noon slot
which most likely
would go to local talk unless they decided to pick up Miller. Then
they have Rush and
Howie and at 7 pm there's Red Sox (soon) or Celtics, and Todd
Feinburg. If they put
Feinburg on in the morning, there's a possible open slot for one of
these shows. And
then we have Savage who supposedly dropped big in the ratings but I think he may
have a following. If WRKO were to drop him, you could have the Sox leading into
one of the prog-talk shows (and the Sox ownership is sympatico with
the Left btw,
so they'd be happy), and then they have Coast to Coast. So who knows who could
be shoehorned into their lineup.

As for the politics of Greater Media and Entercom, I guess you could
call them greens:
as in, they are concerned with whomever would make them the most...money. But
who knows.

I do know of a certain 250 watt station in Cambridge that would beam a
strong signal
into downtown Boston, Harvard Square, and so on, but we're not so sure
if the owner
of that facility (hi Bob!) would want to switch to the progressive
talk format from
what he now has.

In a land where 95 per cent of the politicians are Democrats, where
the Boston Globe
and Boston Phoenix publish, where there are many
liberals/progressives, one would
think that a prog. talk station might be attractive to somebody.
(Though I am hearing
that attractive advertisers has been a problem, which is one reason
Clear Channel
has turned at least some of their prog. talk stations to sports,
feeling it would make
more profits.)