Greater Media confirms WTKK ends talk at 10 AM tomorrow (1-2-2013)

[Mark Laurence]

There's plenty of talk that's successful with younger demos.  It just doesn't happen to fit into the "talk radio" format box that's been installed by programmers across the country.  

Morning shows like Matty on Kiss 108 show that relevant comedy and story-telling is very appealing.

NPR shows that information on a wide variety of topics has broad appeal, and does extremely well with 30-40 year olds.

Sports talk shows that strong opinions are interesting to young and old listeners who don't necessarily dwell on politics.

Advice shows on relationships and money have appeal.  But they work best when they don't stray into politics.  

Comedians like Jon Stewart and Dennis Miller can score political points without hammering ideology 24/7.

Very little of this is done on typical talk radio formats, but on other formats and in other media it's doing quite well.


On Jan 1, 2013, at 5:15 PM, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:

> On 1/1/2013 2:21 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote:
>> My big fear is CBS will move Overnight America back to WBZ as
>> no permanent host has been hired to do overnights.
>>   
> WBZ got so much negative publicity the last time they tried that, so I doubt they wanna go through that again.  As for talk radio, it desperately needs to be re-invented.  It has not done a good job reaching younger demos, and there are just so many angry white males out there-- many of whom much prefer sports-talk anyway (the famous "bloodthirsty shut-ins").  I rarely agree with Michael Savage, but he warned conservative talkers that they were gonna die out as a format if all they did day and night was just bash President Obama-- no matter how you may dislike the current administration (whichever the party in power), if all you talk about day in and day out is one topic, you gradually turn off people who are tired of hearing about it.  So what is next for talk radio as a format?