Boortz Not Buying Huckabee or Smerconish "Friendlier" Talk Angle (lukewarm talk a bore)

Radio Ink ^ | 4/23/12 | Radio Ink

[raccoonradio]

In the upcoming May 7th issue of Radio Ink magazine talker Neal Boortz discusses the recent push by Cumulus and others for a more toned down type of talk radio. Cumulus launched Mike Huckabee April 9th pushing the show as a friendlier conservative talk host. Boortz isn't buying that consumers have tired of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others and they want to see more talkers like Huckabee and Michael Smerconish. Boortz says listeners want to be entertained. "Mike Smerconish is immensely talented. Barack Obama likes him. But on the radio, he is not compelling or exciting. He is methodical and dependable. The listeners are not going to react with overwhelming enthusiasm to somebody like that."

Boortz adds, about Smerconish, "I can see where he would want to go on the air and say "The type of talk radio I do, that's what the consumers want. That is what they are going to be looking for in the future." It's a great sales pitch to get people to sign on to your show. I still think what the consumers are looking for is, number one, entertainment. They want to be entertained. It can be a liberal, a libertarian, or a conservative. It can be far-left or far-right. If they are entertained, they are going to tune in. The ratings are going to be there and the advertisers are going to be happy." Smerconish is syndicated by Dial Global.

In our interview with Boortz, he also says, "syndication is really destroying the supply of good local talk show hosts. The talent pool is very shallow. So, the wonderful world of syndication, while it's been marvelously lucrative for the few hosts that manage to really get into it, it has really smothered the development of local talk radio talent." Neal Boortz has now been on the air for over 40 years and is heard on over 200 radio stations.

[alancarp]

I stopped listening to Boortz when he told the world that he voted for Mittins in the Fla. primary, saying he was the only one who could beat Zero. Lost all credibility as a Libertarian.

[onedoug]

Dennis Prager fan here.

[FrankR]

" repeated his talking point for the seventh or eighth time in the same segment."

Rush is a broadcasting professional, he knows what he is doing.

Radio is a very fleeting medium insofar as the manner in which people listen. Very few people sit and listen to a three, or even a one hour program. With radio you're in the car, out of the car. In the room, out of the room.

As a veteran of radio broadcasting I can attest that that fact is used regularly in the selling of radio time, therefore multiple commercials (spots) are recommended for advertisers. One of the main selling points for radio is that - unlike TV or print - you can be doing other things while you listen, i.e. driving, cleaning house, or even mowing the lawn.

As a listener, I might now hear any of Rush's show until I decided to get into the car at about 2pm and go somewhere, in that case repetition of the days topic(s) is invaluable and if it was not repeated, the point would be missed.

The only time I get bored with Rush is when he gets on football, or golf...neither of which interests me much.

Repetition is the key to most all broadcasting to get the message across. Unlike print, once the words are broadcast, it's difficult to go back and "read" them again for clarity, or better understanding.

Many, many times I've wished someone would invent a DVR-like device so I could rewind the last few minutes of a radio show I miss for being on the cellphone or stopping at the store.

One would almost have to sit directly in front of the radio with loud headphones to get every point made on any radio program. But then, you'd be really bored.

Rush is not be lax, he's just exercising what he knows about radio audiences and the very nature of radio.

I noticed you made no reference to the MSM repeating the TRavon story "talking points"ad infinitum on a daily basis...not to mention those GEICO commercials.

But the MSM knows the nature of broadcast audiences too.

[raccoonradio]

Prager and other “Salem Communications” hosts used to be on in Boston but Salem switched it to Spanish language religion.
The shows Salem does (via Wikipedia):
General Market (secular) programs

Bill Bennett — 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET
Mike Gallagher — 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET
Dennis Prager — 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET
Michael Medved — 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET
Hugh Hewitt — 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET

The woman who got Smerconish started in talk radio is the prog. dir. of an FM talker here and yup they run him.

[raccoonradio]

Yes. I didn’t hear that show but I assume you mean Michael
Harrison (Talkers).
Talk stations in Boston, for example, have a blend of
national and local

WRKO 680
Tom & Todd (local), business show (local), Ingraham (syndie),
Jen Brien (local), Howie Carr (flagship station—synd. through New England but very Boston based), then syndie with
Savage, Jerry Doyle, Redeye Radio

WXKS 1200
Jeff Katz (local), Beck (syndie), Rush (syndie), Jay
Severin (local), Hannity, Levin, Coast to Coast (all syndie)

WBZ 1030
Talk only at night: Dan Rea and Steve Leveille, both local

WWZN 1510
Moonbat:Jeff Santos (local), Stephanie Miller (syndie),
Ed Schultz (syndie), Rebuild America (local) then various
syndie shows though often pre-empted by Red Sox baseball—
in Spanish...

WTKK 96.9
Eagan and Braude, Doug Meegan (both local), Smerconish
(syndie), Michael Graham (local), Wall St Wrapup and
John Batchelor (syndie), Overnight America (syndie)

[onedoug]

Salem here in LA premiering Hedi Harris 6am-9 today. Not so sure for the long term. We’ll see.

[jiggyboy]

I’m not talking about repeating the same topic every couple of minutes for new listeners, I’m talking about the same talking point literally every minute for eight to ten minutes straight. (I happen to have been able to find the very segment here: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/04/09/maybe_sen_mccaskill_can_tell_us_why_we_need_thousands_of_irs_agents_to_provide_health_care , “Find Next Occurrence of” “IRS” until your mouse button stops working to see what I mean.)

I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I have some questions on radio and TV advertising that I’ve been wanting to ask somebody for quite some time.

1) What’s going on with showing the same commercial twice in the same commercial break, or even two times in a row? For a while, I thought my memory was shot, but now I see and/or hear this practically every day. Is this gross incompetence on somebody’s part, or some legal trickery (”you said to run your ad twice during the show, well we ran it twice”)? Is the American attention span now down to the life expectancy of a soap bubble?

2) In the old days, big advertisers (e.g., Campbell’s) wrote their contract so that no competitor’s ad would be on the opposite magazine page or in the same radio or TV commercial break. But these days I don’t know if I could say that there’s any company in the country that has that deal. Over Christmas, I saw TV commercials from four different car manufacturers in a row, then something else, then two more car ads. Why would an advertiser be in that environment?

Re DVR technology for radios, I often find myself lunging for a “rewind 30 seconds” button on my car radio as I immediately remember (over and over again!) that I actually had one. There are radios that let your record what’s being broadcast, but I haven’t found anything that also has that short-rewind button to let you hear it again while it’s recording.

The thread was on radio choice, so it never occurred to me to offer complaints about MSM repetition. That said, one of the things that will get me screaming is when they have only one five-second clip of some new event and play it virtually nonstop while their panel blathers on about the event. Court TV might be the worst — if they have some grainy, telephoto picture of the back of a guy’s head as he’s getting into a car, then that’s the picture they’ll slowly rotate and zoom on five, ten, fifteen times in a row during the segment.

[jiggyboy]

Hear hear on Miller. We had him in Silicon Valley for about two years and then the station did their quarterly schedule blow-up and he was gone. I’m not quite dedicated enough to pay for the podcast and take the extra effort to listening to it that way.

[TheOldLady]

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[Col Freeper]

Metaphorically speaking, we don't want to have an Oxford-style debate about it, we want to beat the crap outta someone.

LOL, ain't that the truth!

[FrankR]

Actually, running the same commercial back-to-back can be very effective. Many times we sold a 30-second spot, but in actuality it was two, of the same 15-second spot spliced back to back. The listeners say, "Hey, they just played that", but it makes more of an impression, plus it gets the advertisers name out there twice as much. Most of us can probably remember those back-to-back ads longer than the single ones. It's a gimmick, but it works.

In my training - back in the early 60's - the golden rule was that competing advtisers spots not be played within 15-minutes of each other (using 15-minute programming segments. Today, however, with the loosy-goosy FCC regulation, anything goes. Greed and major corporations have taken over broadcasting and it's a mish-mash of confusion. I still do a double-take when I see Ford, Honda, and Subaru commercials all in a row. The ones who need to complain, are the Advertisers - I know I would.

Radio, and TV, rules have changed a lot. We had much better diversity when any one company could own no more than 7, AM stations, and 7 FM stations. That rule was started to keep any one corp from dominating their views in the news, etc., but they dropped it at some point while democrats were in charge of the FCC.

Also, many small stations are being taken over by non-English speaking formats, from Spanish to Middle Eastern...we have no idea what they're talking about and the audiences are so small I would hate to try to sell advertising on them...especially here in the south.

When you get that DVR-type radio recorder invented, let me know...