Saturday, December 17, 2005

Black Friday Afterthoughts

I'm surprised by...
-the thouroughness of the house-cleaning
-Randy and Jim being included, and Hadley not
-the way FOP came off on TV
-"Farmer Dave" not knowing until late Friday afternoon
-the fired people being allowed to continue through January 6th
-all of the new people being unknowns in this market
-"the Redbirds station" wanting to take on this new,"shock and awe" tone
-Tim Dorsey having to "lower the boom" when it wasn't really his call
-how radio execs always fall for the "out-of-town-host will work here" mindset

If it were my station to run...and I was going to clean house...I would have considered bringing in some people to replace them who have some cred in St. Louis. Maybe Guy Phillips, J.C. Corcoran and John Ulett, Dave Glover, anybody that St. Louis people could have some connection to, and might know something about sports. Corcoran does the baseball shows in Chicago during the summer already. He's been a proven ratings getter and seems to be able to "get along" at this stage of life. Phillips is a sports-oriented guy too. These people do mostly talk shows on music stations anyway and would bring with them something that none of the people coming in will have..."a built-in following".

Its like KTRS hiring all of KMOX's Cardinals salespeople. They have an existing relationship with their clients and could expect the money to follow them. I suppose they (Corcoran, Phillips etc.) wouldn't bring the "Holy Grail" of being strong enough in the 25-54 demo. These new people had better be REALLY good to get the under-35 crowd to actually listen to AM radio.

All of these out-of-towners have no existing audience and credibility and will be starting from scratch. As I stated before execution day, St. Louis listeners will be very slow to warm up to "outsiders". They could ask McGraw how long it took him to become "a St. Louis guy" over at KMOX.

I'm thinking about the future of all of the ex-KTRSers, but the guy I worry about the most is my good friend Jim Holder. As most everyone knows, he is one of the nicest people you will ever have the pleasure of knowing. And, like me, he's not a young gun anymore. I'm concerned about where, in this market, he will find work. Good luck "Holder-Man".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What KTRS did was a rotten deal for the listeners as well as the on air talent.

I'll vote with my wallet, I'll never eat a Ted Drews again. I'll never ues or recomend another KTRS sponsor to a friend. In fact I'll be sending letters to let them know what I think of who they are giving their ad dollars to also.

I'm not going to listen to KTRS. I've heard Kramer. He's an idiot and crass. His entire act is flat and painful. I wrote the station about him and received several condescending replies.

I listened to the Blues last night on XM. The sponsors need to wake up and realise that I don't have to tune in KTRS to hear the Cardinals either. Frank and the gang are off my list too.
KTRS, what you did sucks!

Anonymous said...

It would seem to me that the two talk-radio people with the biggest loyal followings are FOP and JC Corcoran and if KTRS had both (and if they could co-exist) as well as the Cardinals, they cold rule the town.