Save It For The Show
Here's a piece I wrote in 2010... I've done hundreds of interviews in the course of my radio career. Only a small percentage have included a guest in the studio with me. The far larger majority were on the phone and, in most cases, that was a better working...
Live On Delay
Like the overwhelming majority of radio stations, the entire KTRS broadcast day is on a digital delay just in case someone -- a host, a caller, a guest -- utters one of those phrases the FCC freaks out about. It exists purely to protect the station's license. However,...
Live On Tape (followup)
My comments last week about Stephen Colbert's announcer saying that his show is "live on tape" -- a practical impossibility -- started a conversation on Facebook. Here are a few of those comments. William Difani wrote: Could the intention be to tell the [digital]...
Best Thing I’ve Read Today
Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk show host at WTMJ/Wisconsin, explains why he has quit after 23 years (his final show aired Monday), the horrible backlash he received for being against Donald Trump, and the moral failure of right-wing radio and TV... One staple of...
My Holiday Turkey
This originally appeared on this site in 2011... The first radio station I was paid to work for (after several years of volunteering at non-commercial college and high school stations) was WRCN/Riverhead. It was a classic small-town station on the east end of Long...
Best Thing I’ve Read Today
Longtime radio programmer Darryl Parks has been saying for several years that conservative talk stations will have a big problem on the day after the election: their audience will still be shrinking, old, male, and basically dying off -- and they have no one to blame...
Crazy People Welcome
In my four decades as a broadcaster, there have been a few times when a guest or a caller has said something insane on my show. I try not to let them get away with it. I always make it a point to challenge them, to insist they provide evidence of their claims (just as...
Hell Of A Time
A recent story about the town of Hell, Michigan, being up for sale brought back a flood of memories from the late 1980s. I was doing the morning show at WCXR/Washington, where the heat and humidity become oppressive in July and August (just like in St. Louis)....