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Thank You Rush Limbaugh

“There is a big difference between talents and legends. Rush Limbaugh’s legendary status was sealed a long time ago, but his impact remains as important as ever to a format that desperately needs him.”

Chrissy Paradis

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Why do you need to listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show and familiarize yourself with his background? Let’s start with Reason 1: it is going to make you better at uncovering your purpose or passion; whether it be a career or hobby or something waiting to be unearthed. There’s nothing more helpful in identifying the missing piece from a year that was so challenging and with more potential shutdowns in the works, now is the ideal time to find a way to triumph the 2020 spell with a commitment to organize the required steps that put you on track to reasonably accomplish your goal.

I highly doubt that Rush’s motivation for all he has done to guarantee AM stations nationwide weren’t forced into obsolescence. I’m also not ashamed to acknowledge that the talent in the industry can be appreciated on a scale that has little to do with political issues and rather the widespread lack of acknowledgment or appreciation for a pioneering contribution to salvaging AM radio stations, allowing to pave this universal path of success with his show airing on nearly 650 stations nationwide reaching nearly 26 million listeners at any given time. I have immense respect for the way in which we refuse to speak about the issues that are rarely received as you intended, rather met by considerable judgement.

Despite Limbaugh’s story of success, paying it forward in his field, earning multiple NAB awards and the latest being the presidential medal of freedom, Rush changed the game so that it could never be played the same way again. Yet he’s met by opposition who still overlook his contribution. The amazing way in which he has been intrinsically aware of what the medium was lacking and how to benefit the format, appeal to listeners, and have the space for his Excellence In Broadcasting empire to take off to have over 43 million guests weekly. The Time Spent Listening for the three hour show (TSL) was two hours and 28 minutes as of mid 2020.

The ability to become the breath of air that’s able to be traced back to the restoration, revitalization and transformation of the NTS Format, should be credited and accurately described in the future. The Mount Rushmore monument that would be honoring what Rush Limbaugh’s been able to accomplish would also require the assistance of the people who’ve made such a product in the radio business. Contributions from the brave, committed vision that included tweaking the prime time slot and being able to inform listeners through talk that would be criticized in every way imaginable. Then there’s the show format along with the vulnerability of AM stations News Talk Sports programming which was salvaged from the looming, unavoidable fact that the format went from an extraordinarily quickly depreciating, depleted financial landscape into the limitless potential awaiting the format, AM radio stations nationwide had a second chance—this is a result of Rush Limbaugh’s formula and hands on involvement to ensure the band provided layers of success for News/Talk/Sports and a second chance to prevent a seismic shifting that had remained unaltered since Rush’s 1988 launch. When you’re the show being picked up by 100+ affiliates to add to the 56 stations already airing your program nationwide, you’ve done something worth being proud of.

The format was a perfect fit for the personality of Rush Limbaugh. It involved some serious Clinton administration Freudian slips, but also a style in which he tackled historical information that had been widely adopted by others in the industry today; the parody song or the news with an audience that was listening for unique content.

We also learned that whether you love or hate his political beliefs and on-air style, you have to respect Rush for staying consistent. He stated the EIB Network would not be exiled for broadcasting Gitmo for not agreeing with him on his show. His aim was to show that the conversations that were discussed on his program could continue to grow, take their own shape and eliminate the barrier that once existed.

I’d like to make it clear that I am not sharing my political affiliation in this column. But what I am going to share is the immense pride I have in my first job offer as the EP of The Morning Show with Rush Radio and what the National Brand Manager Ken Charles taught me that resonated so significantly throughout my radio journey. I was taught to never alienate or try to limit our listeners and P1’s. A person may hate your show, but they could also have a meter.

I asked Ken how Rush (el rushbo-damus) knew about the necessary adjustments to perfectly appeal to listeners in the mid 1980’s and what he uncovered that had gone unnoticed by the industry to that point; especially, considering the estimates to be over 43 million weekly listeners.

The Longtime National News/Talk/Sports Brand Manager for iHeartRadio andProgram Director of KNX NEWSRADIO1070, Ken Charles has been one of the most interesting players in the Rush format reset. Ken and Rush have both been huge catalysts of significant growth, development and will forever share a bond that defined the success seen by each of the players. A great number of Ken’s professional years have been spent studying, formatting, and launching a brand ‘ Rush Radio’ that in name alone, appeals to those who have no problem with being the enigma that the audience is so drawn to. Rush has been continually framed as someone who should be ashamed or blamed for failing to share the incredible success he’s attained throughout his professional journey.

“I was the guy who had Rush on his station as a first time PD in 1988′ said . I ran him on weekends. We were live and local during the week. I got a call that the competition wanted to air him live M-F 12p-2p but they’d stay with us if we ran him live. We were local and I passed. They took him and 32 years later the station that took him is the dominant player in the market and has been for over 25 years. I’m still here but that station isn’t. So what did I learn? Talent beats everything.

The audience didn’t care that Rush wasn’t in Orlando. They cared that he was entertaining and talked about things that they cared about. He connected with their hearts and just cut through the radio in a way very few talk talents had before him. I never made a mistake like that again.

So, I can speak about what makes him great from day one. I heard it. It’s why I was first to put him on in my market. But, I missed the other part. At the time, he was so unique that live and local didn’t matter to an audience that had been waiting for someone to speak to them. Outside of morning news magazine type shows most talk talent were either liberal or non-political fluff doing book interviews and talking about nothing.

Rush turned it on its ear. He took a right political slant but also did it with an FM morning man’s understanding of entertainment and turned talk radio on its side.

He single handedly saved hundreds of AM stations ratings wise and revenue wise and changed the dynamics of what talk radio could be.

I could go on forever. I made a huge programming mistake but making it and learning that lesson helped guide my career.”

Today we salute you, Rush.

There is a big difference between talents and legends. Rush Limbaugh’s legendary status was sealed a long time ago, but his impact remains as important as ever to a format that desperately needs him.

It’s well documented that Rush is battling cancer. His overcoming the disease should be the top concern but it’s human nature to expect station executives to contemplate a future without one of the most dominant radio voices of all-time appearing on their airwaves. Tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us, and Rush’s time behind the mic will eventually come to an end, but the longer News Talk radio can hold on to him, the better it is for everyone. When he finally steps away, an entire format could find itself lost and unable to recapture what he delivered them for decades. As the old saying goes, sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

When I was employed full-time as a NTS executive producer in radio. I had just turned 21. I learned so much about radio from two industry titans, Ken Charles and Rush Limbaugh. Rush has made a lasting impact on many of us. I hope we never forget how important of a contribution he’s made to this industry!

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4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Dee

    December 10, 2020 at 1:21 am

    Amazing testimony to Rush’s brand! Great article!

  2. Rick

    December 10, 2020 at 2:17 am

    What a tremendous tribute to a guy that changed my thinking and my way of life over 30 years ago. God bless Rush and Kudos to Chrissy for an excellent column

  3. Deb

    February 17, 2021 at 11:55 pm

    Excellent! Thanks Chrissy. You are an amazing writer!

  4. Thomas Monaco

    February 18, 2021 at 1:55 pm

    Thank You Chrissy for such a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. R.I.P. Rush Limbaugh

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BNM Writers

It’s Time for News Radio to Clean Its Clock

With radio, the top of the hour always begins with a self-aggrandizing, overly-produced introduction to a program I may have been listening to for half an hour already.

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A photo of clocks

News radio is an interruptive format that swiftly moves listeners from one informative topic to
the next but over the years we’ve gotten bogged down with an insufferable amount of clutter: too many commercials, endless promos and teases, and pointless production pieces. All of it
interrupts the flow and cuts into the interesting information you promise to provide.

Let’s clean the clutter, starting with the anachronistic basis for it all: your hourly format clock.

I’ve never understood why radio stations root themselves to the clock. The show starts at the top of the hour and you bury your boring features at the end. Why? Why should the top of the hour be considered the beginning of anything? It’s not how people live their lives. Radio isn’t like TV where shows start at specific times. Hell, TV isn’t that way anymore.

But with news radio, the top of the hour always begins with a self-aggrandizing, overly-produced introduction to a program I may have been listening to for half an hour already. This is especially true with morning shows, where simple logic would suggest that people trying to get to work by the top of an hour begin listening at various times before then.

Who even owns a clock radio anymore?

The 21st century is nonstop. There is no daily news cycle, no beginning or end to anything but
news radio programmers still think of time in divisions of hours, minutes, and seconds. We still draw empty circles depicting analog clocks to plot hourly radio formats.

On news and talk stations, the top of the hour almost always begins with the hourly network
report. It’s the biggest of big-time radio, steeped in tradition, professionally detached, global. In other words, it sounds nothing like your radio station in your unique market and it contains the least interesting content you have to offer.

We cling to the networks at the top of the hour for their prestige, because that’s just how we’ve always done it. Any national or international stories of real interest to Americans, the latest Trump-Biden court decisions, for example, will be well covered in talk shows and you’ll probably want to drop it into your local programming, too. How about a one-minute segment twice an hour, 60 seconds of just the big national and world stuff, in 10-15-second boil-in-the-bag headline segments? I’m just spitballing here. You’re the programmer.

In my heretical news radio mind, the networks do great journalism but they still sound flat,
stuffy, and old-fashioned. They don’t sound like anything else on my station. I’ll dump the top-of-the-hour five minutes and cherry-pick the network sound bites. We’ll deliver them ourselves.

While I’m carving up your format and trying to get you thinking outside the box, do you need
traffic reports every ten minutes? Or, at all? Heresy, I know. Catch your breath and read on.

When we had real-time airborne local reporters telling us what they were looking at it had a gee-whiz factor and the information mattered because it was live, local first-hand reporting. I could imagine the scene as it was being described. Now we have reporters in booths looking at
computer feeds and doing shotgun-style traffic reports for multiple cities. Words without
pictures.

I knew an L.A.-based traffic reporter who did reports for Salt Lake City though she had never even been there. These so-called “real-time traffic” reports are nearly always recorded and delayed for playback. Does this practice serve any purpose at all except to deceive listeners?

Not incidentally, traffic reports are a prime target for AI exploitation. How difficult can it be to
attach state and local transportation agency traffic data to AI voice-to-speech generators? For all I know this is already being done. You can argue it’s cost-efficient but as a longtime morning news host/anchor/personality, I despise it. One of the greatest assets to any morning news team is the interaction between news and traffic people.

When Amy Chodroff and I started working together at KLIF a dozen years ago we had that human contact with remarkable radio veteran Bill Jackson doing traffic from an adjoining studio. Bill wasn’t just a voice, he was a talented news radio veteran and a valued part of our show. He was so good the company, Cumulus, put two more stations on his plate, ripping a valued team member away from us.

As hosts, Amy and I had to assume Bill wasn’t able to listen to the show anymore because he
was too busy gathering and preparing his reports for the other stations. Then he was shipped out of the building to do his work from home which made his insights and witty exchanges
impossible. We couldn’t talk to each other off the air. We couldn’t exchange glances, smiles, and hand signals or bump into each other in the hall. Our show suffered and our audience became a bit more detached.

Bill Jackson, real name Dale Kuckelburg, was also significantly detached from his career.

But I digress. The biggest problem with traffic reports is the shotgun approach I mentioned,
telling everybody in our listening area driving to their unique destinations how traffic is snarled thirty miles away. Good god, we have apps in our cars that do a much better job in real time.

How about the weather? What the hell, we’re swinging the ax here. Let’s be realistic.

There isn’t a day in my life that I don’t wake up with a fair idea of what weather I should expect. I don’t need someone on the radio telling me to carry an umbrella. If it’s iffy the immediate and highly local details are now available at the touch of an app. When the weather becomes of critical and life-threatening importance it’s a major news story and that’s when local radio news shines, making it the center of our continuous attention, not just a regular feature at scheduled times.

It’s your radio station, do what you think is best. I’m only suggesting that you might want to
reevaluate all the things we’ve all taken for granted for far too long.

News radio has always been an interruptive format. We promise listeners “the news you need” in the time it takes them to drive to work. They understand that they’ll receive useful and
interesting content in exchange for frequent subject switching and sponsorships. The great news stations know how to capitalize on that agreement but too many have sold their souls to
commercial clutter that chokes a news team’s ability to serve the promised meal.

As if 22 minutes of inane and repetitive commercials per hour aren’t bad enough programmers, struggling to do their work in a hurricane of increasing spotloads, add to the clutter with recorded promos that simply beseech listeners to keep listening while offering nothing of substance. Meanwhile, the same programmers tell talent to tease, tease, tease the subjects they’ll talk about six, twelve, and twenty minutes from now.

I know the business reality. Radio — especially news radio — is struggling to meet the profit insistence of corporate boards and the overhead needs of staying afloat locally. But at some point, we must answer the question, who do we have to serve first, our clients or our audience?

Station managers and their corporate masters have to stop issuing profit mandates without
offering programmers the opportunity to do their jobs, to provide more valuable content while
limiting commercial minutes, sponsorship rhetoric, and eliminating distracting bells and
whistles.

Clean your clock. Stop filling empty circles with stuff that made sense 50 years ago but is merely clutter today.

The only way to think outside the box is to get rid of the box.

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BNM Writers

AM 680 WCBM Leapt Into Action As the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapsed

Our employees live and work here and know what’s important to our listeners.

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As Americans woke up to a cargo ship hitting Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge Tuesday morning, the crew at AM 680 WCBM was already hard at work gathering the facts.

Just before 1:30 AM, a cargo ship lost power exiting the Baltimore harbor, striking a support beam that toppled the 47-year-old structure. In the wreckage, six people working on the bridge died, while drivers were rescued from the rubble in the chilly waters of the Curtis Bay.

The AM news/talk station — which celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday — went wall-to-wall breaking coverage, something most outlets now avoid because of budget concerns. 680 WCBM morning host and Program Director Sean Casey told BNM in an email exchange how his crews handled the breaking news.


BNM: When did you guys hit the air with breaking news coverage?

Sean Casey: We first broke in with updates at 3:30 AM, approximately two hours after the bridge collapsed. Breaking news updates continued every half hour until 6 AM.”

BNM: How did you coordinate coverage in those moments?

SC: Full wall-to-wall coverage started at 6 AM and included full newscasts as well as interviews with state and local law enforcement agencies, eyewitness call-ins, and our national news partners. Our producer made call-outs and our news department shifted to full-blown local coverage.

BNM: How much experience did you have in putting together coverage of an event like that on the fly?

SC: Having been on the air during 9/11, I used the same formula that listeners want to know: Who, What, When, and Where? The why will come later.

BNM: How does your coverage show the importance of both local radio and AM radio?

SC: In times of breaking news events that impact our listeners, local AM radio stations are more in tune with the local listening audience. Our employees live and work here and know what’s important to our listeners. We also know the local players and officials and can get immediate reaction.

The talk component of our news/talk format offers listeners a chance to vent, share, and communicate with each other in good and bad times. This is why AM radio is still relevant. In some emergencies you can lose your cell service or have too weak of a signal, AM radio remains viable for in-car listening and at home with battery backup.

The AM 680 WCBM morning host and Program Director concluded his thoughts by noting the importance of a team effort, not only in coverage of breaking news events but also in operating a successful station and business as a whole.

“One of the biggest concerns we have is budgetary. More and more AM stations are abandoning the format because of its expense. Very few can afford a live and local news staff and show hosts,” Casey told Barrett News Media.

“Now more than ever, it’s vital that there be synergy between ownership, sales, and programming to maximize ratings and revenue so that we can continue to deliver vital information to listeners in our market.”

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BNM Writers

News is the Only Thing Missing From Election Coverage

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected?

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The first thought I had when I heard NBC had hired Ronna McDaniel as a commentator for $300,000 a year was to wonder how many actual journalists they could have hired for that money. Then, I recalled that NBC had laid off dozens of news staffers just a few months ago. Then, I remembered that I had just recently written a column decrying news organizations throwing pretty much anybody on the air as a “pundit” and this….

This was worse. It’s one thing to grab some rando who happened to be a minor functionary for the Executive Branch. It’s another to hire someone whose job was to promote election denialism and pretend that her opinion is something valuable for viewers. And, yes, it’s just as ridiculous when news organizations hire former presidential press secretaries (that’s you, Jen Psaki and Sean Spicer), their very jobs were to spin everything in their bosses’ favor and now you’re going to pay them big salaries for, um, what? Because they “have a name” or you’re afraid someone else will snap them up? Why them?

The McDaniel deal lasted five days, one completely unilluminating interview, and one unexpected Chuck Todd spine-growing outburst, so it’ll all blow over soon enough. The problem is, though, the part about having fired several news staffers, and what it means in an election year on both the national and local levels. If you have the money to hire an alleged pundit – any alleged pundit – you have the money to hire reporters, and I don’t mean anchors or opinion show hosts.

Coverage of the election is, as we’ve discussed, still very horse-race-centric, and there’s been, of course, coverage of the various Trump court cases, but where is the coverage of exactly what the candidates plan to do if elected? Who’s probing Project 2025 and why isn’t it front-page, first-segment news? Who’s pressing the Biden administration on Gaza? Is anyone reporting on the candidates’ record on climate change?

Beyond prescription drug prices, is anyone digging into the broken healthcare system and demanding answers from the candidates about what they’ll do to fix it (and not letting Trump get away with “I’ll have a better plan, a beautiful plan” without a single specific detail, like they did in 2016)? Why didn’t anyone focus on, for example, the GOP candidate for governor of North Carolina and his incendiary past comments well before the primary?

Pundits are not going to do the legwork on the issues; they’ll just talk about swing states while John King and Steve Kornacki point at their touchscreen maps. We need reporting on the things that matter (and can affect that horse race, even if most people have made up their minds). It shouldn’t just be Pro Publica and scattered independent journalists doing the dirty work.

Honestly, I don’t want to hear the complaints about the quality of the candidates or how this is a rerun or any of that. (We’ll leave that to The New York Times.) We are a horribly underinformed electorate and we got the horse race we deserve. It might just be idealists like me who think that, just maybe, the news media can play a role in educating the public and bursting the bubbles and echo chambers. This country has survived and prospered for a few centuries with the press shining a light on injustice and corruption.

Now, when we need that most, they’re more concerned with what they think will bring them ratings and money (although someone will have to explain to me who thought having Ronna McDaniel as a paid commentator would draw a single viewer to NBC).

Here’s a thought: Don’t lay off reporters, especially in an election year.  Assign them to dig deep on issues that matter to the voters.

Let the pundits talk about that.

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