New station owners with a bottom-line philosophy have canceled public-affairs programming, dismantled news departments and replaced local DJs with broadcasts of prefabricated material to cut costs.
Case in point: When KRBE’s Sam Malone and Maria Todd first went on the air in 1993, most radio stations in Houston had a flashy, larger-than-life morning show. Now they’re among the dwindling number of megawatt morning personalities.
Malone and Todd consider themselves lucky to work for a relatively small company — Susquehanna Radio Corp. — that runs its 29 stations the old-fashioned way, with on-air personalities around the clock and a full-time production, marketing and promotion staff that concentrates on only one station and touts its program at every opportunity.
“The tables have turned in 10 years,” Malone said. “(Back then) people were saying, ‘Don’t go to KRBE in Houston, because they’re a mom-and-pop operation.’ Now everybody wants to work for a mom-and-pop operation.”
“Instead of an evil empire,” Todd added.
I used to listen to KLOL when the Stevens and Pruett morning show was worth listening to. S&P were typically raunchy Howard Stern clones, but hey, I was a male in the 25 to 34 age group, so of course they appealed to me. They pushed a lot of boundaries, and eventually station management (which is now the evil Clear Channel empire, though I don’t know exactly when CC bought them) forced them to scale back on the racier stuff. They became more political instead, which I found unappealing since they still weren’t exactly highbrow. Eventually, Clear Channel fired Stevens, replacing him with a late-night DJ named Greggo, whom I really disliked, and promoting sideman Eddie “The Boner” Sanchez. That lasted about a year, then the whole crew was fired and replaced by a no-talent morning crew called Walton and Johnson, whose only notable acheivement so far has been to annoy a local woman with a billboard that read “Hey, all you virgins – thanks for nothing.”
Now, I listen to all-80s station KHPT in the morning. They play music instead of DJs. Sometimes I listen to KKRW’s Dean and Rog show, which has been around for awhile and which is usually pretty funny. If KLOL started rerunning old Stevens and Pruett shows from about 10 years ago, I’d listen to that.
I’m moderately surprised that this article didn’t touch on the Stevens and Pruett saga at all, since they were a highly rated morning show and their dismissals were sudden and unannounced. It does include this bit of unintentional comedy from a Clear Channel spokesdrone:
Clear Channel spokeswoman Pam Taylor argues that consolidation has led to more diversity in formats rather than less.
“If you own the No. 1 and No. 2 stations in the market, you’re not going to compete against yourself. You’re going to position yourself in some other niche,” she said.
Yeah, it sure would suck to have actual competition among radio stations, wouldn’t it? How much worse it was in the old days when radio stations competed for listeners instead of divvying up market niches. Thank God Clear Channel has saved us from that.
I HATE that MIX 96.5 got rid of Rula and Ryan. Now I have to listen to CDs in the morning. 🙁
Okay I’m satan in the mornings and Rula and Ryan got me in a good mood before I’d get to work.As someone else had said if I wanted to listen to Sam Malone I’d have listened to him on 104.
yeah sam malone sucks a monkey’s pecker
roula and ryan and eric will be missed tremendously this sucks!!!!!!! i won’t listen to 96.5 and will only hope to find out where ryan and roula are?????? do you think the public are idiots??? we are not!!! bring roula,ryan and eric back posted for myself and my daughter!! they were REAL, INTELLIGENT, FUNNY, FAMILY ORIENTED and “FRIENDS” even though we have never met….we are not the idiots YOU ARE!
I’m planning on getting Sirius next month and so that should be fun. At least; Clear Channel does not own that.
I’ve been listening to 96.5 for almost 20 years and Roula, Ryan & Eric were the best. I looked forward to their show every moring on the way to work and at work. Sam Malone is sooooo boring!!!!
War of the Roses! I miss it.
Now we mentioned XM; but does anybody know what the XM stands for?
Hi all – guess what?? Clear Channel just killed another rock station out here in the Bay Area. On New Years Day they switched 104.9, a popular Alt Rock station that had taken a lot of KSJO refugees into its listenership. They switched it to the spanish format Romatica. There’s a blog on it at http://www.mercextra.com/radio.
Clear Channel SUCKS! They’re trying to kill rock. There’s even a blog out here about what the future of the rock star is, with what’s happening to the rock stations.
Me, I went to Sirius because XM has Clear Channel as primary shareholders. Octane, Channel 20 is Awesome. So, Josh, what does XM mean? Inquiring minds want to know.
Martha
And, Martha, XM probably is for eXtra Miserable because Clear Channel owns it but you never know with Clear CHannel because they may ruin another radio station so that they can get some more money from out of it.
I finally got Sirius last month and I love it. Believe me, Sirius has what XM doesn’t and will never have which is Howard Stern, Martha Stewart and music that has no commercials.
I used to listen a small amount to Sam Malone but after about the 100th time I heard him do that stupid “see ya” thing he likes to do, I could no longer take him. Dump the dude. Who likes him anyway. Rula and Ryan were honest belivable characters that dind’t have to get rating only based t&a like the morning morons with no talent or morals,,Walton and Johnson.
Name some good Houston radio stations that Clear CHannel doesn’t own.
I used to be a big fan of S&P myself, they could be politically incorrect but with class and it was fun all the way , then these assholes Walton and Johnson come along and they think bashing everybody left and right is supposed to be funny, somehow they seem to be targeting the redneck, republican majority in Houston and even at that they are failing. Having a gay guy with lisp and a token black guy who they seem to wake up from his naps every 30 minutes to add a line or two doesnt mean you are targeting a large range of audience, unless of course you count all the dimwits in mental institution who can find your stuff funny.
Well, the point is that Clear Channel doesn’t need to buy every radio and T.V. station that they get their hands on and they also don’t need all of that money anyway.
And neither do they need to own billboards.