Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2009 > January > 18
Sunday, January 18, 2009
1/19: Interview with Glenn Beck, starting Monday 1/19
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ABOVE: Glenn Beck entertaining his fans last June at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
Fox News on Monday at 5 p.m. is adding a new conservative talker to its lineup: Glenn Beck.
Beck, 44, made a name for himself first on radio (heard mornings locally on 640/WGST-AM), then got a foothold in TV three years ago at HLN (formerly CNN Headline News). He pulled in good ratings, relatively speaking. (About 400,000 viewers a night at 7 p.m., only behind Nancy Grace.)
But when Fox News came calling last fall, Beck couldn’t resist the obvious benefits; bigger audience, more pay, better fit for his Libertarian-leaning conservative viewpoint. Here are some notable comments from an interview last week:
Were you a fish out of water at CNN?
Surprisingly, not as much as I thought., especially with my bosses. They’re just businessmen. I’m a businessman. We had a great deal of mutual respect. The problem came with the journalists. The elevator rides were extremely long and quiet. Some of them looked at me like I was the anti-Christ.
Did anybody say anything to you about it?
Only one person did. I was walking into the newsroom to do a hit with Wolf [Blitzer.] This woman looked up and said, “Uh… please!” I stopped dead in my tracks. “See, that’s not necessary,” I said. She looked back at me with disgust. “But you expect it,” she said. My response? “Yah. I do. It’s kind of sad.” Some people are so unbelievably full of hatred for no reason.
Will starting the day before the Inauguration work to your advantage?
It works in some ways to our disadvantage. The show’s going to be driven so much by the Inauguration the first couple of days, you won’t get a real essence of what it is.
How will it be different from your CNN show?
“I just did my first rehearsal. It will move a lot faster than HLN did. I think it has the ability to have much more focus because I’m not the only one paddling the boat. I had a great staff at HLN but in the beginning I had to spend a lot of time explaining where we were going. A lot of people there were not conservative or Libertarian. They didn’t understand that point of view. I expect I’ll be able to get out of the gate faster here.”
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1/18: Atlanta radio ratings for the winter, new radio blogger in our midsts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We now have three months worth of data for Atlanta radio ratings under the new people meter system, which should be more accurate than the old diary system. What can we conclude so far? Here are some generalizations:
Kiss 104.1 is doing far better than anybody thought before. A distant third-place finisher behind WSB-AM and V-103 in the old days, now it’s up with the elite. (Both V and WSB’s numbers are a bit weaker now compared to the old system but they are still dominant players.). In December, Kiss even beat V and WSB in overall numbers.
Christmas still works — at least for B98.5. Its numbers in December (technically mid-November through mid-December) were huge, with the station ranked fourth. Fish was flat compared to November (again, it’s actually mid-October through mid-November).
Q100’s audience is far bigger than even that station’s execs had imagined. It’s now soundly defeating Star 94, the former leader.
Rock didn’t do all that well. The River is down. Project is about the same. Dave continues to lag. Rock 100.5 is at the bottom of the rock pack.
-The Spanish stations are holding up a bit better under the new system, which Clear Channel (which owns both major FMs) is certainly relieved.
-The Bull, with its weeklong no-ads promo in late November, did see an improvement in its performance. But Kicks was unaffected, with more than double the Bull’s audience. And even with the brief improvement, will it hold? (Kicks, in fact, is in general stronger under the new system than the old.)
-Some stations that didn’t show up under the old system do so here such as 1160/WCFO-AM and 92.5/the Bear in Griffin.
680/The Fan is trouncing 790/The Zone overall though the Fan’s strongest shows are still doing okay among men.
Oddly, the only “streaming” version of a station popping up on the charts is WAOK-AM.
You can get general numbers here at radioandrecords.com
New topic: Roddy Freeman, an ad buyer in town who has been following Atlanta radio for years, has started an insightful blog about radio. He has done two entries so far: one about Star 94 and another about the Bull. If you are into radio, check it out here at http://atlairwaves.blogspot.com/
Here’s a tease from his Bull entry:
Atlanta is a huge urban radio market, and the country shares are limited. But the market probably could handle 2 successful country stations. Kicks has given The Bull an opening, and The Bull has started to take some advantage of it. The Bull has languished for 2 years. Will it really get up and fight?
And his take on Star 94:
In any case, Star’s Multiple Personality Disorder has to be cured. Arbitron’s Portable People Meter has been kind to CHR stations because they attract a high cume. But to retake Atlanta’s CHR crown, which it long held, Star 94 cannot continue being an 18-34 station in morning drive, banging its head against The Bert Show, and a 25-54 station in the afternoon.
