Speed Gibson

Here's my recap of the morning drive fare, in order of my personal preference. The first group of four I regularly listen to, the last five I don't.

Station      Content Delivery  Host%  Break%  Other%



KTLK-FM 100.3   B       B+       62      17      21

WCCO-AM 830     B       B-       51      38      11

WMFP-FM 107.1   C+      A-       62      30       8        

WWTC-AM 1280    B-      C        57      38       5



KNOW-FM 91.1    C-      C+       56      40*      4 

KQRS-FM 92.5    C       C-       61      26      13

KFAM-AM 1130    C       D        67      23      10

KSTP-AM 1500    D       D        57      13      30

KTNF-AM 950     F       F       n/a

                                       *Pledge week

The "n/a" for Air America's host is very appropriate. Wendy Wilde was deposed before I could review her. But I've heard enough to say it's easily the worst talk radio on the air, for however much longer.

KTLK-FM is my new morning selection, with KSTP-AM abdicating that long held position. I see that they've given Willie Clark a co-host, Jay Coles, but I won't be back until Clark is gone, or more specifically, this "soft news only that won't offend anyone" format.

Positions 2 and 3, even 4 if I know there's a big national story breaking, are pretty close. Mostly, I listen to these in the car "channel surfing" around the breaks.

Again, I find KTLK-FM the clear winner. It's local. The hosts are easily the smartest on dial. The hosts have good radio skills and complement each other well. And for now, the commercial load is very low, though I actually hope they succeed in booking more business.

I am now going to move on to the mid-morning slot, starting with KSTP-AM's Bob Davis, heard 9 AM to 11:50 AM.

This is the last in my series profiling the various morning talk show offerings, which I'll recap in a later post. I saved this program for last, as it is a network show, with only a splash of local news and weather at the top of the hour. The abbreviated time breakdown:

  Content:         57%

  Breaks:          36%

  News & weather:   5%

  Theme, promos:    2%

I just don't like this concept. Morning (and evening) drive time radio has to be local. Barring that, you should at least have to be entertaining, like Laura Ingraham. But that's not Mr. Bennett's long suit, either.

OK, he's a smart guy, very personable, but he doesn't cover anything beyond what Rush and the many dwarfs do. What he does cover seems more headline than article, no real depth of analysis. He does do a good interview, but that's not enough.

I do listen now and then, particularly the first hour before 6 am as a quick read on the headlines. But after that, I return to KTLK-FM.

I wish Dr. Bennett every success, but it's too thin, too tame, and too national for me.

WFMP-FM (107.1) targets women, no doubt about it. But real men can enjoy the "Balanced Breakfast with Ian and Margery" heard weekday mornings from 5 to 9. First, some abbreviated stats:

Promos and Commercials: 30%
Content: 62%
News, Weather, etc: 8%

The content is all Ian and Margery Punnett. Margery does her part from home via a "blur line" as she gets their two boys up and off to school. The news, weather, etc is all but limited to two minutes of network news and a local "107 second" segment for the rest.

The content is pretty good, presented in a mostly light manner. They can get serious on occasion. Kirby Puckett had died the week I am reviewing, and they took on the media's coverage of Kirby's personal problems or lack thereof. Then they asked just how much introspection is appropriate at a funeral. It was very good, as you might expect from Ian.

Another good topic was a Bazaar article that being a stay at home mom is now chic, that women today now had more choices than prior generations. They lined up several women callers of the previous generation and had a great discussion, the bottom line being nothing has really changed other than now, yes it's fashionable.

Other topics included how fetching our Driver's License photos always seem to turn out. Botox, divorce, romantic poetry, and even some American Idol snippets. In discussing SAT's and cheating and calculators, I loved this from Margery: "The calculator I used to do long division didn't connect me to some pervert."

It's a good production, too, with a great theme/intro using Nat King Cole's "Just Like Being in Love" and featuring the two boys ("Itchy" and "Scratchy") introducing their parents. The flow is great and I was surprised to see the commercial load reached 30 percent. Other than those jangling awful Menard's ads, the ads seem to blend into the show.

It's very enjoyable, even for men, but it's not for me most days. There just isn't enough news, in fact, hardly any. The weather forecast is once an hour, maybe twice if Ian gets around to it for a few seconds. I need a little more, including sports. Traffic is as needed, which is next to none, so they have that right. By design, it's not drive time radio, but if you're air during morning drive, I think you have to make your listeners a little more current.

Next up: Bill Bennett's Morning in America.

For the record, I am specifically reviewing what I recorded from KNOW-FM 91.1, the news flagship station of the Minnesota Public Radio empire.

The KNOW program schedule lists "Morning Edition with Cathy Wurzer" as running from 4 to 9 weekday mornings. Actually, there are two distinct programs here. From 4-6, this is basically the National Public Radio feed (80%). Cathy Wurzer logs less than 5 minutes per hour, with a smattering of local news headlines, weather, and promotional announcements. Therefore, I'll focus on the second portion, from 6 to 9 AM.

This happened to be a pledge week, so maybe this isn't the best comparison against the other morning shows. However, such pledge drives are an all-too-frequent fact of "public" radio life. I therefore went ahead, obtaining this breakdown of the 6-9 portion of the show:

National (NPR) news   41%

Pledge drive          33%

Local (MPR) news      15%

Commercials            5%

Weather                3%

Promos, banter         2%

Sports                 1%

Other than the pledge drive, almost a welcome distraction, I can sum up the rest of the content in one word: bland. The news copy is bland, the vocal styles are bland, even the music snippets are bland.

Bland doesn't mean bad. Given the choice between a pungent, hard-left, sneering Air America and a bland, center-left, pedantic Public Radio, I'll take the latter. The news segments were generally accurate and informative, and had the luxury of time to develop some points. But bland doesn't mean great, either. The measured delivery of well written, perfectly enunciated copy comes across as a bit pretentious.

The MPR studios are reportedly have the latest and greatest in technology. As James Lileks might put it, a alien spacecraft would stop there for spare parts. Despite all this great equipment, the final product is a bit sloppy. Cathy Wurzer, who I think does a good job on TV's Almanac, really isn't nearly that good on radio. She's very smart, well-read, and cultured, at least within her liberal world. But doesn't mean you automatically have radio skills. She simply cannot fill time leading to a hard break, often resulting in babbling, broken speech, and even dead air pauses. Compare this with WCCO-AM, where however annoying the pace, they make dozens of flawless transitions an hour.

On the plus side, there are no traffic reports, other than one or two mentions of a major accident. Some may like that sports gets little attention; the one percent I show was almost totally about the Olympics. Averaging in the pledge drive segments over the year, the time spent in commercial breaks is still well below the competition.

MPR's Morning Edition is no Faberge Egg as some would have you believe. It sounds smooth and silky but that inherently limits the topic choices, and includes no dissent whatsoever. Let me put it this way. Spend 20-30 minutes reading your morning newspaper, then listen to an hour of the many morning programs I'm reviewing. MPR's Morning Edition is the one that adds the least additional information.

I had heard several tell me that KFAN had a morning show and they did more than just sports. This is true, I found out. Also, their ratings are respectable. The Power Trip runs from 6 to 9 each morning. The time breakout is:

  Sports              27%

  Commercials         23%

  Banter              14%

  Miscellaneous       10%



  Grammy Awards        7%

  Movies               6%

  Music                5%

  News                 3%

  Twins Stadium        3%

  Traffic              2%

The Sports segments above for my three day sample were allocated thusly:

  Timberwolves        34%

  Super Bowl          21%

  NBA                 12%

  Olympics             6%

  Gambling Ring        4%

  Twins Stadium        3%

  NFL                  3%

  Gopher football      2%

  Vikings              1%

  Wild                 0%

  Twins                0%

  All other           14%

It was the week after the Super Bowl, so clearly some stories were still forthcoming, such as for the TV ratings. The Timberwolves received more attention with LeBron James coming to town. They discussed the 'Wolves disappointing performances of late several times. The Wild aren't playing particularly well either, but the expectation isn't there.

Sports are slow now, with no baseball or football. March madness isn't here yet. NASCAR is just starting. They could have talked a little golf, but chose not to. Still, they are a sports station, and could have done more, both in quantity and in quality. Only the Timberwolves got some quality analysis and discussion.

So fine, they didn't spend all that much time on sports, not as much as you might expect on a sports station. Instead they did the Grammy Awards, some pop music, and some movies, plus a few "Willie Clark" news of the weird items. This wasn't a good choice, as I found them totally unconvincing as music or movie critics. They had their individual opinions as to why they liked one song or movie and didn't like another. They didn't, perhaps couldn't, tell you why they did, or suggest why you might. It was little more than banter, and there's plenty of that already.

My biggest issue is the talent, mostly with "the Superstar" Mike Morris. He was continually gruff, even surly at times, as if he wasn't getting enough sleep. He sounded like he was bored with the show. This surprised me a bit, as I've always enjoyed his work on the Vikings post-game call-in show. There he stays calm, gives good insight, and goes very easy on blaming any one player or group for those many disappointing losses. Here on the Power Trip, he is Mr. Hyde.

His cohorts aren't much help, fine if you're just doing sports, but over-matched for a more general show. I can only surmise that Kelly Guest's departure was significant, and that they had better find a replacement soon.

As of now, this show is right down there with Willie Clark. Even if you really like sports, this is difficult to listen to.

After decades of dominance, WCCO 830 AM is still a major brand in Twin Cities radio. As Soucheray once observed, many kitchen radios tuning knobs were so caked with rust and cooking grease that it was impossible to change the station away from the Good Neighbor.

Many of us remember mornings with Maynard Speece, Roger Erickson, Howard Viken, and Charlie Boone. Those easy-going days of farm reports, the morning hymm, the CBS World News Roundup at 7 am, and Joyce Lamont are all but gone, replaced by a frenetic concatenation of 30 to 90 second segments. The breakdown of my three day, twelve hour sample:

  Commercials         35%

  News                26%

  Sports              11%

  Entertainment News  10%

  Weather              6%

  Traffic              5%

  Banter               4%

  Other                3%

This broadcast is clearly aimed at the commuter who might hear 20 minutes or so. Weather and traffic are given every ten minutes. That and the commercials take up nearly half the time right there. As such, Host Dave Lee doesn't get the air time most morning hosts receive.

That 26% is news is commendable, and it's the best quality radio news on the dial. You get 3 minutes of CBS news (quiet out there!) and 4 minutes of local news at the top of each hour. But most of that is repetition across the four hours. If you boil down the non-commercial content to eliminate the repeated information, you have about 45 minutes or so of content each day.

Dave Lee also does play by play for Gopher football and basketball, and that's basically what he does here, calling the action as the board operators hurriedly switch from one segment to the next. Given that assignment, I think he does a good job.

If you want a quick recap of what's going on, WCCO is your best choice in the morning. But if you have the morning off, "traffic and weather together on the eight's" will either bore you or annoy you. Listen for 20 minutes, then put on some music.

Next up: KFAN's Power Trip with "The Superstar" Mike Morris.

KQRS, that is, 92.5 FM, featuring Tom Barnard, Terri Trane, and the rest of the KQ Morning Crew. This is the number one morning show in the Twin Cities with a solid lock on that 18-35 demographic advertisers crave. First, the time breakdown:

Hosts               56%

Commercials         26%

Music               11%

Sports               4%

Traffic              1%

Comedy Skits         1%

Weather              1%

Given it's success, it seems odd how loose the format is here. The only thing you can really count on is that you'll hear about six "classic rock" standards at regular intervals. At less predictable times, you'll hear 5-6 minute commercial blocks, the rest being one minute here and there. Hey, they don't carry network news at the top of the hour, so they have to get their bathroom breaks in somewhere.

The content also goes in streaks, often 15 minutes or more. American Idol garnered the most time, playing some of the contestants who didn't make it. This is perfect for Barnard, who regularly conjugates "to suck": he sucks, she sucks, this sucks, that sucks, and to be sure, those "singers" did indeed suck. But this got tiresome after a couple of minutes.

The murderers who planned to open a coffee shop in Amsterdam triggered a lengthy discussion of Amsterdam itself. Again, this was perfect for this show, with the libertine attitudes there toward drugs and sex. This, too, is tiresome after a few minutes, at least for someone my age. But a raw edge with a lot sexual banter is a staple, maybe the staple of this show. I, in fact, quit listening to this show when I was in that 18-35 demographic for that very reason, as it was much more raw then. Yes, it has mellowed with age, and I'm happy to hear that Terri no longer works in a "hostile" working environment.

Other subjects included the Chaska murder itself, the pediatrician acquitted, the Golden Globes awards, the "Chocolate City" remark, and the "Fifth Duke" of Cleveland. I was impressed with a couple of unlikely segments with a representative of "America's Test Kitchen" and a webmaster who runs a travel feedback site. I don't expect a hard news format here, and the fluff factor was indeed 62 percent.

You've heard Tom Barnard more than you know in narrations and commercials everywhere. Still, his vocal quality grates on me a little, with that slight rasp. It's like the "velvet fog" without the velvet; yes, this is not Mel Torme. He also hurries a bit much, often trying to see how close he can cut to a break after saying "KQ". That said, he's still very good at what he does.

Terri Trane, well, I have better memories of her way back when I used to listen. She's really not that good. She basically now just reads the traffic reports and contributes little else, all delivered in a flat vocal style. I picture her staring out the window, not at all focused on the show. I'm not familiar with the rest of the current Morning Crew, but they did well.

I won't argue with success, and if I were them, I wouldn't change a thing. OK, yes I would and I'd mess it up, no doubt. But as I said, I'm no longer in that KQ demographic, so while I wish them continued success, I'll take KTLK.

Next up: Wendy Wilde, heard 6-9 AM on Air America 950 AM.

This past I week I recorded the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday editions of the new KTLK morning show. It goes a full four hours from 5 to 9 AM, starring Andrew Colton and Kelly Guest. First, the time breakout:

  Hosts               62%

  Commercials         17%

  Local News           7%

  Traffic              4%

  Weather              3%

  FOX News             3%

  Sports               3%

  Rush Limbaugh        1% (Morning update)

I thought Willie Clark spread himself too thin covering 56 topics over his three day sample of 10.5 hours. These hosts covered 98 topics in their three day sample of 12 hours. Part of that is that this program has less traffic, sports, and no business news, i.e. fewer "drive time" distractions. They also had an additional 90 minutes to fill, since they start at 5 AM.

Willie Clark did not repeat any topics. Colter and Guest repeated several. (I only counted them once.) This isn't necessarily bad, as few people will listen to the entire show in this time period. For a current topic, like the Alito confirmation hearings, this is often a plus.

Besides 50 minutes of banter (happy talk, intros, exits), Judge Alito was the big subject, garnering 31 minutes. Five more topics received more than ten minutes: the Andrews murder (Edina couple who moved to Florida), Iraq, bird flu, whining TSA screeners, and the new St. Paul smoking ban. The last included a live telephone interview of Bob Moffitt, who was undetstandably happy, even happier no doubt when his false statements sailed through unchallenged.

Eleven more topics took 5-10 minutes, twenty more took 3-5 minutes, seventeen took 2-3 minutes, twenty eight took 1-2 minutes, and fifteen were under 1 minute.

While better than Clark at 100%, this show still has an uncomfortably high fluff factor of 42%.

In covering the news, Colton and Guest can't help but give us some insight into their politics, but otherwise the show is pretty much apolitical. I think that's a reasonable strategy, as you have many other programs on KTLK to handle that. If it matters, Colton seems to be somewhat left of center, while Guest somewhat right of center.

Andrew Colton's news experience shows, and Kelly Guest's smooth radio skills are an excellent complement. The chemistry works. They're still sound like they're rushing things a bit, but for a new team, doing very well at not stepping on each other's lines.

It's a good blend of national and local news, and while I could do without knowing if Angelina Jolie is pregnant or not, the fluff at least waits its turn behind the real news.

I'm impressed overall. In fact, it is now my new personal morning choice.

Next up (by request!): the KQ Morning Crew.

Things are already moving quickly at the big AM 1500, per Dementee and Fraters. In fact, I started this series figuring Willie Clark might be the first casualty. So before this becomes a post-mortem, here's my analysis of Willie Clark himself.

I have no idea why he was hired. Had he been one of the "Next Big Thing's" I reviewed last year, he would have finished in the middle of the pack. As I noted in part 1, he frequently pauses in mid-sentence, often 3 seconds or more. He stammers and fills with "um" and "ah" and "you know" and "while" and "now" while he figures what to read next. And other than sports where he does seem to have some passion, that's all he really does - read.

And what does he read? Little more than the "news of the weird" like stupid bank robbers that use their own deposit slips for hold-up notes. Over my three day sample, 338 minutes outside of breaks, weather, traffic, business, and Reusse, I tallied:

  Callers     18%  (various topics from below)

  Sports       9%  (by himself, no Reusse)

  Banter       8%  (intros, exits, happy talk)

  Weather      4%  (without Hammer)

  Topics      61%

Only five topics merited more than ten minutes: movies, company-mandated weight loss, Florida: home of life's losers, poor airline service, and procrastinating.

Another five topics received 5-10 minutes: Congress's low ratings, New Orleans Katrina damage bus tours, Super Bowl commercials, vodka, and the most popular vacation destinations. Six topics received 4-5 minutes, seven topics 3-4 minutes, eight topics 2-3 minutes, thirteen topics 1-2 minutes, and 12 more under 1 minute.

Other than sports, not one of these 56 topics had anything to do with the headlines last week. The miners were still "alive" on Tuesday, with reality and confusion setting in Wednesday and Thursday. There were a number of angles to follow in this story, such as mine safety and our own mining industry up north. No, it was more important to discuss Rollergirls.

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's stroke drew but a few seconds of comment, contempt actually for those of us who think this is an important story. He cares not for the miners (or his boss insists as much), yet complains that Sharon pushed the miners off the front page. Jack Abramoff? John Murtha? Judge Alito? Never heard of 'em.

Locally, Pawlenty met with Ford in Detroit. Two mayors were sworn in, one clearly intent on outlawing smoking in St. Paul bars. Northwest Airlines' pilots may go on strike. Apparently Bob Berglund's summary at the top of the hour is all you need to know.

Throughout all of this, I got the clear impression that Mr. Clark isn't exactly a people person, an oddity in this business. Further, he sounds to me as if he all but hates his job, perhaps taking it only as a transitional step to some other station or role.

You add it up, and there is absolutely no reason to listen to this program, and KSTP's management gets a big slice of the blame here as I've noted. You can hear the same headlines at the top of the hour, and equivalent sports, weather, and, (sigh) traffic on any competitor. The rest is fluff - pure fluff. You learn nothing. You gain no insights. And Clark's somewhat dour style can ruin a perfectly good morning.

As others noted, guest co-hosts have suddenly appeared this week. I couldn't care less. My dial, long set to KSTP in the morning is now set to Bill Bennett's Morning in America or sometimes Ian & Marjorie's Balanced Breakfast.

Our newest local talent is Willie Clark, heard mornings 5:30 to 9:00 on AM 1500 KSTP. I recorded Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this past week, January 3-5, as the basis of this review. As you may know, Mr. Clark comes to us from Sioux City, Iowa. He lived across the border in North Sioux City, South Dakota. There is also a South Sioux City in Nebraska, which I imagine made it a little complex and confusing to track state politics.

As I like to do, here is the breakdown by segment type:

  Host (Mr. Clark)    57%

  Commercials         13%

  Sports               9% (Patrick Reusse)

  Local News           7% (Bob Berglund)

  Traffic              6% (Kenny Olson)

  ABC News             3%

  Business news        3% (Wall Street Journal)

  Weather              2% (Patrick Hammer)

These are approximate of course. It's often hard to draw the line during the happy talk transitions. There are also the quick weather forecasts within the host segments and "brought to you by" tags here and there.

Very striking is the very low (by Patriot standards!) commercial load. A number of these spots were in fact promos for other AM 1500 programs and Public Service Announcements. But this seems more the rule across the dial this January. Maybe the advertisers are cautious during this big transtion for KSTP and launch of an all new station, KTLK-FM.

Most striking, however, is Mr. Clark's frequent, lengthy pauses, for no apparent reason. Several were over four seconds, dozens over three seconds in my three day sample. When I edited out the excess delays over one second, I eliminated over 26 minutes of dead air, an average of 2.5 minutes per hour. When you add to this a high amount (for a professional broadcaster) of ah's and um's, I think this is a significant problem for this show. Even when reading text, these unexpected dropouts make it harder to follow, and certainly more annoying.

As I said of Bob Davis, this portion of KSTP's day is very constrained by their drive time format. In fact, I think it has become worse with an announced "traffic and weather together every 15 minutes" policy. Actually, I think they have the weather correct. There are two live segments with staff meteorologist Patrick Hammer, around 5:50 and 7:35. The rest are quick "Patrick Hammer's forecast is ..." readings every so often.

But much as I like Kenny "Soul Man" Olson, I call on KSTP to be the first to stop this incessant "traffic report" nonsense. These reports that in effect cry wolf every 15 minutes numb the listener to the occasional exception. Just tell us about the big stuff, like an overturned tanker truck.

All in all, this format is nowhere near as crazy as Dave Les's Short Attention Span Theatre over at WCCO 830. But it still sounds like organized chaos. Willie Clark does manage to get the airwaves to himself half the time, and I'll review what he does with that time in the next post.

Meanwhile, I'll be recording the new KTLK-FM Morning Show with Andrew Colton and Kelly Guest this week.