Author: Dan Kennedy

Boston’s talk devolution

While the focus on the talk-radio wars here and elsewhere has generally been on the dysfunctional station that is WRKO (AM 680), it seems that the real mess may be at WTKK (96.9 FM). Globe columnist Steve Bailey reports that WRKO is charging — and presumably getting — considerably more money for advertising than its rival during the all-important morning and evening commutes.

In the morning, ‘RKO’s Tom Finneran show (on which Bailey appears) is charging $400 for a 60-second ad, compared to $250 for the same ad on the syndicated “Imus in the Morning” program on ‘TKK. In the afternoon, Howie Carr (WRKO) gets $600, while Jay Severin (WTKK) lags at $350.

I imagine this needs to be taken with at least a grain of salt. In the newspaper business, ad-rate cards tend to feature more creative writing than anything you’ll find in the actual paper, and that may be true of radio as well. But Bailey’s numbers make a certain amount of sense.

Finneran, the born-again non-lobbyist, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, but the aging Imus’ return has essentially been a non-story. I suspect that most of Imus’ few remaining listeners found a new morning routine during his richly earned hiatus, and they’re not going back.

As for the Carr-Severin war, it’s a shame both sides can’t lose — but Carr does manage to bring intelligence, wit and an encyclopedic knowledge of Boston to the table, despite his laziness and his occasional indulgences in homophobic snickering. Severin possesses a large vocabulary, but his ranting, his mindless cheerleading on behalf of Mitt Romney and his mundane-yet-offensive insights into politics are tiresome. I’m not sure why, but Severin has become much less listenable since his return from syndication a couple of years ago. I guess listeners agree with me, given that Severin was beating Carr in the ratings before he left.

WTKK could have solved its drive-time shortcomings. Part of it wasn’t the station’s fault — Howie Carr wanted to switch and become the station’s morning host, but his contract didn’t allow him to do so. If I were running ‘TKK and had somehow found a way to land Carr, I’d have kept him in the afternoon and moved Severin to the less important mid-day slot. Then I’d have moved “Eagan and Braude,” the station’s best program, to morning drive.

Not that they asked me. But you know what? They’d be better off if they had.

One final note. Bailey also reports that the ad rates charged by the sports-talk programs on WEEI, a sister station to ‘RKO, absolutely blow away both ‘RKO and ‘TKK. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s famous dictum about academic politics, the infighting between ‘RKO and ‘TKK is so fierce because the stakes are so small.

What’s new is old again

Clint Hendler tries to be kind in his assessment of washingtonpost.com’s primary-night video coverage. But in the end, he observes at CJR.org, it was just TV. That the Grahams can now offer a fourth cable news channel via the Web is nice, but it’s not exactly the new-media breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. He writes:

Here’s an organization with an impressive roster of journalism pros, people who cover beats day in and day out. Bring all that to bear on an election night, and you can see how it might be the start of something special. At the same time, I could help thinking that this future looked rather old. I was seeing a newspaper ape a newscast.

I caught a few minutes of it on Tuesday. I logged in for Barack Obama’s speech. It was nothing special, and it was jerkier and less in sync than it would have been if I’d watched CNN. According to Hendler, if I’d stuck around I could have heard Jeff Jarvis say “There is no such thing as print journalism any more” for the nine-millionth time.

It might have been better than the cable nets, but it was too hard to watch. Level the technological playing field and I’ll pick the one I like best.

Not that Dan Kennedy

Several people have asked me recently about a Dan Kennedy who’s traveling the area and reading from his new book. It’s not me. It’s him. And, oh, there’s a third Dan Kennedy who writes books, too. I’m really glad I’m not him, but I wouldn’t mind having his money.

Alex Beam once wrote a pretty funny column in the Globe about the three of us, but it’s no longer freely available on the Web. So you’ll have to take my word for it.

Did I mention that you can buy my book? (Or you can read it for free if you’d like.)

Balboni begins again

You can count the number of Boston media people who’ve created significant, sustained news organizations on one hand. Stephen Mindich, who in 1966 launched the weekly newspaper that became the Boston Phoenix. Jane Christo, who transformed WBUR from an eclectic college radio station into a news powerhouse. And Phil Balboni, who founded New England Cable News. Have I missed any?

Now Balboni, 65, is leaving NECN. But rather than retiring, he’s starting an international news site to be based in Boston. According to Jenn Abelson’s story in today’s Globe, this is no small venture, having attracted heavy hitters from business and journalism, including former Globe publisher Ben Taylor. The project will be known as Global News Enterprises. Balboni has already registered the domain name globalnewsenterprises.net (a placeholder is there at the moment).

The entire news business is undergoing a wrenching cycle of destruction and reinvention. It’s easy to focus on the destruction. Today comes word that GateHouse Media, which owns about 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts (including The Patriot Ledger of Quincy), is cutting 60 jobs. Nationally, Tribune Co. and other newspaper owners keep slashing.

But Balboni’s move shows that there’s plenty of reinvention going on, too. At a time when major metros like the Globe have eliminated their foreign bureaus to focus on local coverage, there are opportunities to provide new kinds of international reporting.

It sounds like Global News will be a relatively low-budget operation, occupying a slightly different space from Global Voices Online, a Berkman Center-affiliated project that intelligently aggregates bloggers from around the world.

This is worth watching — and rooting for.

Roger Clemens’ crash landing

I was working and didn’t see any of Roger Clemens’ testimony. But this, from the New York Times, is enough for me:

Mr. Clemens testified that in those conversations with Mr. Pettitte, he was talking about his wife’s use of H.G.H. one time and on another occasion was referring to something he saw on a television show. Mr. Clemens sought to rebut Mr. Pettitte’s sworn and damaging statements to the committee that Mr. Clemens told him point blank that he had used H.G.H.

But Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, clearly did not believe Mr. Clemens, and pointed out that Mr. Pettitte’s wife, Laura, had also given an affidavit in which she confirmed that her husband told her about his conversation with Mr. Clemens shortly after it took place.

As ridiculous as Clemens’ insistence that he didn’t use performance-enhancing drugs may be, you certainly couldn’t throw the book at him on Brian McNamee’s say-so. A lot of observers have fallen for the ridiculous notion that McNamee had no incentive to lie. In fact, he had every incentive to say what prosecutors wanted him to say. Pettitte, on the other hand, is a longtime friend of Clemens who is facing no legal consequences for any of this.

It’s over. Never mind whether Clemens will go to the Hall of Fame. He could soon be facing much more serious problems. To quote U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., “Mr. Clemens, once again I remind you, you are under oath.”

A media primary challenge

It will be interesting to see whether Hillary Clinton can hang in there given the pressure that’s now going to come her way to get out in favor of Barack Obama. Not that she’s going to withdraw. But it’s possible that Obama now has such a head of steam that Clinton is going to run out of money and be relegated to also-ran status before Texas and Ohio, where she hopes to resuscitate her campaign.

Check out some of the morning commentary following Obama’s broad victories yesterday in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.:

  • Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post. “Obama’s thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack, three weeks before she reaches what will probably be more friendly territory in Ohio and Texas.”
  • Emily Bazelon, Slate. “Hillary has been an excellent first for us. No one else could have done what she’s done, with all her aplomb and professionalism and seriousness. But she doesn’t have to be the nominee, or the president, to have come through.”
  • Adam Nagourney, New York Times. “The lopsided nature of Senator Barack Obama’s parade of victories on Tuesday gives him an opening to make the case that Democratic voters have broken in his favor and that the party should coalesce around his candidacy.”
  • Jeanne Cummings, The Politico. “Hillary Rodham Clinton is now on a path to the Democratic nomination that is remarkably similar to the one that failed for Republican Rudy Giuliani.” (Indeed, there was something very Rudy-in-Florida-ish about Clinton’s popping up in Texas last night while she was losing badly on the East Coast.)
  • Peter Canellos, Boston Globe. “Clinton’s supporters insist they will make up for the recent string of losses with wins in some very large states ahead, including Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Each of those states has more of the type of voters who have supported Clinton in the past — lower- and middle-income Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Hispanics in Texas. But most analysts — along with many in both the Clinton and Obama camps — can only wonder whether Obama’s momentum will change the outlook.”
  • Andrew Sullivan, TheAtlantic.com. “She’s come undone.” (His head for a round-up of “Hillary’s finished” commentary from across the Web.)

I’m sure I could dig up more, but you get the idea.

Now — a challenge to the media, much of which deeply loathes Clinton and would love to see her campaign topple over for good. Pointing out that the game is just about over is perfectly legitimate. Analysts analyze, pundits pontificate and yes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to picture Clinton’s winning the nomination.

But just cover the damn race, OK? The fact remains that Clinton and Obama are practically tied in delegates, and that if Democratic voters in Texas and Ohio decide they really prefer Clinton after all, then she’s back in it. I’m a political junkie, and I enjoy polls and predictions as much as anyone. It’s just that they need to be kept in their proper perspective.

The Bailey Brothers

Scott Van Voorhis reports in the Herald that casino opponents are getting serious, hiring an experienced anti-casino strategist, Dennis Bailey, to help them strategize against Gov. Deval Patrick’s three-casino plan. Bailey is the brother of former Globe staffer Doug Bailey, a PR executive who’s also working on the anti-casino campaign.

Dennis and Doug Bailey are not related to Globe columnist Steve Bailey, but he’s well-known for deriding the casino plan and for tagging Patrick with the nickname “Governor Slots.”

Hillary Clinton’s non-challengers

Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn is quoted in the New York Times as saying:

She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner. Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.

Now, why would Times reporter Patrick Healy take dictation from Penn without observing that his statement is pure spin? This is Clinton’s third run for office. She did not face a serious Republican (or Democratic) challenger in her 2000 Senate run, as Rudy Giuliani dropped out. (If Rick Lazio counts, so does Alan Keyes.) Her 2006 re-election was essentially a coronation.

It looks to me as though Penn is conflating Bill Clinton’s campaigns with his client’s. And that Healy neglected to pause and say, “Wait a minute.”