Opinion: Seattle Radio Off All Weekend
(courtesy blatherwatch.com)

Where the hell was talk radio this weekend?
Seattle talk radio let us down.

After the shocking murder and mayhem Friday afternoon at the downtown Jewish Federation, they crapped out.

Talk radio is always lecturing us on how they're the real journalism; the community builders; the vox populi.

But the talk stations on that day of days, evening of evenings, weekend of weekends just checked out of live and local at the regular times. A terrorist event ending in murder was within the realm of possibility; it was a frightening national story erupting in a frightening national time and had come home to roost; and local radio didn't seem to give a national f**k.  

A reader writes: "KIRO in the past would go live and wall-to-wall on major weekend events: Princess Diana, Reagan's death, Saddam's capture. Fisher has always been too cheap and incompetent. Only recently did KIRO begin to blow off weekend breaking news for restaurant infomercials and crap."

KIRO stayed on live and local the rest of the evening as they always do on Fridays, and went to CBS at 1a Saturday as always. Then they went into the weekend crap of animal husbandry, infomercials, canned syndicates, Chef Tom, Sheriff Tex, Gardner Ciscoe, broken only by the occasional news live mikes of Frank Shiers, The Styblehead, Carl Jeffers, and Goldstein.

There was a time when KIRO would have stayed local with talk hosts coming in and working the phones all weekend. KVI, and KTTH had the same ol' sorry morass of canned corn like Republican Radio; syndicated best-ofs, infomercials, brokered health and cooking shows.

Their so-called talent were all at their Eastside homes patting their hamsters, and watering their laburnum.

We were a community needing community; the radio could have been a town hall for news and talk; an outlet for angst and a safety valve for anger and recrimination.

Newspapers, no matter how great their news-gathering capabilities, don't have the potential to create neighborhood like radio. Radio folks have always prided themselves on it.

Then it was Monday and and talk radio went back to partisan "entertainment" and doctrinaire "community;" selling mortgages, Geico, Select Comfort, and up-to-the-minute conservative mudhoney.

Friday's shooter was "a liberal," Michael Medved assured us, today. This is a great time of year to buy gutter protection, we learned this afternoon.  

"Public service" is safely shelved in the few hours a week the government makes them play those bad commercials about chlamydia and owning your own home. Let's face it- this "public good" shit doesn't pencil.

Community service, talk radio- what a crock!

Posted by michael hood on August 01, 2006 at 01:31 AM