Curtis Sliwa Dumped By WABC / Citadel

So where does this leave WTKK? Will they carry his new, scaled-down show run out of a tiny Salem station?

From Perry Simon at All Access:

WABC Expands Batchelor To Weeknights

CITADEL Talk WABC-A/NEW YORK is expanding weekend host JOHN BATCHELOR to weeknights 9p-1a ET starting MONDAY (11/30). The move into the slot presently occupied by CITADEL MEDIA’s CURTIS SLIWA follows the recent launch of BATCHELOR’s weekend show into syndication by WABC.

GM STEVE BORNEMAN said, “BATCHELOR’s SATURDAY and SUNDAY ratings have been so explosive, it’s a logical move to expand the program to weeknights.”

PD LAURIE CANTILLO added, “BATCHELOR offers a road map for understanding our fast-changing world at a time when listeners are hungrier for information than ever before.”

So, where does that leave SLIWA? Will he be taking another bite of the APPLE shortly elsewhere on the NEW YORK dial?

Batchelor, by the way, has been syndicated in the past and bombed. He’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.

Evil Minds Converge – For Cocktails

From the Track Gals and their “Tracked Down” notes:

Senate President Therese Murray being feted by U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt, Quincy Mayor Tom Koch, Julie Kahn from Entercom and many more at the Marina Bay home of PR guy George Regan…

Did the neighbors complain of any sulphur-like odor coming from the event?

Isn’t it fascinating how readily evil is attracted to evil? It’s magnetic.

At the global level, it’s like the dictators of North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc, gathering for cocktails. Hey, Delahunt pals around with those thugs as well! He’s the one guy who’d be comfortable in either setting.

Who would throw a party for corruptocrat Therese Murray? Unbelievable.

It’s almost as crazy as naming your dog “Maloney”.

Even more surreal: having one of these crooks as your neighbor.

WTKK – In Over Their Heads

Struggling FM talker WTKK’s troubling habit of rearranging its deck chairs continues with revamped station imaging and a new website.

Almost all references to “WTKK” have been removed and the “talk evolution” tag has disappeared as well.

Now, 96.9 is referred to as “Boston Talks”, using a generic design that looks suspiciously like a “lite FM” or “smooth jazz” cookie cutter template. If I were to take one message away from “Boston Talks”, it is that WTKK avoids controversy at all costs and is now aimed at dental waiting rooms and office park lobbies.

Here, there’s a lot of text, I’m not sure how WTKK’s remaining listeners are supposed to digest it in this format.

Another issue: the prominence of “Boston” for a station whose target audience lives in places like Peabody, Rockland, etc. Boston means little to a suburban listenership, should it really be the main focus?

The bottom line: these guys are in over their heads and another re-imaging isn’t going to help until WTKK has a lineup that makes sense and can be marketed that way.

WRKO ‘News’: Have Listeners Had It?

Moments ago, WRKO’s piped-in “news” led off the update with coverage of Ted Kennedy’s widow agreeing to appear on Oprah’s show.

Sure, The Globies are all over this one, but does the average WRKO listener want to hear about it?

I’m receiving an increasing number of complaints about WRKO’s faux “news” department, have listeners simply had enough?

Globie Dem Senate Poll Cooked?

For two days, we’ve seen the Boston Globe’s US Senate Democratic primary poll touted as firm evidence of Martha Coakley’s commanding lead over her challengers. WRKO’s piped-in “news” has highlighted it more than once, as have other outlets.

But did anyone bother to look at the data itself? The sample is heavily skewed toward female voters, with about a 60-40 women-men breakdown.

Why the oversampling? Is there evidence that men plan to stay home on election day? If so, let’s hear the reasoning.

And does it surprise anyone that Coakley would come out ahead in a survey that heavily favors women?

Could The Globies explain why they didn’t address this issue in the story?

We’ve seen oversampling used a great deal in recent months at the national level: by padding polls with extra Democrats, Obama’s ratings were kept artificially high, but that trick isn’t working terribly well at this point.

Meanwhile, bumbling primary campaigners have needlessly stepped into another pile of doggy-doo, this time related to Patches Kennedy’s troubles with the Catholic Church in Rhode Island.

Why did Coakley and Michael Capuano think attacking the bishop and church teachings on television would be wise?

Clearly, Emily Rooney was looking to stir things up, but “front-runners” should know better than to jump into an internal religious dispute that isn’t even related to Massachusetts! Politicians defending other incumbents against a bishop in this heavily Catholic state? It risks scaring away the devout, especially older (high-propensity) voters.

Since she’s already under fire for her curious handling of the infamous Father Geoghan case in 1995, there’s a particular level of indiscretion here that could hand foes a great deal of fodder in the days to come.

In an election where tiny turnout swings will make all the difference, this was a major blunder.

WGBH Senate debate image: Boston Globe

Mixed-Up Margery

Thanks to a series of muddled Boston Herald columns that put together make absolutely no sense, it’s been quite a week for WTKK’s Margery Eagan.

Try following along:

— Martha Coakley (who blindly supports ObamaNancyHarryCare even though it will damage healthcare in Massachusetts): good!

— Sarah Palin (who opposes this bureaucratic monstrosity): bad

— Sarah Palin: very, very, very bad (two catty tirades in a row just to make the point clear)

— ObamaCare that doesn’t include taxpayer-funded abortions: unacceptable

— Health care rationing (the direct result of coming “reform”, including reduced pap smears and mammograms: bad

Added together, how does any of this make sense? Eagan supports the very people who want to bring about the rationing she fears. She opposes those who question this rushed, bloated, expensive and generally ill-considered legislation, but is also angry with its proponents because they aren’t extreme enough on the abortion question.

She knows rationing is coming, with women a likely early target, but sees it as inevitable (when it isn’t at all if this bill is killed!) because “Americans (unrealistically) demand perfection“:

The dilemma, of course, is that when it comes to cancer or heart disease or lung transplants or anything else health-wise, Americans demand perfection. But perfection is very, very expensive, and we’re just about tapped out.

Understandably, she’s taking a lot of heat in the comments section below her piece. A sampling:

Hey Madge- that’s the BEGINNING of the health care “rationing” that us “scare mongers” (b@stards that we are) have been telling you would happen under this health care shell game. Ironic that they’d start with one of their base constituencies. The Bill hasn’t even PASSED yet, and the rationing and rationalizing has begun.

Years and Years of “get in early, get checked, early detection is key” goes out the window because why? Because Obama wants it that way? What’s amazing is that all those medical experts can be bought off that easily. And this is JUST the beginning….

Hey ladies, is this the “Change” you voted for? When are the people who pay bills in this country going to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and stop this moron in the White House from jeopardizing the safety of women!

—

Hey Marge:

NOW you get it… Your Messiah let you down (again) only THIS TIME you can SEE it

He isn’t REFORMING health care, he is TAKING IT OVER, and replacing it with something else.

It sure ain’t HEALTH CARE, except by name

Marge, now it’s YOUR TURN. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, for a change, instead of whining about the problem

—

Poor Marge, she just cannot get over the fact that her idol, “The Great Messiah” “Mr. O” could care less about what happens to her or anyone else. Now the people who run this nation who will vote for and pass anything he asks them to, which some of them have not read. They might do something if they knew it would cost them their cushy jobs. Marge, you will just have to live with it til 2010, and then pray we can get them out of there and just possibly have another impeachment trial.

The big question: Margery, you left yourself wide open for intense blowback, why?

Eagan & Braude image: Boston Herald library picture

Globies Play Bury The Headline

The Globies have managed to bury the Alexandra Kerry DUI bust story, with just a small link deep on the left side at Boston.com leading to a brief AP story.

At the Herald’s site, by contrast, it’s front and center, with a locally-written piece.

Meanwhile, Howie Carr can’t wait until 3pm to dig into this one. Needed: a female “do you know who I am?” voice.

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh covered her arrest here:

RUSH: I normally would not even mention this. Senator John Kerry (who served in Vietnam)’s daughter has been arrested for DUI in LA. I normally wouldn’t mention this, folks — and I’m not going to make a big deal out of it now — but I will say this: “I wonder if AP will assign an army of reporters looking into this,” because you know that if this were Sarah Palin’s child who had been stopped for DUI, more than 11 reporters would be looking into it, don’t you?

Margery Just Can’t Stop Herself

Now, it’s two columns in a row, demonstrating beyond any doubt she’s got an unhinged fixation on Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, Margery’s got it backwards.

Fifteen minutes? Clearly, Palin’s not going away anytime soon.

Think what you want about Sarah Palin, but when Margery’s alternative is the drab and bleak emptiness of Martha Coakley, who expects a US Senate seat to be handed to her for no reason beyond personal ambition, the former Alaska governor’s appeal grows exponentially.

Today’s piece also contains a particular gem in a plug for one of her touchy-feely colleagues at the ratings-challenged WTKK:

Before yesterday’s interview, life/business coach and WTKK talk host Mel Robbins offered an apt analysis of why Palin has been so polarizing. “Because she’s decided her brand is us vs. them, and since much of what she’s about is that she’s being attacked, when she’s attacked and you’re with her, you’re attacked, too.”

That’s a great way to score bonus points with the station’s beleaguered management ranks.

Powerful Conservative Women Bring Out The Worst In Margery

While she defiantly backs lackluster Democratic opportunist Martha Coakley for the open US Senate seat, WTKK’s Margery Eagan used her Herald column yesterday to point fingers elsewhere, seemingly unaware of how America perceives Bay State moonbats.

What is it about powerful conservative women that has Margery in cat-fighting mode?

From the piece:

A little nutty or totally wacked?

Totally wacked, for my money.

But this is the question some Republicans still ponder about the two most “hated” women in the country, as Fox superstar Sean Hannity lovingly calls them.

The first: probable GOP presidential contender Sarah Palin, whose 13-week “Going Rogue” tour starts tomorrow on Oprah.

The second: rising-star Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, relegated to wacko world last year after numerous bizarre moments (some detailed below). Last week she came roaring back as her anti-Obamacare rallies drew thousands to Washington, and they practically ignored GOP big shots John “tan-a-rama” Boehner and Eric Cantor to chant, enthralled, “We want Michele!”

Here, she squeezes one last drop of Outrage (!!!) out of the footage editing mistake made by Hannity’s producer (without mentioning outright dishonesty by his MSNBC competitors):

A quickly rehabilitated Bachmann now averages a major TV appearance every nine days. Conservative superstars Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and all of the Fox News network, in fact, pushed her anti-Obamacare rallies.

Hannity did apologize after Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart caught him using pictures of Bachmann’s rally that in fact were pictures of last September’s much bigger “Tea Party” rallies. And Bachmann apologized for ralliers carrying Holocaust skeletal body posters. Then there are her own freaked-out constituents. “When your captain is crazy it’s time to jump ship,” declared Dennis Coleman of Oak Park Heights in a letter to his local paper. Bachmann’s Tea Party set, he went on, is “not in touch with the mother ship.”

As long as Margery truly believes do-nothing Martha Coakley should be handed a US Senate seat for doing absolutely nothing, her credibility regarding other women in politics will remain low.

Keep This Phony ‘Senator’ Away From Our Children

For days when you find The Globies just aren’t partisan enough, try enduring an issue of the Patriot-Ledger and its flunky sister papers scattered across various towns in the region.

The Patriot-Ledger combines the establishment-backing elitism of the Boring Broadsheet with a dippy, no-questions-asked approach to covering the Bay State’s ruling class.

Today’s edition has a fantastic example, but there’s far more to this than mere media bias, it really points to the brain rot that has infected Massachusetts political life.

Watch as a Scituate mother is inspired by phony “Senator” Mark Kirk, the Friend-Of-Ted who was handed a seat in one of the sleaziest political moves in American history:

SCITUATE — U.S. Sen. Paul G. Kirk urged a group of middle schoolers to make life a learning opportunity.

Kirk, who was appointed on an interim basis to the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Edward M. Kennedy in August, visited the Inly Montessori School on Friday at the invitation of literature teacher Shelley Sommer. She worked for him at the John F. Kennedy Library.

“Whatever you do in life, don’t waste your time,” Kirk told about 40 students from Inly School and the Thacher Montessori School of Milton.

Kirk said he made the visit in hopes of inspiring students to volunteer and do community service work rather than be idle.

Phoebe Knox, an eighth-grader from Scituate, asked Kirk to describe the positives and negatives of being a senator.

Kirk said differences between political parties are disappointing.

“There’s not enough working together,” he said. “Working across the aisle is missing.”

Kirk told students he believes President Barack Obama is committed to a government health-care plan and that he agrees with the government bailouts to stimulate the economy.

Parents and teachers said students learned a lot from the visit.

“It’s an incredible honor that someone of that status would come to this little school,” said Holly Clifford, an Inly School parent.

So what did our children learn from Phony Senator Kirk?

— That success in life isn’t earned, it’s seized through connections to sleazy politicians.

— That “democracy” has outlived its usefulness, leading to a Senate chamber that looks more and more like the House Of Lords.

— That adults in Massachusetts have been conditioned to believe that decision-making is best left to appointed rulers, as we are not intelligent enough to think for ourselves. Accept the burden of a massive government bureaucracy and the hefty bill that comes with it (which will be covered by our children and grandchildren).

A creep like Paul Kirk has absolutely nothing of value to teach our children, can we at least keep him out of local schools?