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?

The War Begins

The day we’ve been dreading for so long is finally here:

- The Globies have already remade Ted K into a saint. Expect the next thundering editorial to be aimed at the Pope for his slow pace in deifying the late senator.

- Don’t believe for a moment that Democrats have time for genuine mourning, the internal war over his successor is already underway. Calls to rewrite the 2004 law in order to provide their party with the advantage of incumbency will grow louder, especially from The Globies.

In fact, Beacon Hill ruling party sleazebags are already plotting and scheming as we speak.

One upshot: the political infighting and backstabbing will be fun to watch.

Another: if the rules are changed, the appointment process could easily destroy Deval Patrick for good, just ask David Paterson.

- Network news coverage could prove even more over-the-top than what is seen locally.

- As nonbelievers are singled out for scorn after making “insensitive” statements about Ted K, watch for the “gotcha” game to begin.

- Even token conservative Michael Graham’s WTKK-FM slot has been overtaken by flaky quasi-liberal talk today. A touchy-feely weekend advice talker is filling-in and providing syrupy, sugar-coated love letters to Ted K. No wonder the ratings are in the toilet.

Here’s a letter from a SaveWRKO reader:

WTF? Today of all days, you would think WTKK would want a news / political person — Dan Flynn maybe?

Even if there were not major breaking news, does it make sense to have a self-help guru covering a political talk show? Does Dr. Laura ever fill in for Rush? Maybe Dr. Dean Edell can fill in for Jay next time he’s on vacation. It’s been almost a week since he hasn’t had one.

It takes a lot to get me to listen to WRKO when Howie isn’t on, but the suits at ‘TKK are making it easier and easier.

— Perhaps trying to one-up WTKK’s leftward shift, WRKO actually dumped Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham today, replacing them with convicted felon Tom Finneran, the corrupt former Democratic House Speaker.

Ted K’s passing provides the elitist, establishment media a chance to flex its muscles, perhaps for the last time. Don’t think for a moment The Globies aren’t prepared to take full advantage of this opportunity to sustain and promote political corruption in Massachusetts.

Media Suck-Up Comment Of The Month

With this gem, Eddie Andelman wins the Suck-Up award over any prospective challengers:

Andelman, who has had a variety of roles on radio and TV in Boston over the years, appearing on more than 100 sports stations throughout the country, said he’s enjoying his job as host of “The New Sports Huddle” Sunday nights from 7-10 on WTKK-FM.

“The last year and a half, I’ve been at 96.9,” said Andelman. “It’s a great station with great people.”

Andelman has had a strong relationship with many of the sportswriters in Boston, and said it makes sense that newspaper reporters have crossed over to participate on the broadcast side.

“I always felt there should be a marriage between talk radio and writers,” he said. “I always knew that writers eventually would have to be in another kind of media. You could see 20 years ago, once the Internet started, it was a matter of time. Content is still king.”

Isn’t that rich? You gotta love somebody who would praise Boston radio’s most notorious programming habit.

On Second Thought, There IS A Local Angle

As I watched this bombshell report on the background of former Catholic priest-turned-KGO / San Francisco talk show host Bernie Ward, one question came to mind: were it a major Hub-based political or media insider facing charges, would one of our TV stations dare to do this kind of investigative research and reporting?

Boston TV news is little more than car crashes, fires and the latest shootings in Dorchester and Roxbury. And it certainly isn’t interested in taking down well-connected insiders from our media-politics regime.

It’s About Credibility

For a moment, let’s put aside whatever feelings we might have about House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s clearly shaky political future and look at his ethics mess from a whole different perspective.

Based on how they handle the events of the coming days, various Bay State organizations have a great deal to gain or potentially lose. Let’s take a look:

Bay State Republicans: now completely shut out of power and without substantial numbers anywhere on Beacon Hill, the GOP needs to prove to voters that it still has a relevant purpose.

That can be accomplished here by firmly positioning itself as a fearless watchdog against abuses of power during a period of one-party rule.

During the DiMasi mess, it has been out in front and particularly noisy. Whether the party will show a new, competent side over the long term is anyone’s guess. If London can elect a Conservative mayor, then anything is possible, even in Massachusetts.

Them Dems: could this be the new incompetent Bay State political party? How does one take the gift of single-party rule and screw it up this badly? Overconfidence is the culprit, the feeling that Bay State voters will overlook virtually any Democrat scandal.

Right now, they’ve become a fodder machine for pundits, a situation that will hurt them in November.

Newspapers: the DiMasi mess is unusual because the story was broken by the Democrat-friendly Globe, which normally serves to protect Beacon Hill’s corruptocrats. The Herald has had to play catch-up for once, but has been all over it since Sunday’s Globie front-pager.

This odd switcheroo might explain why DiMasi’s political position is now so threatened: the beautiful people still read the Sunday Globe.

Talk Radio: a medium that was created (largely in Boston!) as a natural citizen watchdog has now been so badly compromised that area listeners no longer trust it. All three local talk stations have been tripping over each other to see who could suck up to Beacon Hill the most, with embarrassing results.

Rather than serving as a voice for Massachusetts voters and taxpayers, all three stations now actively fight them, with perhaps a couple of exceptions on the schedule.

Think about it: while The Felon defends local crooks and WTKK features hour-long suck-up fests, THE GLOBIES went after DiMasi. When the Boring Broadsheet is more trustworthy than WRKO, WTKK and WBZ combined, we are in SERIOUS trouble.

While the commonwealth’s most powerful political figure goes down to defeat, all of these players need to have battle plans in place.

And when Sal gets the boot, I’ve little doubt that a local talk station will be waiting in the wings with a mega-bucks contract. How did the situation deteriorate to this point?

UPDATE: I’d left out a whole category here, that of local television news. During Friday’s 11pm newscasts WCVB-5 reported on the alleged threat against a female lawmaker by a colleague, but ignored the DiMasi scandal. WHDH-7 focused on the harassment angle but worked in a mention of Sal’s troubles.

But hey, aren’t car crashes on Route 3 more important?

Bailey’s Self-Serving Rate Card Comparison

In today’s Boston Globe, Steve Bailey used his column to do something terribly self-serving: he included rate card comparisons for WRKO, WEEI, WBZ and WTKK.

Sure enough, WEEI’s morning show comes out on top:

Who is on top in Boston’s drive-time talk radio world? Nothing says it so directly as the rate card for a 60-second ad.

In the morning: WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan, $1,500; WBZ, $1,300; WRKO’s Tom Finneran, $400 (whose show I appear on every morning); and WTKK’s Don Imus, $250.

In the afternoon: WEEI’s Glenn Ordway show, $1,500; WBZ, $625; WRKO’s Howie Carr, $600; and WTKK’s Jay Severin, $350.

Over at Media Nation, Dan Kennedy correctly points out that radio rate cards are full of imaginary figures, rarely paid by sponsors. Would you ever pay the full sticker price on a car purchase?

Radio ad buys are actually discounted far more, especially when spots are purchased in quantity, or when a sponsor isn’t picky about time slots. So Entercom’s fantasy rate card might simply be pumped up higher than Greater Media’s. For the sake of the rest of this discussion, however, we will treat them equally.

Another big factor is availability: how many are they actually selling? Many SaveWRKO readers have pointed out how WRKO seems to run an incredible number of annoying PSA fillers, a sign of unsold inventory.

As for Finneran generating higher rates than Imus, that’s an easy one: WTKK is paying a price for running syndication in morning drive rather than a local show. Even if The Felon stinks, at least he’s in Boston. That makes a big difference during key drivetime hours.

One major point that has been missed is that WRKO’s low rates must be killing Entercom. Remember, WRKO airs the Red Sox games, not WEEI (generally with one weekly exception). WRKO turned in puny Red Sox ratings in 2007, despite the team winning the World Series.

We know the company is paying somewhere between $15 and 20 million per year to run Sox games. So WRKO broken out by itself must be losing millions. Can WEEI make up for WRKO’s losses? Maybe, maybe not.

In my book, the worst buy on the list is WBZ’s newswheel, where larger numbers of listeners tune in, but for very short periods of time. They are the least likely to stick around through the next commercial break. A good talk host (certainly not Finneran) can tease ahead and discourage dial-turning.

As far as Carr fetching more than Severin, despite the latter’s higher ratings, several thoughts come to mind. First, it’s hard to believe Howie’s getting that kind of bread after his long break last year and weak recent performance.

Second, he’s been on the air many years and is perhaps the most recognizable radio name currently working in the market. And WRKO itself has been building a loyal audience for a quarter-century, even if has chosen to piss it away over the last few years.

By contrast, WTKK has struggled since its 1999 debut to build a fiercely loyal local audience. It has played it far too safe, preferring to keep Boston politicians appeased rather than build long-term listenership. Station marketing is also weak and the current talent lineup leaves much to be desired. It beats WRKO in the 25-54 category, but that hasn’t translated to as much as it should.

As for Bailey, even though he discloses his WRKO contributions in the column, the piece is blatantly self-serving. If WTKK’s rates were higher than WRKO’s, do you think he would have included this information?

UPDATE: There’s an interesting discussion about Bailey’s column here.

Priorities

I am much more interested in understanding why a five-year-old boy choked to death on a local skool bus than watching local TV news bubbleheads continue their mindless Super Bowl hype.

Regan Gets His Own Show

The weirdest talk radio-related story in ages has been buried in the news: WRKO / Herald PR flak George Regan is getting his own talk show!

Oddly enough, it will be heard on one of WRKO’s competitors: WBIX, the long-troubled business station. While the Globies mentioned the news in Friday’s editions, the Herald apparently didn’t:

Regan gets set to talk about business

Never at a loss for something to blather on about, PR mouthpiece George Regan is getting his own one-hour morning show weekdays on Alex Langer’s business talk station, WBIX (1060 AM).

“Regan’s Rants” debuts Feb. 1 at 8 a.m. and will be a mix of call-ins, guests, and prepared material. The flack’s foray onto the AM airwaves will pit him against a few of his own clients – including Tom Finneran on WRKO and John Dennis and Gerry Callahan on sports station WEEI – an unusual PR move, indeed.

Again, why does every media and politics insider in Boston feel entitled to a radio talk show? And how do they keep getting them?

Local Media Snows Us All

Last night, watching Boston TV news reporters make excuses for Deval Patrick’s mishandling of the winter snowstorm was simply too much to bear, so I moved on to something else.

Though WHDH-7 is running a much more critical AP story on its website this morning, last night, the 7 News Team’s love for our governor (or unwillingness to criticize him) couldn’t have been more clear.

That’s now the prevailing tone in New England media coverage of the political power structure, after a rocky period early in Patrick’s tenure. But he soon after laid down the law, so it’s been nothing but pro-Deval drivel ever since.

That’s also the thread that ties together this blog’s focus: courage. SaveWRKO kicked off very much by accident early this year after our state’s traditionally most vocal critic, WRKO radio, was turned into an apologist for corruption and bureaucracy on Beacon Hill.

It wasn’t just the unfortunate hiring of convicted felon and corruptocrat Tom Finneran: Howie Carr was later taken by the body snatchers, returning to air with fluffy filler segments designed not to stir the pot.

This was the year where the bad guys took firm control of local talk radio for political purposes, ratings and revenue be damned. Even with the Red Sox on the schedule, WRKO’s ratings were disappointing. And WTKK has dug in its heels in the face of a largely-rejected lineup.

On the print side, the Boston Globe provides a mixed picture, with excellent investigative pieces into our stone age state-run mental institutions and sleazy small claims court system. But the paper is always careful not to point too many fingers directly at Beacon Hill Democrats, providing protection for the regime at all costs.

Meanwhile, the Herald’s survival represents our best hope, but it too is off course. Particularly on its editorial pages, the Herald needs to position itself as the fearless rebel publication, one that will fight for the interests of its readers. But even it is too beholden to the incestuous local media-politics clique, which undermines the paper’s credibility.

Today, a story from California caught my attention, because this level of courage rarely exists in the media anymore, whether in New England or anywhere else.

In 1953, a tiny daily newspaper in the then-small Central Coast town of Watsonville challenged a corrupt county district attorney who campaigned on a platform of shutting down gambling houses. After he took office, the paper discovered Charles Moore was actually himself tied to local betting outfits and only interested in shutting down the competition on behalf of his mobbed-up friends.

Despite a real risk to their own safety and that of their families, the small staff of the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian spent a year working relentlessly to get the story, upsetting the local political establishment (who had not only backed Moore, but created his prosecutorial career out of thin air) in the process.

Against all odds, they succeeded in forcing Moore from office. By that point the story had gone national, with the paper’s efforts receiving a tremendous amount of publicity. He later became a priest and died Sunday at the age of 80. There’s more coverage here from the AP.

For its efforts, the Register-Pajaronian became the smallest paper in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, an honor usually reserved for major publications.

It’s that lack of fear, so rare in today’s gutless media environment, that is most admirable. Why should anyone be afraid of Deval Patrick and his rudderless administration? Why are talk hosts forced to apologize for making mundane gay references? And why are our supposed “rebels” looking so watered-down these days?

In Boston, we even reward people who dishonestly claim to have won a Pulitzer Prize with multi-million dollar radio contracts and a newspaper column (in the Herald, the publication that is supposed to know better).

What our local media sycophants don’t realize is how badly they are misreading public sentiment. Between my futile effort to catch a flight out of Logan yesterday and other activities around the area, I’ve heard a lot of anger over the way the snowstorm was mishandled.

Because we knew the storm was coming far in advance, their excuses just aren’t going to fly. In a state with high taxes and big government hovering over every aspect of our lives, we expect the roads to be cleared during snowstorms. It’s that simple.

That’s why no amount of covering for Deval & Company is going to fool the public this time.