Media: No Double Teaming, KIRO-FM

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I've avoided comment on changes that started last week at KIRO-FM in Seattle, Washington. However, after listening (via podcast) to the new "co-hosting" arrangement on the Dave Ross show for more than a week with two different co-hosts, I'm finished. The Dave Ross Show, and by extension KIRO-FM, is no longer part of my regular radio listening experience.

I had made KIRO-FM's Dave Ross Show a part of my regular listening habits for most of my present period of unemployment for several reasons. While Ross has a largely left-of-center viewpoint, and expresses it in the opening features (such as the "News Through Ross-Colored Glasses") of the show quite freely, he runs a fundamentally ideas-driven show. He interviews people from across the political spectrum and asks them probing questions. His constant refrain is "trying to figure out what actually works" regardless of who suggests it, and his tagline for years was "crusader for common sense." With the exception of much of the lineup of KGO in San Francisco, such talk shows are rare in the world today--even the other shows on the KIRO-FM lineup either come from an uncompromising right-wing perspective or are not ideas-based.

Such an intellectually-based show could be boring (local public radio shows across the United States offer examples), but Ross injects humor, from lines bordering on stand-up comedy to prepared musical parodies, that makes the news fundamentally entertaining. One not only learns what arguments might make sense (mostly from Ross' left-leaning perspective, but also from guests of all stripes), but one can actually look forward to being amused. On an average day, I have felt like it was worth my time to listen to his show, relative to other options available such as Rush Limbaugh, Ronn Owens, or Jim Richards on our local newstalk station here in Toronto.

That era is over. KIRO management has apparently decided that Ross needs to have a talkative co-host, emulating the competing KOMO radio show "The Commentators" or perhaps more accurately, the afternoon Ron and Don show on KIRO-FM. For four days last week, Ross was joined by Luke Burbank, best known for his lifestyle podcast, TBTL. While Burbank can be witty when discussing deeper subjects and his previously-weekly banter with Ross was often fun, three hours of it a day was terrible. There was no longer time to take calls on most days, which eliminated the ideas-from-the-masses aspect of talk radio--it's hard to imagine a Dave Ross show without his trademark "APB" for callers of an unusual background--who often do call in and offer valuable insight. Instead, we had considerably less intellectually-inclined discourse, the epitome of which was Burbank asking former United Nations ambassador John Bolton about his mustache.

With Burbank away on other duty this week, Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur has been co-hosting with Ross. While one could understand that perhaps Burbank was intended to bring in a younger audience that listens to TBTL, it's hard to see what demographic Brodeur invites. With an even more liberal perspective than Ross, she certainly doesn't add political diversity to the show. She may have a future in talk radio--I think it would be interesting to hear her on a solo show--but I just don't see what she is adding more than distraction to Ross' show.

I suppose analysis of transcripts would reveal that Ross' opinions and argumentation are still making it to the air, but the co-hosts are so distracting that I feel like I have to listen more closely to dissect it from the inanities of the co-host, and I'm simply not willing to do that. I don't feel like I'm getting what I used to get from the show, so I'm not planning to listen anymore.

Of course, my preference would be for a return to the solo Ross show, but if a co-host is required, why not a right-wing ideas person--say, Kirby Wilbur--sitting with Ross? For all its billing, the supposed debate between John Carlson and Ken Schram on KOMO is not all that heated. KIRO-FM has the potential to out-Commentate the Commentators, but it won't happen with the Dave Ross co-hosts tried thus far.

Margin Notes: Imbayakunas, Talking Bridges, TBTL

The Imbayakunas performed near the entrance to the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario on 2-September-2009

TORONTO, ONTARIO - One day while working in Roundhouse Park in Toronto, Ontario this summer, our crew thought we heard Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa" coming from the Rogers Centre. It turned out to be the Ecuadorian group The Imbayakunas performing outside the CN Tower. The group became a fixture for much of the summer, providing the far background music for the area. In addition to traditional Ecuadorian songs and "El Condor Pasa" (which was inspired by Andean music), their repertoire includes a varied list of pop music including The Eagles ("Hotel California") and even Celine Dion ("My Heart Will Go On"). Don't they count as "CanCon" (Canadian content) without covering Dion?

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The headline could have come from a model railroader, but these protest signs along the Georgetown Line were actually calling for electric-powered commuter trains. This one was along Dundas Street West on 2-September-2009

Many trains already pass the CN Tower every day, but many more will if GO Transit/Metrolinx's plans for expanding service on the Georgetown Line come to fruition. GO wants frequent trains to Pearson International Airport and longer-distance commuter trains to Kitchener-Waterloo on the route. The plans are encountering quite an organized resistance in many neighborhoods, not so much for their frequency as simply the fact that they would be diesel-powered. Protest signs against [Premier] Dalton [McGuinty]'s Dirty Diesels have appeared all along the line in Toronto recently.

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Some interesting graffiti was found on the Wallace Avenue footbridge in Toronto, Ontario on 12-September-2009

On the Wallace Avenue footbridge over the tracks that may be electrified, some interesting graffiti was found recently. If a bridge path could talk, what exactly would it say? Get off of me?

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Radio shows aren't alive, either, and the show called Too Beautiful To Live has lived up to its name. The last broadcast of the evening talk show aimed at younger listeners on KIRO-FM in Seattle, Washington was Friday night, though Luke Burbank, Jen Andrews, and Sean DeTore will continue the program as a podcast. I must give Blatherwatch and Michael Hood credit for making the comment of the week, noting that the programs replacing "TBTL" are not awesome. Frank Shiers is live and local, but not terribly exciting, and Allen Hunt's religious program is an odd choice for the otherwise-centrist station. Interestingly, the other major Bonneville effort at reaching a younger audience, KSL's Nightside Project in Salt Lake City, Utah, rolls on--maybe it's time for me to finally listen to that program.

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I have been listening to NPR's All Things Considered often enough to catch Noa Adams doing fill-in hosting, which has been a nostalgic return to the era lasting until 2003 when he was one of three regular hosts along with Linda Wertheimer and Robert Siegel. Hearing Adams and Siegel co-hosting again took me back a decade, though Adams fans probably most enjoyed his solo hosting on Labor Day.