[BC] Building an audience

[Rich Wood]

------ At 10:58 AM 10/13/2005, cldube wrote: -------

>Did O'Reilly and Hannity get their national exposure on television 
>and then make the migration
>to syndicated radio (I'm not talking about local shows)? I knew them 
>from TV long before hearing them on radio in this area. That would 
>guarantee some monies (and built in audience?) to back up an upstart 
>nationally syndicated radio show methinks? They would already be 
>familiar names. Just askin'.

O'Reilly was on FOX before he brought "Fair and Balanced" and his 
spin on the no spin zone to radio. Hannity was on WABC before he went 
to FOX. He's pretty enough for TV to take a chance. He's the classic 
brunette blond.

Most people who do TV find radio much more difficult and fail. On TV 
you have a cast of thousands just to mop your face. In radio you fly 
by the seat of your pants for hours at a time. At WOR we once had a 
construction crew chop all of our phone lines trying to steal what 
they though was a big copper cable. When they discovered it was 
mostly insulation, they dropped it in the basement. All we had was 
the STL. No incoming calls for many hours. Most TV people couldn't 
vamp for that long. The experienced Talk Show Hosts on WOR did a 
pretty good job of it. The network was down and we used Subway Net to 
deliver CDs to ABC.

Generally there's very little synergy between TV and Radio. I had to 
deal with Eyemark when Dr. Joy Browne tried TV. They took a known 
personality and tried to change her. Her show ran longer than Laura 
Schlessinger's version of Jerry Springer but it didn't click. With TV 
none of the cross promotion promises were kept by Eyemark.

It's interesting to note that Roger Ailes at FOX expected "his" 
people to sign with FOX. O'Reilly resigned with Westwood and Hannity 
stayed with ABC. Otherwise there would probably be a "Fair and 
Balanced" FOX Talk Radio network, not just radio news.

Eyemark never made mention that Joy Browne was on radio. We upheld 
our part of the bargain by promoting TV.

Two of the biggest disasters on network radio or TV were moving Larry 
King to daytime radio based on the TV show and giving Limbaugh a TV 
show. Somehow a fat cranky Conservative in a dark blue suit with a 
decades supply of Brylcream used each show didn't have the showbiz 
flair of American Idol or Dancing with Somebody Famous (or whatever 
that was called)..

Rich