Well, everybody else is writing about it, so I might as well too. There are two significant directions that this could go, and I honestly can’t decide which one to take it. Let’s first start off with the “just business” canard that WTMJ almost tossed out there. Frankly, I didn’t find the show appealing enough to listen to. She just couldn’t make the transfer between the printed word and the spoken one. Judging by the ratings, most people agreed with me.
Counterbalancing that, the time slot she was in is truly the dead time of radio. Almost the entire potential audience is doing something else, whether that is watching TV, out eating, out at the bar, or out at the game. Indeed, that last factor, specifically the fact that WTMJ airs the Brewers, Bucks and Badgers, made it harder for Jessica to cultivate an audience because half her shows are pre-empted. She also came quite cheap, as she was a part-timer. I can’t imagine Dennis Miller’s syndication price being that cheap, especially since, unlike with Jessica’s show, WTMJ has to pay Dennis’ syndication company a significant amount for the shows that aren’t aired.
That leaves the flap that Tim Cuprisin and his fellow-traveler lefties used to bludgeon WTMJ into something like submission, the bit where a chicken substituted for Eugene Kane, the resident racist at the Journal Sentinel. My, oh my, how fast the firing line has moved to mere criticism of black racists. Worse, WTMJ management made it clear that’s the new line. If that truly is the line, I don’t expect Dennis’ show to last very long, because he is an equal-opportunity ripper.
They could’ve saved themselves a LOT of problems by keeping Mark Reardon around.
