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News & ArtsMonday, September 14, 2009
City What Happened to TBTL?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 1:35 PM
As Dan noted last week, the awesome KIRO radio show Too Beautiful To Live is off the air.
"Not awesome," say TBTL fans, who recently postered the station's wall in protest.
So why was the show cut from the on-air lineup?
“It didn’t appear to be working, according to the ratings," said KIRO program director Rod Arquette this morning. "When we asked people, they said it just didn’t seem to fit with the overall theme of what KIRO is about.”
What is KIRO about? From my December 2008 feature on TBTL:
At almost every hour of every day, KIRO's on-air programming consists of sports jabber, political shouting matches, and the same old traffic reports—except for during three very odd hours each weekday evening when Too Beautiful to Live is on.
KIRO is abandoning its hopes of courting a younger demographic with TBTL—a show that was created by Luke Burbank, explored everything from Beyonce to the troubled banking system, and cut it all with great music and wonderful, meandering stories. Instead, the station is going back to the old (in every sense of the word) format.
“This was going to be an experiment—throw it in the beaker and see what comes out of it," said Arquette. "And it didn’t turn out the way we all hoped it would... Everything in this business is driven by ratings."
One place where TBTL's numbers did stand out: online. The show had about 226,000 podcast hours downloaded in the last month. "Which is a HUGE number," Arquette said, noting that no other KIRO show has anything close to that big an online following. "That’s where the greatest success was," he continued. "Because on a ratings level it just didn’t seem to be clicking.”
So TBTL is going to continue as an online-only show (broadcasting live right now, according to the new homepage) with KIRO paying Burbank through the end of the year.
And then? Can Burbank shop his show elsewhere? Who, in fact, owns the TBTL concept?
"I don't know who owns that," Arquette said. "We're going to have to negotiate."
3
Luke owns the TBTL "brand", or whatever you want to call it, and is broadcasting over the interwebs, from his home, starting today. www.tbtl.net
4
Shocking. Who would have thought that Seattle radio listeners would tune-out three hours a day of vapid mumbling by blasé self-absorbed radio personalities whose entire vocabulary consisted of pop-culture fragments absorbed while watching TV Land.
5
@4 Yeah, it's much more interesting to listen to an angry old white guy shouting catchphrases like "death panels" and "socialism".
8
KIRO also changed up their hourly format to broadcast the national top-of-the-hour CBS news and interrupts the surviving on-air personalities every 7 minutes for traffic updates. This approach clearly is designed to compete with the all-news-all-the-time KOMO 1000 news format.
Sure, the TBTL podcast remains, thankfully. But I got into TBTL - and KIRO at all - by actually hearing the show by sheer accident on the air on my way home one night in its first week.
Clearly, by shunning TBTL exclusively to the interwebs, KIRO seems to be giving up on attracting younger listenership to its terrestrial broadcast out of fear of losing their predominantly baby-boomer demo. Replacing TBTL with a conservative-leaning talk show host in the 7-10pm slot isn't exactly going to compete with KEXP.
Sure, the TBTL podcast remains, thankfully. But I got into TBTL - and KIRO at all - by actually hearing the show by sheer accident on the air on my way home one night in its first week.
Clearly, by shunning TBTL exclusively to the interwebs, KIRO seems to be giving up on attracting younger listenership to its terrestrial broadcast out of fear of losing their predominantly baby-boomer demo. Replacing TBTL with a conservative-leaning talk show host in the 7-10pm slot isn't exactly going to compete with KEXP.
9
I loved TBTL with all my heart. TBTL taps into something special, and others agree, since the podcast has fans all around the country. Kind of crappy when someone does something different and instead of inspiring others, they lose their jobs. suck.
10
I have no reason to keep an AM radio in my car anymore. TBTL was the only good and decent thing on the airwave, and although I still have a soft spot in my heart for Dave Ross, I can't in good conscience continue to listen to a station that supports Playground Bully Dori Monson and that moron Frank Shire (sp?). Dori blasted Obama every 20 minutes during the election race with "experts" who proclaimed that the market was tanking because of the THREAT of Obama winning, and Dori would then shrilly and giddily proclaim that the market was going to MELT DOWN if Obama won. Oddly, Dori hasn't taken any air time to retract his statements or take responsibility for his absolute lack of objectivity honesty or prescience. As for TBTL - the only truly fun and engaging thing left on the AM dial. KIRO has slowly gone conservative, and Dave Ross is the only real progressive thinker (ie: thoughtful not rhetorical and bombastic) left on the station. TBTL will hopefully live on in podcast. Jen and Sean were half the fun so hopefully they'll be involved too, especially Jen - a wonderful, caring, genuinely funny human being. Thank you for the best 390+ shows in Seattle radio history.
11
TBTL was, and always will be the shit. Download those podcasts and listen to them while I am purifying RNA or cloning DNA. Makes the time fly by like a Georgia Pie. Hoo Wee. Now your talking. Mama, forget life.
12
TBTL was the ONLY thing I listened to on Kiro. ALL of their hosts, except Luke, whores who pimp themselves out for local business to fatten their paychecks. You can't listen to a SINGLE program on that channel without hearing someone drop an ad placement in their show, or hear them on absurd, cheesy commericials, pimping "As seen on TV" type products
It's hard to imagine any of them, including Ross, give a damn about radio journalism, quality radio, or the issues they talk about. Anytime I do happen to hear KIRO I am left with a very clear understanding that the host is just looking for a paycheck and is counting the minutes till the show ends.
I could write an essay on the fake personas he hosts adopt to manufacture outrage and stir the pot. None of them are genuine.
Fortunately, radio as a whole is on it's way out, and the twits at KIRO (Hosts and management) will have a hard time selling their brand of "radio" to an audience that picks their programing a la carte and demands more than same ol' tired schtick.
It's hard to imagine any of them, including Ross, give a damn about radio journalism, quality radio, or the issues they talk about. Anytime I do happen to hear KIRO I am left with a very clear understanding that the host is just looking for a paycheck and is counting the minutes till the show ends.
I could write an essay on the fake personas he hosts adopt to manufacture outrage and stir the pot. None of them are genuine.
Fortunately, radio as a whole is on it's way out, and the twits at KIRO (Hosts and management) will have a hard time selling their brand of "radio" to an audience that picks their programing a la carte and demands more than same ol' tired schtick.
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