from All Access
JULY 29, 2003
GOOD KARMA's Talk WTLX (100 X)/MADISON is running polka music instead of HOWARD STERN in mornings this week.
STERN's contract with the station expired and the station says "there are not enough listeners to justify the costs involved in carrying the show."
STERN has been replaced by "Happy Times for Jolly People," a polka stunt, while a new morning show is in the wings.
The rest of the schedule, including DON AND MIKE and TOM LEYKIS as well as the syndicated sports show with owner CRAIG KARMAZIN and STEVE POLITZNER, remain in place.
WI Columbus (Madison market) WTLX 100.5 noted with polkas this morning in place of Howard Stern. A stunt that precedes a format change? (Tim Taugher) Update: I see in their web site that Howard Stern has been dropped; a polka show called "Happy Times for Jolly People" is listed in the 5-10 a.m. slot.
This is what the WTLX www site says this morning (July 29, 2003):
**100X Launches Yet Another Morning Show**
Mon 07-28-2003, 11:09 pm
After a flood of phone calls and e-mails, 100X admits they were wrong and will seek to undo what has been done. Putting polka in morning drive was a bad idea.
The decision to launch a polka morning show was flavored by the (mistaken) assumption that Madison desired a polka show. A closer look at geographic trends shows that although there are pockets of polka backers in Fall River and Cottage Grove, the vast majority of the 100X listening area are decendents of people who immigrated to Wisconsin to escape the persecution of the polka loving majority of the old countries. (oops).
In need of a new temporary morning show, 100X returns to its roots as a champion of the oppressed, a voice to the underrepresented, and a beacon to the helpless. And who more negelected than children?
Most of us encounter children weekly, if not daily, yet how many of us have ever stopped to consider what radio stations cater to their needs? Obviously the majority of the 100X broadcasting day is not kid friendly.
We want to extend an olive branch to the pint sized cuties. Known legally as minors, we prefer to think of them as friends. And until we install our new permanent morning show, A.M.s belong to them.
So whether its the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle, or Shine on You Crazy Diamond, we have the song for your progeny.
from the Wisconsin State Journal
May 16, 2003
Pop hit staple Z104 regained its lead as the most-listened-to radio station in southwestern Wisconsin, according to the quarterly Arbitron ratings, but crunch those numbers to include only Dane County and country outlet Q106 ties Z104.
Among all listeners age 12 and older, the always-competitive morning ratings were won by news-talk station WIBA-AM (1310)'s Michael Bahr. Q106 slightly edged WIBA-FM (101.5) and Z104 for second place.
WBZU-FM (105.1), dubbed The Buzz, earned a surprise win among the much-desired demographic of adults 25 to 54. The Buzz plays pop and rock hits from 1970s and 1980s.
The station's syndicated morning program, Kimberly and Beck, which originates from Rochester, N.Y., isn't faring as well as the city's other prominent out-of-town morning show. The nationally syndicated "Bob and Tom Show," which airs from Indianapolis, continues to post impressive ratings.
Here is the rundown; the rating is the percentage of listeners with the radio on tuning in to a particular station; only commercial ratings are released.
Overall ratings
1) Z104, 8.4 2) Q106, 7.6 3) "Magic 98," 6.7 4) WJJO-FM, 6.6 5) (tie) WIBA-FM and WOLX-FM, 6.2 7) WIBA-AM, 5.7 8) The Buzz, 5.3 9) WMMM-FM, 4.6 10) WMAD-FM, 2.5.
Morning ratings
1) WIBA-AM, 8.8 2) Q106, 7.3 3) WIBA-FM, 7.2 4) Z104, 7.1 5) Magic 98, 6.3 6) WOLX-FM, 6.1 7) WJJO-FM, 6 8) The Buzz, 4.7 9) WMMM-FM, 4.1 10) WTDY-AM, 2.8.
Howard is on WTLX-FM (100.5).
from the Wisconsin State Journal
November 7, 2002
Madison's most popular morning radio show broadcasts live each weekday from a studio in aIndianapolis?!
Believe it.
In a surprise result, Indiana-based syndicated jokesters Bob Kevoian and Tom Griswold - better known as Bob and Tom - topped the Madison area's most recent quarterly Arbitron ratings. The veteran duo, heard from "classic rock" WIBA-FM (101.5), is the first syndicated program to have the largest local audience among the Madison market's hotly contested morning shows.
Bob and Tom have continued to develop a loyal Madison following since they debuted here in April 1998. The pair edged the country outlet Q106 (WWQM-FM) morning team of John Flint and Tammy Lee in the new ratings.
"Bob and Tom have a very funny morning show that has mass appeal," said Mike Ferris, Madison's FM operations manager for Clear Channel-owned stations, including WIBA-FM.
Q106, however, was the most listened-to station overall among all listeners.
"You can like country at 18. You can like country at 54," said Tom Walker, president of Midwest Family Broadcasting, which owns Q106. "It's hard to make a country station age-specific. It's the last broad-ranging genre."
Bob and Tom maintained their domination of a target audience: men ages 25 to 54. In that demographic, they held a huge lead over the next closest competitor, Q106.
While Howard Stern receives national attention, he still has not been able to lift Madison-area upstart WTLX-FM (100.5).
"The station (Stern) is on doesn't have the signal strength that WIBA-FM has," Ferris said. "Bob and Tom develop characters. They do guest interviews. They don't cross the line the way Howard does. I think that means a lot in any community."
from the Wisconsin State Journal
November 24, 2001
Craig Karmazin was born to be in radio.
The son of Mel Karmazin, a longtime executive at Infinity Broadcasting, Karmazin played pretend broadcaster as a child, and later was an intern at a Philadelphia radio station.
When he was barely out of college, Karmazin formed Good Karma Broadcasting in 1997 as a vehicle to buy three area radio stations: WBEV-AM (1430) and WXRO-FM (95.3) of Beaver Dam, and WYKY-FM (100.5) of Columbus.
He bought the stations for nearly $3.5 million, financing much of it through a bank loan in New York. Since then he has purchased stations in Watertown, Janesville and South Beloit, Ill., and tried to buy another in Mayville.
Karmazin is determined to make his own mark in the radio world.
He continues to provide intensely local radio in the communities where he owns stations, investing in new facilities and adding staff.
At the former WYKY, however, he has taken another tack. Hoping to attract listeners in Madison, he changed the station's call letters to WTLX and added New York shock-jock Howard Stern to the morning lineup.
He markets the station as 100X, with an apparent emphasis on the X. The radio station's World Wide Web site offers such features as the X-Games, where visitors can vote for the babe of the month by clicking on one of four scantily clad choices.
Karmazin also co-hosts a show on WTLX in the 4 to 7 p.m. drive-time slot with boyhood buddy Steve Politziner that Karmazin describes as stupid radio for smart people. (See related story.)
"I hope I've improved all the stations," said Karmazin.
"WTLX was the one that had a lot of opportunity and was unlucky enough to have me," said Karmazin, whose self-deprecating humor belies his East Coast cockiness.
Karmazin was reared in North Brunswick, N.J., between Philadelphia and New York City. His father was the head of Infinity Broadcasting, one of the nation's biggest radio networks. The elder Karmazin is now president and chief operating officer of Viacom, the company that includes CBS and Infinity among its holdings.
Karmazin looks and often still acts like the fresh-faced college boy he was when he was developing his radio station business plan five years ago while attending Emory University in Atlanta.
Karmazin got his first taste of Madison while visiting a friend at UW-Madison while in college and decided the area might be a good place to be in the radio business.
He contacted radio station brokers and ended up buying his first three stations even though the owners hadn't been looking to sell.
Since then, Good Karma Broadcasting bought WTTN-AM (1580) in Watertown in 1999 for $525,000. In 2000, Good Karma bought WKPO-FM (105.9) in Evansville for $2.8 million, and WTJK-AM (1380) in South Beloit, Ill., for $235,000.
He also tried to buy WMDC-FM in Mayville last year, but lost out to another bidder.
He acknowledges that it helps to have a father who is a top executive at a big broadcasting company to get bankers to open their doors, but Karmazin, 26, said his father is not an investor in Good Karma Broadcasting, and that the debt is all his.
Good Karma now has 70 employees at its various locations, including an office in Madison. Karmazin said that's up from 45 employees when he acquired the stations.
By all accounts, Karmazin is a tireless and enthusiastic broadcaster.
"I think he's done a good job of keeping the radio stations stable," said John Klinger, one of three partners of Beaver Dam Broadcasting, which sold the three stations to Good Karma in 1997.
Klinger stayed on as a consultant to Good Karma for about a year after selling the stations. He returned to that role this year, coordinating the construction of a new control room at the Beaver Dam studios and overseeing the move of WTTN's offices and studios into a remodeled building on Main Street in Watertown.
Along with the new headquarters, Karmazin gave WTTN a new format, switching from classic country music to a talk format with a strong local emphasis, including two full-time news people.
Sherrie Avery-King, manager of Watertown's Main Street program, said WTTN is "extremely supportive" of the community.
"Whenever there's an event, WTTN's right there," she said. "They're definitely a community-based radio station."
Karmazin would like to parlay WTLX's proximity to Madison into a strong presence in the Madison radio market.
"We certainly want to grow our listeners," Karmazin said, noting that the 6,000-watt station can cover Madison from its transmission tower along Highway 60 west of Columbus.
In addition to Stern, the station carries other nationally syndicated shows, including Mitch Albom, a newspaper columnist and author of best-seller "Tuesdays with Morrie."
At night, you can tune in to the Flato.com show and call in for bargains on hotel rooms, restaurant meals and the like. Flato, an acronym for "for less all things online" is owned by Good Karma and combines a Web site with the radio program to help link up bargain-seeking consumers to merchants with excess inventory.
So far, WTLX's programming for perpetually adolescent males has not attracted a large audience in politically correct Madison.
In the most recent Arbitron ratings for the Madison radio market, for instance, WTLX received a 0.6 rating, meaning that of all the people over age 12 tuned into the radio at a given time, 0.6 percent had WTLX on.
Even WKPO-FM (105.9), Good Karma Broadcasting's station in the Janesville market that transmits urban contemporary hits from a tower near Evansville, gets a 1.4 Arbitron rating in Madison, indicating more than twice as many listeners in the Madison market.
But all the good karma in the world may not be enough for WTLX to make a dent in Madison.
Madison-area radio is dominated by three companies with 15 stations and two out of three listeners. And WTLX's signal is weak and often difficult to pick up on Madison's West Side.
"They are really not a factor," said Bill Vancil, vice president and general manager of Mid-West Family Radio stations in Madison: WTDY-AM (1670), WMGN-FM (98.1), WJJO-FM (94.1), WWQM-FM (106.3) and WHIT-AM (1550).
"None put a real strong signal into Madison," Vancil said of Karmazin's stations, adding that "out-of-market stations don't show up much" in the Madison Arbitron ratings.
"Whether Howard Stern is good - that's not the point," said Vancil. "He wants to be a Madison station, but he's not. He's a Columbus radio station."
Karmazin downplays the significance of ratings and said what really matters is whether his advertisers are happy.
"If we have a thousand listeners or a million, it doesn't matter to my car dealer unless people buy cars," said Karmazin.
One happy advertiser is Tom Meyer, a real estate agent with Restaino Bunbury & Associates who says he has sold at least three houses directly as a result of the name recognition he has from his ads on WTLX.
"It's business I wouldn't have had," said Meyer.
Byline: Tom Alesia
The news is the news.
Madison radio's quarterly Arbitron ratings are out and - despite the city's countless zany morning personalities across the dial - straightforward news host Michael Bahr is No. 1.
Bahr handles the morning shift on WIBA-AM (1310), where news, weather, sports and traffic are delivered with eye-on-the-clock precision and few frills (unless you count Charles Osgood's folksy syndicated commentaries).
And Madison listeners like it that way. A lot.
Bahr, who has worked at WIBA-AM since 1987, has been among the city's most notable morning hosts for nearly a decade. On occasion, he has topped the overall morning ratings as the market's most listened-to radio host.
But the new ratings, released Tuesday, put WIBA-AM's morning show comfortably ahead of the competition. Pat O'Neill of WMGN-FM (Magic 98) ranked second while former WZEE-FM (Z104) hosts Marc Anthony and Vicki McKenna were third. Rounding out the Top 5 are Jonathan Suttin and Kitty Dunn of WMMM-FM (105.5, Triple M) and Indianapolis-based syndicated hosts Bob and Tom of WIBA-FM (101.5).
Magic 98 ranked as the most listened-to station overall, followed by WIBA-AM, Z104, Triple M and WWQM (Q106).
--snips--
from the Wisconsin State Journal
May 19, 2000
--snips--
Do you believe in Magic?
Adult-contemporary outlet, WMGN-FM (98.1), Magic 98, led the quarterly Arbitron ratings released this week.
Magic 98 is the Madison area's most-listened-to station, narrowly edging pop-rocker WZEE-FM (104.1), Z104. It's the first time Magic 98 won this category in its 17-year history, said Pat O'Neill, the station's morning host and program director.
Magic 98 also holds a sizable lead among listeners ages 25 to 54 and reaches nearly a quarter of the female listeners in that demographic.
The morning-slot race has three stations bunched at the top: first, WIBA-AM; second, Z104; third, Magic 98.
--snips--
from the Wisconsin State Journal
March 3, 2000
Howard Stern finally made a dent -- a small one, but a dent nonetheless -- in the Madison-area Arbitron radio ratings.
A New York icon, Stern, who is equal parts funny, flamboyant and foolish, has been airing here since August 1998 on Beaver Dam-based WTLX (100.5 FM), a relatively new station that aggressively pursues Madison listeners.
Inching past a few established local morning shows, Stern finished 11th out of 18 Madison-area outlets among all listeners. He also jumps to fifth in his target demographic: men ages 18 to 34.
Stern and WTLX are still miles from perennial Madison morning leaders on "Z104," WIBA-AM, "Magic 98" and WJJO-FM, but the results show the scrappy station is making tiny waves.
"He's been incredible for us," said WTLX general manager Craig Karmazin, who uses Stern's show to anchor the talk station's lineup of sports talk and shopping shows. "There was never a doubt Stern could make it in this market."
Other Arbitron notables:
*WTDY-AM's morning talker Sly didn't receive any of the expected ratings boost on the heels of his much-publicized feud with Madison Mayor Sue Bauman.
*"Z104" maintained its spot as Madison's most-listened to station, but "Magic 98" held the lead among listeners ages 25 to 54.
New at Q
Popular country outlet "Q106" hired John Flint, formerly with an Eau Claire station, as its morning host.
Flint, 30, joins Michele Stone on the program.
During Flint's debut Monday, "Q106" aired his frantic phone calls to the studio, describing how he was lost and couldn't find the station.
It was an act.
"I'm a strong believer in theater of the mind," Flint said. "If people believed it, we did a good job."
--snips--
December 13, 1999
from the Business Journal of Milwaukee
While Mel Karmazin plots strategies to expand a media empire that already includes CBS and Viacom, his only son, Craig Karmazin, concentrates on the bottom rung of the media ladder in small-town Wisconsin radio.
Since graduating with a business degree from Emory University in Atlanta in May 1997, the younger Karmazin has quietly assembled a four-station chain in Beaver Dam, Columbus and Watertown.
Craig Karmazin, 24, is the sole owner of Good Karma Broadcasting L.L.C. The company paid $3.8 million for three stations in Beaver Dam and Columbus in August 1997 and $525,000 for the Watertown station this August. The source of financing for the purchases was not disclosed, and Craig Karmazin declined to be interviewed for this story.
Karmazin said he doesn't want the spotlight focused on him, but his stations.
"I'm not looking for any publicity," Karmazin said. "I'm just plugging away here, trying to accomplish some things locally."
However, he's hardly invisible in his stations' broadcast area. Karmazin is the co-host of "The Sports Drive," a low-rated, amateurish sports talk show on the Columbus station (100.5) FM weekdays from 5 to 7 p.m. He also makes guest appearances at local advertisers' events.
Sample topics from one night's show in November: which kind of barbecue ribs are bad to eat during a date and the last time Karmazin's co-host "slept with his girl." Oh yes, and the keys to the Packers winning their next game.
"Some people might think we are young punks, and they'll call us up and tell us that," Karmazin told The Capital Times in Madison. "But that's OK."
Karmazin serves as the general manager of his stations from a squat office and radio studio building in a semi-industrial area of Beaver Dam.
At the time Karmazin bought the Beaver Dam and Columbus stations, he told the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen that he was familiar with the Madison area, which is southwest of the stations.
"I was looking to buy some stations, and I love the area," Karmazin said.
Karmazin grew up in New Jersey and listed his home address as in North Brunswick, N.J., when he bought his first stations. His father rose through the ranks as a radio advertising salesman before becoming the top executive at Infinity Broadcasting, which CBS Corp. bought in 1997.
Earlier this year, the elder Karmazin, 56, became chief executive officer of CBS and is heir apparent to the soon-to-merge CBS and Viacom.
Local media executives said Craig Karmazin is on his own with his radio venture.
"He is the man -- this isn't his dad's operation," said Jim Conley, president of newspaper publisher Citizen Publishing, Beaver Dam.
Conley said Karmazin is a "very sincere person" and "quite mature for his years."
Karmazin hasn't tinkered with the sound of his locally focused AM stations, said Conley and Mark Heiden, advertising salesman at the Watertown Daily Times." However, Karmazin has dramatically changed the Columbus FM station. In October 1998, he dropped the station's homespun easy listening sound for talk and changed the call letters from WYKY-FM to WTLX-FM. He also installed the Howard Stern show as the station's morning anchor and started identifying the station as "WTLX Madison/Columbus." Stern's home base is CBS-owned WXRK in New York City.
So far, neither the Stern show nor WTLX have connected well with the Madison market. WTLX, which has a weak 6,000-watt signal and a transmitter located one county northwest of Madison, ranked last in the Arbitron ratings for Madison earlier this year."
"He's not afraid to experiment and put on programming that's not what you'd expect," Jeff Tyler, general manager of the six-station Madison radio group of AMFM Inc., said of Karmazin.
In an effort to become more of a player in Madison, Karmazin received Federal Communications Commission approval to move the WTLX tower into northern Dane County near DeForest. However, the town board in Windsor in August rejected Good Karma's proposal for a zoning change and conditional use permit necessary to build the tower. Karmazin declined to discuss what his next move might be for the WTLX tower.
Karmazin also operates an Internet shopping site, flato.com, that offers cut-rate prices on entertainment, attractions and hotel rooms. WTLX announcers, including Karmazin, relentlessly promote the site.
Karmazin appears to be quite ambitious, despite his humble stations.
"He's a young guy, he's trying, he's making a go of it," Tyler said. "We just haven't felt any effect."
from the Wisconsin State Journal
August 13, 1999
BYLINE: Tom Alesia
In spring 1998, the station chose an Indianapolis-based, syndicated morning radio show as the permanent replacement for '90s Madison ratings king Sly, who joined WTDY (1670 AM) as chief talker.
After Sly left, classic-rock outlet WIBA-FM's sizable morning ratings burned up as quickly as Jimi Hendrix's guitar.
Enter Bob and Tom. The wisecracking Indianapolis duo, who use a revolving door of touring comics to provide material, had succeeded in dozens of other markets, but Madison was unchartered turf for syndicated morning acts.
Well, Bob and Tom are a hit. Not a big hit, but a hit nonetheless.
In the local quarterly Arbitron ratings released this week, Bob and Tom posted their best overall numbers. They've slowly attracted a big enough audience to lodge themselves between popular morning shows on WOLX (94.9 FM) and WWQM (106.3 FM).
"We've seen steady improvement, not just in the (ratings) numbers but the response on the street. At first, people complained, `Well, they're not a local morning show,' " said Mike Ferris, WIBA program director. "But people are accepting them because they're funny."
Bob and Tom's biggest audience is made up of men age 25 to 54, a desirable demographic for advertisers.
"They speak to the average 40-year-old like me," Ferris said, adding that Bob and Tom's audience is listeners who are "out of their college drinking days."
WIBA-FM also is experiencing a resurgence, jumping to a fifth-place tie overall with WIBA-AM after dropping to a station-low 11th place last fall.
While new hard-rock outlet WJJO (94.1 FM) continues to lead WIBA-FM, the classic-rock format is far from dead, Ferris said. He added that WIBA "livened up" its classic-rock format in recent months, adding more music from artists such as Ozzy Osbourne and Van Halen.
The news isn't as good for Howard Stern, whose New York show airs on WTLX (100.5 FM), based in rural Madison. Stern placed 18th out of 20 morning shows heard in the Madison market.
Other radio ratings news:
*WZEE (104.1 FM) continued its stranglehold as the most listened to station in Madison. Z104's Marc Anthony and Vicki McKenna held a comfortable lead among all morning shows. The pair also earned the top spot among listeners age 25 to 54.
*WMGN (98.1 FM) is the city's most popular station among listeners age 25 to 54 and 35 to 64.
--snips--
February 5, 1999
BYLINE: Tom Alesia of the Wisconsin State Journal
Z104's morning team of Marc Anthony and Vicki McKenna also remained on top among all listeners 12 and older.
Adult contemporary station Magic 98 (WMGN-FM), meanwhile, edged Z104 as the most popular station in the category of listeners age 25 to 54, a highly sought-after market for advertisers.
Other notable results:
*Big-mouth Howard Stern made as much of a splash in Madison as dipping your toe in Lake Mendota.
Airing on Beaver Dam's WTLX (100.5 FM), Stern's syndicated morning shockfest barely registered a blip here.
*The heavily hyped syndicated morning duo Bob and Tom did OK on WIBA (101.5 FM), tying for eighth in the 16-station Madison market.
The program, based in Indianapolis, tied with renegade talk show host Sly on WTDY (1670 AM). Sly spent several years as Madison's radio king at WIBA-FM before jumping to WTDY in October 1997.
*Can Madison support two country radio stations? It's looking less and less likely.
Q106 (WWQM-FM) did well, tying for fourth among overall listeners, but Y105 (WYZM-FM) placed 13th.
Arbitron releases rankings for each station by the number of listeners 12 and older. That's a general interest tally. Arbitron also gives ratings by demographics (ages 18 to 34, ages 25 to 54 and so on) that radio stations use to attract advertising.
"Radio is a niche medium," said Glen Gardner, operations manager at WTDY-AM, WHIT-AM and WJJO-FM. "We know the general public can understand 12 plus. But we're all looking at different things for our various stations."
With that in mind, here are the ratings:
Overall: 1) Z104; 2) Magic 98; 3) WIBA-AM; 4) (tie) WOLX-FM and Q106; 6) WJJO; 7) (tie) WMAD-FM and WMMM-FM (Triple M); 9) WTSO-FM; 10) (tie) WIBA-FM and WTDY; 12) WMLI-FM; 13) Y105; 14) WHIT and WIBU-AM; 16) WSJY-FM.
Overall morning shows: 1) Marc Anthony and Vicki McKenna, Z104; 2) Michael Bahr, WIBA-AM; 3) Pat O'Neill, Magic 98; 4) Johnny Danger and Greg Bair, WJJO; 5) Dan Burns, Q106.
Listeners age 18 to 34: 1) Z104; 2) WJJO; 3) WMAD; 4) Magic 98; 5) Q106.
Listeners age 25 to 54: 1) Magic 98; 2) Z104; 3) WOLX; 4) Triple M; 5) Q106.
Listeners age 35 to 64: 1) (tie) Magic 98 and WOLX; 3) (tie) WIBA-AM and Q106; 5) Z104.
AFTER NORMAN MAILER presented the best screenwriting Oscar years ago during the Academy Awards, he was asked by a literary snob why he had ever agreed to do it. Mailer quoted Voltaire: "Once a philosopher, twice a pervert."
I had a similar thought on agreeing to make a fool of myself interviewing Howard Stern on live national radio Wednesday morning. The nation's pre-eminent shock jock -- "king of all media," as Stern modestly bills himself -- is now on the air in Madison, on the new local talk station, WTLX/FM 100.5, mornings at 6 a.m., which is why I found myself with the "opportunity" to chat one-on-one with him during an on-air teleconference.
"Our format is simple," Stern said of the radio show, which airs in 49 markets around the country. "People hang on every word I say." Stern allowed that he was "happier than a rapist on Viagra," and made gleeful mention of the nude photos of his rival talk host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, which recently appeared on the Internet. "She's not a doctor, she's a gym teacher," Stern said.
And what of Madison? "I know nothing of Madison," said Stern, who starred in the movie version of his best-selling autobiography, "Private Parts." Then Stern remembered something. "Madison is where they removed a painting from East High School of a madonna figure and a rat." He was right: Milt McPike ordered it removed in 1994.
"You were actually on the air in Madison once before, in 1986," I said. "You bombed."
"That must have been my Saturday morning show," Stern said. "You can't make it with a once a week show."
I told Stern that the owner of WTLX/FM, Craig Karmazin, said Stern had found Jesus and pledged to donate $250,000 to a Madison charity. Stern laughed and said, "Don't believe anything you hear on this station." There was little point in asking Stern for specifics about his program -- bathroom humor, ethnic and gender slurs, sometimes funny, sometimes not -- so I asked if he ever took it on the road to visit affiliates. Might we expect to see Stern in Madison? Not very often, Stern said. "It doesn't add much. Occasionally when we go to No. 1 in a market, I'll do it."
I thanked Stern, and I think he actually started to thank me, but couldn't recall my name. "Why don't we have the names!" His sidekick, Robin, said, "His last name was Moe."
"Homo?" Stern said.
That seemed like a good time to hang up. . . .
--snips--
from the Wisconsin State Journal...
How much Howard Stern can Madison handle?
First, there was the announcement that TVW, the cable-only offshoot of local CBS affiliate WISC-Ch. 3, would air Stern's new late-night Saturday show starting this weekend.
Now Beaver Dam station WTLX (100.5) is beaming Stern's weekday radio show to the Madison area, more or less.
The station, best known as the home of the bargain-filled "Radio Shopping Show," recently began airing Stern's shtick weekdays from 6 a.m. until whenever he decides to quit. The WTLX signal can be picked up in most parts of Dane County, although car radios tend to do better than indoor sets.
WTLX is the first Wisconsin station to broadcast Stern's daily pottyfest.
--snips--
from the Wisconsin State Journal...
If you've heard sports talk on local late-night radio and wondered what was going on, here's the scoop:
Madison is no longer a one-horse town.
WTLX (100.5 FM), formerly WYKY, began an all-talk format Aug. 5 with 75 percent of programming sports-oriented. WTLX's signal originates from Columbus, but the station will soon open an office on Madison's East Side.
"We're going to do as much as we can locally," said Craig Karmazin, a 23-year-old from North Brunswick, N.J., who started his own company, Good Karma, a year ago and purchased WTLX and two other radio stations in the Beaver Dam area in December.
WTLX will provide competition for WHIT (1550 AM), which began an all-sports-talk format five years ago.
WTLX has an advantage in that it operates 24 hours and is FM, while WHIT has a sunrise-to-sunset schedule and is AM. WTLX has two local shows Monday through Friday.
"I view us as competition to a lot of radio stations," said Karmazin, who heard about Madison through friends attending the University of Wisconsin while he was a student at Emory University in Atlanta.
The two local shows are "Mad City Middays" with Sean Thompson and Corey Otis from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and "The Sports Drive" with Karmazin, Steve Politziner and Brian Roller from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
WTLX is affiliated with the Sports Fan Radio Network and carries "Ferrall on the Bench" and "The Brick House." WTLX airs Howard Stern from 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and "The Radio Shopping Show" from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Bloomberg News takes up the 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. slot.
Karmazin plans to have UW football and Green Bay Packers game-day programming. WTLX might pick up WYKY's UW hockey broadcast rights.
Most of WTLX's on-air personalities are in their early 20s. While that youth has benefits (enthusiasm), it also has drawbacks (enthusiasm).
"We are caller-driven," Karmazin said. "Some people might think we are young punks and they'll call us up and tell us that. But that's OK. A lot of people are listening."
Roger wrote:
This one surprises me, especially the station. I lived in Wisconsin for a while, and I don't remember this station.
Anyone have any more info on this? I'm just kind of curious, it must be almost a new station!
#120 Madison, WI
Winter '98 Arbitron - (Updated 5/07/98)
Fall '97 Win '98
WZEE-FM (CHR/Pop) 11.3 12.5
WJJO-FM (Rock) 6.7 9.3
WMGN-FM (AC) 6.7 9.1
WIBA-FM (Cl. Rock) 7.9 6.5
WWQM-FM (Country) 5.8 6.5
WIBA-AM (News/Talk) 5.0 6.1
WOLX-FM (Oldies) 5.8 5.9
WTDY-AM (News/Talk) 4.0 4.3
WMMM-FM (Adult Alt) 4.4 3.4
WYZM-FM (Country) 1.9 3.4
WMAD-FM (Alternative) 4.8 3.2
WTSO-AM (Nostalgia) 4.8 2.6
WHIT-AM (Sports) 3.8 2.4
WMLI-FM (AC) 2.7 2.2
WSJY-FM (B/EZ) 1.3 1.8
WIBU-AM (Country) 1.2 1.2
WKPO-FM (CHR/Rhy) --- 1.2
WTMJ-AM (News/Talk) .4 .6
WJVL-FM (Country) .6 .4
Back to ratings.
This page © 2000-2003 by The Complete Howard Stern Links!