I'm sure we owe it to the abundance of cable news channels.
When did we start caring what news broadcasters think?
As the years go on, we find networks and stations continuing to serve us opinion after opinion from their talking heads.
We've always looked to broadcasters for commentary and criticism, but when did we decide it's important to know what Alix Kendall and Jason DeRusha think?
I use to scoff at the idea, as if Kendall giving her opinion on today's social issues or political wrangling was some sort of breach of ethics. But let's be honest, Kendall isn't a reporter. She's not a journalist. She may know what's going on when she presents the news, but she's not out there gathering information and filing a report. She's paid to talk, and to look good when she does it. She may have once pounded the pavement, but those days are over. She gets to sit in the comfy chair all morning, and then on a comfy couch to share her keen insight on the day's news nuggets and celebrity non-news, which of course has become increasingly important in our day-to-day lives.
She's one of many at the local and national level. And we care. We care what Kendall and her sidekicks think. We really care. If we didn't, KMSP-TV wouldn't be airing an hour of Kendall and her sidekicks every weekday morning.
That's what local television is coming to, and why not? We've been subjected to a steady diet of this for years now. It wasn't enough to know what Barbara Walters and company think about "hot topics," we needed an afternoon clone on CBS. And now we have a minority women panel doing the same thing on a daily syndicated program. I guess we can't get enough of that sort of thing on cable television. Or maybe too many of us still can't afford it.
We haven't hit the local saturation point yet, evidently, because WCCO-TV opted to share with us an hour of their broadcasting brilliance rather than replace the latest celebrity talk show host failure with another syndicated program. We're calling it Mid-Morning, or MidMorning. I don't know which, as the WCCO Facebook page can't decide what we're calling it.
We now get DeRusha and his giddy sidekick sharing stories and insight into the world we live in every weekday morning at 9 a.m.
But damn, do we have to choose? Those 9 a.m. eyeballs are so valuable that WCCO is challenging KMSP directly. Look out world, it's Carson vs. Rivers all over again!
I had to sample a few minutes of the inaugural show, and it's pretty much as I expected. As the final minutes counted down to the start of the fresh, new and exciting show, the giddy sidekick could hardly contain herself. I didn't realize the start of an hour of fluff was so exciting. You'd think WCCO was about to invent a new format.
But alas, it was not to be. There are straightforward news and weather presentations packaged into the WCCO chat fest, something KMSP avoids doing at 9 a.m. since they're not beholden to a network morning show for the two hours prior to their couch chat.
The lowlight of the morning came when DeRusha and the sidekick actually moved away from the news desk to sit at the in-studio couch, joined by DeRusha's morning news babes, so that the foursome could privilege us with their opinions on the news of the day. Oh thank God!
I turned back at the end of the show to see the self-congratulatory finale of their first chat fest. You' would have thought they had just landed an unmanned spacecraft on Mars.
I had no idea how nervous KMSP was about competition for the thousands and thousands of people who crave couch chat every morning. When I flipped to KMSP I saw none other than the prodigal son, Jason Matheson, sitting on the couch. His TV wife and the jolly weatherman weren't there. It's spring break at many metro schools this week, I'm sure they're busy entertaining the kids in some far away land, as all grade school students are entitled to.
I'd actually pay to read the story of why Matheson – whom we love more than Wendy Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Kelly Ripa combined – spent a year on the bench to earn his parole from KMSP, only to turn around and forsake his first love and return to KMSP less than a year later. (What the hell happened at WCCO in less than a year? Why does KMSP need him on their station so badly? Why the absence of a non-compete clause like the one that chained him to the FM dial for a year before he emerged at WCCO?)
It's unlikely Matheson is going to bail on his morning drive radio gig in order to make a triumphant return to the couch on a regular basis. Perhaps he has learned how to teleport between St. Paul and Eden Prairie. Barring that, KMSP clearly sweet talked him into blowing off at least a portion of today's morning drive in order to counter WCCO's heavy artillery. We've got a donnybrook in the making!
The television landscape has always been far more prestigious than its radio counterpart. But the value of broadcast real estate has eroded with the creation of cable television channels. And digital streaming is further eroding the already fragile ecosystem. We're seeing an increasing emphasis on talk programming on the local airwaves, including the once-coveted FM dial. So why shouldn't our local and national broadcasters and content providers emulate what works halfway decently on local radio? (The bean counters for KTMY-FM might beg to differ.)
We need entertainment in our lives. Not every program can emulate "The McLaughlin Group." But did we really need yet another hour of couch chat, even if it's buffered by news tidbits and slice-of-life profiles by the giddy sidekick?
Of course we did.
