I don't have the patience.
Borrowed from Bring me the News:
"Few details have been announced by the Eden Prairie-based Fox News affiliate, but FOX 9's "Morning Buzz" will become Good Day beginning next Tuesday.
Alix Kendall, Kelly O'Connell and Shayne Wells will host the "lifestyle-focused" show. Morning Buzz is currently hosted by Kendall, O'Connell and meteorologist Keith Marler.
KSTP-TV announced Wednesday that it'll launch a 9 a.m. weekday show called Minnesota Live on Sept. 7. The show will be anchored by Megan Newquist and Chris Egert, and is described by the ABC affiliate as a "lifestyle show highlighting what makes Minnesota an incredible place to live."
The show will be televised on Channel 5 in the Twin Cities as well simulcast on WDIO-TV in Duluth and KAAL-TV in Rochester, all of which are under the Hubbard Broadcasting umbrella."
Where to begin.
Every once in a while I turn on Fox 9, and it seems like I never see the jolly weatherman. I know he had health issues and was on the sidelines for a while, but it seems like I run into him on the morning broadcast infrequently. I never understood the appeal of him, but then again, I never understood the appeal of host chats.
So Fox 9 is dropping the "Buzz" for an all-female chat that is lifestyle-focused, whatever that means. Out with the jolly weatherman, in with the drab former traffic guru. Funny that they're calling the show "Good Day," given that when the local Fox station started morning news and features more than two decades ago, they called it "Good Day Minnesota." It was a lame name then. Why recycle it now?
It was bad enough Fox 9 gave us an hour of Alix Kendall's bubbly personality. Mr. Forehead, Jason DeRusha, eventually joined the fray. Oh boy. Mr. Foodie gets to pontificate along with whatever reporter draws the short straw and has to sit on the couch near the witty Twitterer. (Do they still do that, or did that die with the pandemic? I haven't watched that crap in eons.)
Now we have the geniuses at KSTP-TV joining the mess with their morning anchors. No more Regis or Kathie Lee at 9 a.m., now we get the morning anchors pontificating. And look, another lifestyle show!
Ch. 5 already kills 90 minutes per weekday with Twin Cities Live. A couple of yentas talk about the fabulous and exciting world we live in, and sell products through disguised ads that are "provided by" the company being featured. Yeah, we need more of that crap in this world. Sure, the 9 a.m. hour will be sacred... lots of local stories that didn't make the cut of that "So Minnesota" feature they trot out once a week. I'll hold my breath.
I don't know two things about the cost of television, but somehow trotting out hour after hour of news on Ch. 9 all evening, or filling the schedule with anchors and reporters giving opinions on crap they need not have an opinion about, is a better alternative than running some national celebs ego-driven talk show. What a weird world we live in. This is the evolution of man? We are living in end times.
GET LOST, PERK
To the surprise of most, Eric Perkins departed from KARE11 last month.
Dude has to be over 50. He claims he left simply because he needs a new challenge. That may be true.
But let's look at reality. He's a lousy sportscaster on his best day, who has to be over 50 years old. He had held a job at KARE for 25 years, and against all odds he became number 1 in the sports department. He's at a point in life where he should be salting away his paychecks for retirement in a decade or so, but instead he's going to live life dangerously, without a new job or opportunity lined up? Something doesn't pass the smell test.
People love the dork when he would play, and for years he did that dopey "Perk at Play" segment. People loved it, because we all love watching a man-child behave like a man-child, I guess.
He looked and sounded like a collegiate stoner having the best Saturday night of his life, and that was good enough for KARE11, and he's walking away from a gig reading sports headlines in front of a camera? I'm sure there'll be a job for the dork if he wants it. Everyone loves having a former TV face on their payroll. Perhaps he can afford to live life to the fullest at this point. Perhaps he inherited a nice chunk of change from his father. I have no idea.
I'd be content to never hear his name again. Too bad I made the mistake of listening to the KFAN morning show for a few minutes not so long ago. They had no problem welcoming the dork to their highly celebrated "Initials" game.
May that be the last time I hear his voice.
I read some online chatter about Perk's departure, and the naming of Reggie Wilson as the new top dog of KARE sports. I have no idea who Wilson is, or why he was chosen. I have my guess.
A lot of people were wondering why longtime weekend sports geek Dave Schwartz didn't get the gig. We assume he would have wanted a promotion at the station that has employed him for more than a decade. We don't know that, but it's a logical assumption.
I find it surprising, too. It makes me wonder if we have another Jeff Passolt/Russell Shimooka moment on our hands. (There's not a great story onilne that I've found chronicling this KARE11 blunder, and I'm not going to rehash it here. If you don't know your '90s broadcasting history, you're out of luck.)
Fun fact: Shimooka's Linked In page seems to conveniently forget his ill-fated gig at KARE11.
ASSHOLE ALERT
If you know the local radio landscape, you know that asshole Brian Oake has returned to Cities 97.
He was named the new morning drive genius at Cities. The station has become so forgotten I couldn't tell you anything else about what's happening at the frequency these days. Talk about invisible, this station has done a hell of a vanishing act from my landscape during the past few years.
Turns out the radio hipster had been helping sell records at a Hopkins music store to make a few bucks before being rescued by Cities 97. I guess that podcasting cash cow was a little light on the milk. Cities 97 rescued him from joining the roster of radio has-beens, and now that he's part of the Clear Channel family again, he's back to pimping himself on KFAN. I heard a few minutes of the asshole during a previous 2021 state fair appearance on Dan Barreiro's show, which they replayed on Labor Day.
I have nothing brilliant to say. I'm just sorry to know that the longtime broadcasting asshole has a gig in radio again. I was hoping he'd become another successful real estate broker in Minnesota.
AND FINALLY
We're about a week away from the one-year anniversary of Eric Malmberg's firing from The Current.
I'm not making an argument for or against the guy, but I do find it curious that a guy who was fired by the hipster radio station, over a story the sister station wouldn't air, has yet to be rung up on any criminal charges. Based upon the outrage, he had to be guilty of something. I know the wheels of justice move slow, but what if he's never charged with a crime? In the court of public opinion, he has been convicted of some sort of crime. Will he ever be able to work again? What if he's not guilty of anything more than being creepy?
I'm genuinely fascinated by the story of a story that never aired on MPR News, and resulted in reporter Marianne Combs quitting her job because of that. She quits, and Malmberg is fired because of a story we've never heard. It's a fascinating world.
I'd pay $89.30 to know what Malmberg has been doing with his time for the past 51 weeks. I'll pay that $89.30 to just about anyone, other than Minnesota Public Radio. At least not until they #bringbackBrianOake.
The best thing about Oake working for The Current: We didn't have to hear him on KFAN.
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