Alix Kendall, Megan Newquist and Brian Oake walk into a bar

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. 

Rena Sarigianopoulos doesn't need a part-time job

It's not exactly breaking news: Plenty of our local celebrities aren't living on easy street.

By local celebrity I refer to those who speak on TV or the radio. They're not celebrities, but we like to think of them as special, and act accordingly.

It has long been known that those who have "cool" jobs in major market radio don't necessarily cash fat paychecks. Sure, there are heavy hitters whose presence are a major draw, and their salary will reflect that. But even those folks aren't on the fast track to living next door to a lion hunting dentist, either in Eden Prairie or Marco Island, Fla.

Our local jocks are often shilling for products when they're not dazzling us with their dulcet tones. I'll never forget listening to Jeff Dubay shill for Body Solutions, along with many other local jocks, many moons ago. They were essentially shilling for snake oil, but as long as the checks were being cashed.

When Dan Barreiro was splitting time between sports radio and writing columns for the Star Tribune, he didn't do commercials. Not so long ago we liked to hold our "journalists" to a higher standard. Barreiro wasn't a journalist, but nonetheless.

Wait a minute. Why was Barreiro holding two jobs simultaneously for several years? Like radio, the newspaper game isn't exactly a license to print money. Sports guys working in television or newspapers by virtue of their jobs were a wealth of information, and ultimately opinions, therefore they were good candidates for the low-paying world of talk radio.

Barreiro obviously built a reputation and following that afforded him the luxury of not answering to bosses at the Strib, and therefore bailed out on the newspaper biz, which has taken it in the shorts since the Internet era began. (The rapid decline in the broadcast and print industries both have the Internet to thank for the deterioration of their business model, and the low quality product you're commonly served in 2015.)

Soon after Barreiro sold his soul to radio, he started endorsing products. You'd think that a successful, heralded personality like Barreiro would forgo attaching his name to whatever bidder came along with the fattest check, but obviously the money's good enough for him to grab. Whether his salary is hefty or modest, none of us tires of banking easy money.

Commercial reads and promotional appearances at bars, restaurants and Best Buy have long been a staple of the radio jock. I've heard it said that jocks can double their salary with work outside of, or in conjunction with, their on-air shifts. It's no surprise the time-honored tradition continues, even with the heavy hitters in the industry. Tom Barnard has made obscene amounts of money in his career, both at KQRS and in the commercial voice over biz, and yet he's still hustling gigs.

In recent years we've seen plenty of TV people wading into pools they wouldn't have dipped a toe into years ago. Just as newspaper folk have found income opportunities in radio, sports anchors and reporters from TV land have been offering their talents to the AM and FM dial. Mark Rosen has been the leader in this, dating back to the 1980s.

Randy Shaver has also had a long association with the local radio airwaves, albeit to a far lesser extent, as he mysteriously chats with the metalheads of the 93X morning show. And more recently Joe Schmit has made his presence felt on a recurring basis, thanks largely to his TV station also owning the local ESPN affiliate. (Perhaps he has long had a presence on the airwaves, predating the flip to sports talk, and I just never knew it.)

Although Schmit's arrangement is all about corporate synergy, he's no stranger to shilling for extra cash. Thanks to the loosening of our journalistic standards, the sports guys can hawk all sorts of non-sports products on the airwaves. Schmit has long shilled for local pizza, and was "Vacation Joe" under a previous ownership of Sun Country airlines, an arrangement that Schmit tried to capitalize upon once upon a time, going so far as to leave KSTP-TV for a while. That didn't work out so well. It turned out worse for his buddy, the former owner of the airline.

Schmit may not be hawking vacations this year, but he figured there's a buck or two to be made in the world of print, so he has his own vanity publication to capture them.

It's easy to blur the lines between sports broadcasters and corporate pitchman. These guys may be journalists, technically, but so are the anchors and reporters bringing us important stories via Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. Rosen, Schmit and the rest are merely entertainment reporters.

Where it gets interesting is watching our local journalists find ways to double dip. Examples of this are fewer, but we've seen some entertaining double dipping in recent years. And I'm not talking about Elizabeth Ries or Jason Matheson, mostly because they're not journalists any more, although Matheson went through the motions not so long ago at WCCO-TV.

I'm not familiar with Ries' resume, so I don't know how much news reporting she did or was doing prior to whenever she arrived at KSTP-TV, but when the door opened to become a shill for local products under the guise of co-hosting a local "talk show," she gave up all pretense of being a journalist. She's now determined to milk it for everything she can.

She became a co-host on the company-owned chick talk station in addition to her hourly TV show responsibilities, at least until she gave birth to a child. She continues to smile for the TV camera on weekday afternoons, but ceased gabbing about celebrities all morning on the radio. She was reported to remain a part of the chick talk radio station as a contributor in some capacity, but I can't vouch for that actually happening.

Matheson has dabbled in news reporting, as I noted, but he's carved out his niche in celebrity talk, as evidenced by his tenure in morning drive at the same chick talk station. One morning radio job isn't enough to pay the bills, evidently, as he has been pulling double duty for a while now. He returned to his mistress, Fox 9, earlier this year after about two years apart, and there's no pretense that his job is to report news of any kind.

I get it, maximize your earnings while you can. That second job may not be necessary, but if it keeps you in the public eye and helps solidify your brand, (I detest that term,) rake in that extra cash.

Anchors can make good money reading a teleprompter and smiling for the camera, as if they're some sort of geniuses. Occasionally an anchor steps out from behind the desk, but often they have it easy. I often wonder how well Leah McLean would do if she had to actually report a story.

Reporters who are well established and specialized probably do OK, but reporting isn't a great gig.

A guy who went by the stage name "Bryce Williams" is well known now that he shot and killed a reporter and camera man during a live news segment this past summer. Williams was a former employee of the Virginia TV station the reporter and camera man worked for. He was reported to have earned $36,000 annually while employed by the station. Major market station? No. But Williams wasn't fresh out of college. Perhaps his odd behavior and issues during his previous employment resulted in his being mired in small market TV. Even had his career progressed to Minneapolis, I doubt his salary would have increased exponentially.

How great is the pay in reporting? You can find several examples of former reporters who have given up their career for something that has nothing to do with TV. As pointed out not so long ago, KMSP-TV's Kelsey Soby bailed out of television for a job she hardly seems qualified for. I can name a few people off the top of my head who bailed out in recent years for jobs in public relations, sometimes as spokespeople for governmental agencies. Somehow being a TV reporter makes you good at communicating the business of the county attorney, county sheriff or a police department.

Tim McNiff, a former sports guy who spent many years anchoring the morning newscasts at KARE-TV, bailed out last year to become the executive director of media relations for some Minnetonka p.r. firm. Really, he was the most qualified person for the job? A guy who had spent the previous decade reading news nuggets that others wrote is the best guy to relate to the media? Perhaps, but doubtful.

And why did McNiff give up a life in the spotlight? He was probably bored with it, a little bit anyway. And he might not have been in line for a better gig at Ch. 11, so that might have been a factor. You think he traded in a hefty paycheck and a few hours of on-air time every morning for a 9-to-5 job and a pay cut? Don't bet on it.

The bottom line: TV isn't all that glamorous, and even if it's not construction work, it's not a ticket to easy street. You'd better be lucky like McLean or able to parlay your pseudo-fame like sports anchors or Matheson if you want a nice house in Eden Prairie. And no, I'm not forgetting another option: Marrying a six-figure salary. What car salesman doesn't want pseudo-celebrity arm candy?

Which brings us to Rena Sarigianopoulos. For a while she walked the fine line few reporters do. She double dipped.

Yeah, Jason DeRusha must bank a few bucks for penning his brilliant observations about the restaurant industry. But other than weather people flashing their smiling mugs on the weather page of a local daily newspaper, few non-sports folks seem to make a habit of parlaying their brilliance into meaningful second incomes.

But Sarigianopoulos pulled it off for a while. She inexplicably was chosen as part of a trifecta that helmed a morning show on 96.3 FM. Alongside her colleague Eric Perkins, who also had no business being on local radio, Sarigianopoulos had an early morning gig on FM radio to go along with the many hats she wears at Ch. 11. I'm not sure how often she was absent from her radio gig, but if she worked every weekday morning, then she didn't have a day off, as she is a busy beaver during the weekends at Ch. 11.

Besides anchoring weekend newscasts, Sarigianopoulos would be on the air bright and early on Saturday mornings to do two hours of local chat, which often blurs the line between human interest and paid advertising. And she'd be on the air a few weeknights filing a report from the asphalt jungle. The woman had a crappy Ch. 11 schedule and yet she added weekday mornings to it? Why would she do something so ridiculous? I'm going to guess her mortgage payments were a little hefty for her KARE-TV paycheck.

But she's married now, and her trophy husband is a car salesman. He sells nice cars, too, it sounds. The commission ought to be good. And if so, Sarigianopoulos – who no longer cashes paychecks from 96.3 FM – won't have to find a second job to pay the mortgage.

For every overpaid face on local TV, there are plenty of others who aren't being compensated as if they're anything special. But the public likes to adore these fine folks as if they're royalty. If only they knew.

Let's not shatter the illusion.

Keith Leventhal, we hardly knew ya

I don't know 10 things about Keith Leventhal, and it's likely you don't either.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, "Who's Keith Leventhal?"

For maybe two years Leventhal was the third-string quarterback at KARE-TV. By quarterback I mean sportscaster, of course.

Leventhal's stint in Minnesota was forgettable. He joins a long line of second and third bananas at local stations who moved on and were quickly forgotten.

I saw him anchor the weekend sports report a few times, I saw him file reports periodically for the sportscast and I saw him tweet insightful nuggets that make broadcast professionals so precious and special in society. Nothing he did blew me away. Actually everything he did was forgettable.

And that's how it should be.

We live in an era where we don't want news and information, we want infotainment. We don't want a stoic broadcaster reading the script, we want news nuggets with an extra side of personality. This is especially true when we watch the sportscast, since it's really just an entertainment report anyway.

We don't want to decide if a gesture was classy, a decision was boneheaded, a play was spectacular or a moment was unforgettable. We want our sportscasters to tell us, so we don't have to think for ourselves. It must be true, otherwise how do you explain why Mark Rosen still has a job at WCCO-TV?

Leventhal didn't have the career clout to tell us what was despicable and what was admirable. And that was refreshing.

He didn't have bad hair or a childlike disposition, either, a la the current king of KARE-TV sports. Leventhal probably would have filled the role of man-child had his bosses asked him to. But they probably didn't, so he did what broadcasters do best, deliver the product without trying to outshine the veteran "talent" at KARE.

So what did he get for his two years of service as the disrespected, low man on the totem pole? Walking papers. Now I don't know this for a fact, I'm only guessing that the reason he has been unemployed is that somebody at KARE-TV didn't think he was gimmicky enough to fit in with the cast of "characters" they dress up in monkey suits and skirts to play the role of broadcasters.

Again, that's only speculation. Leventhal may have simply walked away and decided the circus peanuts he was earning for two years of toiling as the No. 3 sportscaster wasn't enough to update the wardrobe at Kohl's. For some it's easier to find a new job when you're not simultaneously trying to half-ass your way through the job you have.

But I'm betting on the former.

I only noticed he was gone when the station started using a news reporter to read the teleprompter during the weekend sportscasts. He wasn't a particularly notable presence on the station, obviously.

But like I said, it was refreshing to have a competent, knowledgeable sports reporter do his job on the station without annoying you with his banter, ugly mug or nails-on-chalkboard vocal stylings. He was too bland for his own good, and unlikely to move up the KARE food chain any time soon. So he's better off gone and quickly forgotten.

Lest you think that I have nothing but high praise for Leventhal, he's guilty of the same annoying characteristic every young broadcaster seems to be guilty of: he wants to dazzle you with his social media savvy. There's nothing wrong with that, as it's easy to ignore, but I remember distinctly how self-aware he was, and how quick he was to demonstrate it when he first rolled into town lo those many years ago. I quickly categorized him as another ego-driven, annoying broadcaster.

But by ignoring his social media pandering I came to appreciate the fact he wasn't Mark Rosen or Eric Perkins, and we could use a lot more broadcasters like Keith Leventhal in this town.

Emily Engberg: Is the kitten on the prowl?

It was brought to my attention today that the excitable little imp from Twin Cities Live might no longer be married.

For some reason our local chat fests like to have wacky reporters out combing the streets, showing us just how fascinating the Twin Cities is. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but whether it be Gary Lumpkin of days past or Emily Engberg of today’s knock off of Good Company, you want somebody who people think is amusing, despite the fact you’d find him or her annoying if he or she was a member of your extended family.

Engberg’s appeal baffles me. She’s not particularly funny, although she thinks she’s entertaining. She’s easy on the eyes, which always helps, but her presence won’t command a room. (That’s not necessarily negative.) She can speak fluently, but she doesn’t dazzle you with intelligent observations or shrewd commentary. But she does what people want her to do, evidently, so job well done, Emily. You’re the female Eric Perkins.

As the story goes, an anecdote she shared on Twin Cities Live left out any mention of her husband. This was notable for two reasons. One, in the past she has made it clear that she’s married to some sort of Conway Twitty wannabe. Two, she was talking about a home improvement issue, evidently, something in which the counsel of her husband might have been reasonable.

Online research that I was able to verify without too much trouble showed that a few years ago Engberg was pimping some sort of concert by her then-husband Dustin Lee via Engberg’s Facebook page. A click to Lee’s linked Facebook page says today he’s engaged to somebody else.

I don’t watch TCL very often. I like to see what kind of fluff they’re passing off as a human-interest topic, and how close they come to simply pimping goods and services of local businesses. (They come damn close. I keep waiting to see a disclaimer pop up denoting a segment is a paid advertisement. It’s only a matter of time with that show.)

Although I don’t watch the show very often, TCL and Engberg weren’t shy about pimping Lee’s music and his marriage to Engberg in the past. Lee performed on the show, and they didn’t hide the fact why he was singing his honky tonk tunes on the show.

I can’t speak to whether or not Engberg ever spoke of her divorce on the show. I’d bet not, but I don’t know that.

Divorce is a part of life. What was once a social stigma is now a common practice. More than half the marriages in this country end in divorce, so it’s really no big deal. I guess it is a big deal when a person’s spouse turns out to be a cheater or the nuptials end within months of the pledge of everlasting love. But it’s not shocking when a marriage ends. Some people practically embrace it, as if it’s a sign that both partners have grown as humans, and subsequently grown apart.

Our local “celebrities” get divorced. It’s a part of life. If you’re on a talk show, TV or radio, referencing your spouse is hard to avoid. And if you get married, you have to talk all about it. Just ask TCL newlywed Elizabeth Ries.

But why is it that our precious broadcasting talent isn’t so quick to announce the termination of their marriage? I know, nobody likes to admit they’ve failed. And divorce is a type of failure.

Good news, heterosexual men of the Twin Cities, the imp is not married. She’d look good on the arm of a lot of executives, so perhaps she rebounded as quickly as her cowpoke ex-husband. But if not, then perhaps you’ll get lucky and stumble upon her when she’s out hamming it up for the camera. If you can stomach her antics, perhaps you can marry a real Twin Cities celebrity!