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. 

Do you love Jeff Dubay more than he hates you?

When I started this blog a little over two years ago, I needed some random, slightly clever title for it, emphasis on slightly.

Jeff Dubay seemed like the perfect minor broadcasting "celebrity" worthy of immortalizing with this blog. Little did I know his life would implode, again, soon after I launched the blog. I'm not a fan of his schtick, but I do root for him, despite his appetite for self-destruction.

My goal was never to build a a vast online audience or a social media empire, I just wanted a place for opinions to be shared on people who think they're really, really special because they are seen or heard daily in the Twin Cities.

I have promoted the blog a bit, but I've mostly given that up. I tried promoting it via a couple of avenues, but I've since come to enjoy watching blog postings find their audience organically. I share each blog post via Google, and usually tweet a link to it once or twice, otherwise I'm rather low key when it comes to promotion.

I won't cite a lot of analytics, but I will share a few interesting tidbits when I look at how this modest collection of essays has reached the masses during the two years I've churned out content.

I'm averaging about 12 posts a year, and I never intended for this blog to have weekly content.

I'm not delusional, page views are no promise that a viewer has read a word I wrote. But that's one of the few measurements I have available in trying to decide if anyone notices the content I create.

I've tried a few experiments with Google and learned that my blog postings are near the top of Google searches for some of the broadcasters I've toasted.

Number one, easily, is Alix Kendall.

My April 2014 blog post about Kendall and her lawsuit against the cops has generated more than 13,000 page views in nearly two years.

I'm no analytical genius, but it doesn't take one to know that female TV broadcasters are frequently Googled.

Kendall must be quite popular with the Googlers of the Twin Cities. As a matter of fact, there's a blog site that features thousands of pictures of newswomen nationwide wearing boots. (Rena Sarigianopoulos, my new least favorite broadcaster, has been featured on the site.) That blog started as a site dedicated to the worship of Kendall.

So the fact that Kendall generates the most traffic to this blog is not a surprise. I should probably write about her more often just for the web traffic, but I'm not as fascinated by her, or her boots, as some people.

It's a close race for first runner up. The edge goes to a guy known on KFAN radio as Meatsauce.

His post grabbed a lot of attention in June 2014 because I tweeted the link to him, and he tweeted the link to his followers. As you'd expect, Paul Lambert wasn't enamored with my critique of his success in radio. I don't hate him, I don't love him and I didn't flatter him when I reviewed his charmed life, but he shared my writing, perhaps to rally those who love him to his defense. It worked, it appeared, as my blog post about him blew up quicker than any other I've written.

But ultimately Kendall proved to be more appealing to the Internet than Lambert, not to my surprise, so he's a distant second with barely half of Kendall's page views.

In third place, not far behind Lambert, is a post about Kelsey Soby. I've penned a couple of posts about Soby, but it was the first one that has her at more than 6,000 page views. Not to my surprise she generates a lot of Internet steam, although that has slowed down thanks to her retirement from being a morning traffic babe.

In fourth place is my post about Emily Engberg. The out-and-about imp for the channel 5 afternoon chat fest is easy on the eyes, and she has managed to generate nearly 5,000 page views.

From there things drop off dramatically. No other blog post has generated 2,000 page views. The closest would be a long dissection of Jason Matheson's career. That post is a steady performer, helped in part by the fact that a Google search of his name sometimes puts my posting at the bottom of page 1. He's no Engberg, clearly, but he's an established broadcaster that has a strong name in this market. So thanks, buddy, for the blog traffic. I'm not a loyal fan of his work, but I like his attitude, so it's hard to root against him.

Some of my older blog posts have low page views, often because I didn't drop a name into the title, I suspect. Name checking the primary subject, if there is one, helps generate traffic. Posts that don't have a name in them are the worst performers, according to page views.

Although I have several post titles that reference Dubay, none of them top 1,000 page views. And my very first post, about Dennis "Rusty" Gatenby, has more page views than any Dubay post, although it, too, has less than 1,000 page views.

Showing promise is a November 2015 post about Shayne Wells, the new traffic babe at FOX 9. It has nearly 1,400 page views, which is pretty good compared to everything I've written about Dubay.

Another measurement of interest in the comments I receive. None of my posts receive a truckload of comments, and the comment tally includes responses I make, and I respond in some capacity to most of the comments I receive.

Many posts have no comments, but the post with the most is my Lambert analysis. His total is due, in part, to the fact he tweeted it to his followers, and several of them read it, and responded. The post manages to generate an occasional comment nearly two years later.

Kendall gets the most page views, but her post is second when it comes to comments. She has never tweeted a link to my writing, to the best of my knowledge, so I'm guessing that has something to do with it.

My first post about Soby is the third most popular with those who comment. Beyond that my blog has a small, random handful of comments.

These numbers don't tell you a lot, and I don't care. I just wanted a snapshot for comparison purposes should I continue this blog in the years to come.

One last note, my post about Keith Leventhal is doing pretty well. It has nearly 1,000 page views, which is impressive given nobody in the Twin Cities knows who he is. I suspect half of that traffic is due to the fact he visits the post on a daily basis.

What does Shayne Wells know about Twin Cities traffic?

I haven't been paying much attention to the Fox 9 Morning Debacle in recent weeks, so it escaped my attention that the morning news talker has resurrected the role of a traffic reporter.

When Kelsey Soby quickly vanished earlier this year the station was equally as quick to replace her with something called Lacey Crisp. A very welcoming tweet suggested that Crisp was a permanent addition to the morning chat fest, but she lasted about a month before she was unceremoniously dispatched. I suspect I'm in the minority of viewers who remember she existed.

By the way, Crisp claims in her online resume that she was a freelance traffic reporter, or something to that effect, suggesting she was never supposed to be a permanent part of the Fox 9 team. That's quite contrary to how that tweet appeared, but future employers will never know the difference, so Crisp might as well sell it in the best possible light.

After months of having the anchors bumble through traffic reports, and having the weather kid handle the duties on one busy, ugly morning in the Twin Cities, Fox 9 appears to be taking another crack at having a woman tell me all about the local traffic conditions. The latest broadcasting prodigy is Shayne Wells, who seems to have held about 12 different jobs in the Twin Cities during her exile to the midwest. She has worked in local radio and TV, as on-air talent and in the background, it appears.

I have no idea how giddy the TV viewing fanboys will be for this fresh face during the Fox 9 Morning Zoo, or how long she'll try to explain what we're seeing on area traffic cameras, but if she's continuing to work behind the scenes for the station as well, perhaps she'll last longer than Crisp.

I'd pay money to know what's going on behind the scenes at that fiasco known as Fox 9. I sense the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing most of the time.