"A group of wealthy Democratic donors is planning to start a liberal radio network," The New York Times reported a few weeks ago, "to counterbalance the conservative tenor of radio programs like 'The Rush Limbaugh Show.' "
Well, whoop-de-do. They're going to mess it up. It's the classic Hillary-meets-health-care, good-intentions-bad-execution conundrum.
I want them to succeed. I'm a liberal talk host. Now, I'm not suggesting I've found the secret formula to dehypnotize dittoheads. But bad decisions are being made. The "Rich Group of Democrats," as the Times' headline put it, is talking about hiring certain Hollywood stars who are incredibly talented and, in my view, not necessarily suited for daily talk radio.
Al Franken is one of my heroes. How can you not love the author of "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot"? But Al Franken, in Seinfeldese, is a slow talker. You need pacing in radio. Three hours of slow talk, even with some pre-produced sketch comedy, isn't going to cut it. Liberals like to think their audience is above such short-attention-span theater.
Franken is funny. But Americans have been conditioned to expect a fast-paced show. Even liberal Americans. The art of endless monologue is best practiced by those whose speaking style is a little more rat-a-tat-tat than our pal Al. Jim Hightower's program did not catch fire nationally in part because his just-plain-folks style was too slow.
Janeane Garofalo? Please. She's a remarkably talented actress. If you go to see a Garofalo performance you can bet it'll be quirky and funny, and have a certain depth. But her patter is scattered and inconsistent, which is great in small doses, but not for a daily radio show.
Daily talk radio is a bear. As the saying goes, some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you. Talk hosts have a daily knockdown drag out with the bear. Have you ever tried to be smart and funny and topical and quick and scintillating as you banter with strangers who may or may not have a brain or a clue for three hours every single day?
Comedians do 10 or 15 minutes. If you're a Robin Williams or a Chris Rock, you can pull off a great hour. And when you go to the next town, you repeat that hour. And every so often, you try to write a new hour's worth of stuff and start all over again. Talk radio hosts are supposed to have two or three hours of fresh, interesting material every day.
You can do interviews, but they better not be too long or ponderous. In the end, the show is you and you are the show. One reason Rush Limbaugh is great at what he does is he's a broadcaster. Yes, broadcasting is show business and vice versa, but there is a difference. Live broadcasting is about spontaneity. You'd better do a lot of prep work, but it's the way you handle it live each day that's crucial.
Even if you studied the complexities of an issue for hours, if it's not working, you've got to bag it right away and go to plan B. You can feel people tuning out if you don't have the juice. Rush spent years honing his yapping skills disc jockeying around the country. You can't just have Hollywood stars. You need some broadcasters, people who talk off the cuff on the air every day.
It's a skill apparently underestimated by the leaders of the new liberal network. In a CNN interview, Jon Sinton, chief executive of the project, said that most of the music and entertainment industry folk are liberal, and they're pretty creative, so that's his secret ingredient to success.
What they're good at is taking weeks or months to produce something -- and if it doesn't work, they fine-tune it until it's ready. There are no second takes in talk radio.
One name bandied about by those forming this network makes sense: Bill Maher. He's quick, smart, funny and, though he started out as a comedian, he's become quite a broadcaster, both at Comedy Central and ABC. He learned about broadcast pacing, when to talk, when to shut up, when to let someone else make your point for you, and when to stop the presses and call someone out as an idiot . . . big and fat, or otherwise.
Build your network around Maher, not Franken or Garofalo. And one more thing. Have some regular people as part of your network. You can't just have already established stars, you have to grow stars. They knew that when they started the Fox News Channel.
Al Franken says you can't out-Rush Rush. Maybe not. But we can learn from the evil opposition's success and steal some of their playbook.
They're trying to start a liberal radio network from scratch with a bunch of Hollywood spoiled rich cats unaccustomed to the rigors of doing daily talk radio well.
As Jerry Seinfeld would say, "good luck with all that."
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