Big book for Jason Lewis, eh?

LAMBERT: It kills me to say so, but those at long last are numbers equal to what he left at AM 1500. Of course I continue to believe that Sarah Janecek and I would have gotten to a 5 even sooner ... but then one of us would have been dead.

Even The Good Neighbor showed an increase. The snowbirds must be back!

LAMBERT: The first number is the fall number (share). The Neighbor struggled.

In total households (the only numbers Radio Research Consortium, the company that tweaks Arbitron numbers on public radio allows that the public see):

KNOW (News/Information)--4.9
KSJN (Classical)--4.4
KCMP (The Current)--1.3

Since the public can't access fall numbers from RRC, I don't know exactly what those were, but it seems to me that News/Information's up, Classical's up or static and the Current's going down--dangerously into the below 1.0 numbers WCAL was pulling before the sale, which ought to make those St. Olaf alums who want to force Kling to give the station back joy.

LAMBERT: I'm still rooting around looking for MPR numbers.

Since you left Clear Channel has come onto hard times. From Yahoo

"...A consortium of major Wall Street banks was close to settling litigation with two private equity firms in connection with the buyout of Clear Channel Communications Inc., people familiar with the matter said.

Under the proposed settlement terms, the banks would fund Clear Channel's buyout at $36 per share, down from the original price of $39.20, the people said. That would cut the value of the deal to about $18 billion from $19.4 billion..."

LAMBERT: $36 a share? Ouch. That still sounds like very bad mojo. Maybe $24.

CCO: I am not sure how they end up with a 6.8 in 12+. All the age and daypart breakdowns show them in the 2's. Do they make it up with the Sports Huddle?

LAMBERT: Shelby must be big with 14 year-olds.

C'mon...spin it...
"I did a column on the decline of radio listening - and my hundreds of thousands of readers flocked back during this book to see what they were missing."

Or maybe that you're the only one who can win in November(ratings).

And so the drumbeat begins for radio.

I hate commercial radio! It's numbingly dull! I am so glad I am getting Satellite.

I cannot believe how far KQ and WCCO have fallen since the 90s!

LOVE your column!!!!

Polly

LAMBERT: I'm old school. I love my CD collection.

Commercial TV is still worse.

LAMBERT: Now THAT'S upbeat.

I would have been delighted to deliver one of the eulogies at Brian's funeral (unless I was already incarcerated for doing the deed).

LAMBERT: I'm sure they'd give you a 24-hour furlough. Like Dukakis gave Willie Horton.

I will posit again that the Janacek / Lambert duopoly was ill-conceived as it meant that 50% of the positions were indefensible from the get-go.

The old facts vs. feelings thing.

Witness the failure of Air America.

Liberal foolishness simply does not make for good radio, or newspapers, as Avista will attest.

LAMBERT: I remain as fascinated as ever with what you regard as "facts". Toss a couple up some time.

But since you revere right-wing talk radio above almost every other information source, take it as a compliment when I say you completely embody the roiling stew of phobias, antagonisms and misperceptions of the target talk radio audience.

Okay Brian, I've seen these media ranking numbers for years and faithfully ignored them (because I could from my non-media world), and you (God help you/bless you/however you prefer) try to make sense of them, I suppose you had to try because the media careers/industry you followed made decisions based on them.

But HOW to make sense of them? Think about it on a gut level--you are in the industry and familiar with its realities, and yet these numbers always leave you scratching your head, right?

I suggest you listen to your gut and throw these surveys away before they taint your fingers. The survey processes are so contrived to be worse than meaningless--they are misleading given the huge gaps in assumptions and surveying logic used to create them.

Political polling has 1+1=2 logic and accuracy by comparison to these clumsy Arbitron numbers. I'd bet on Pro-Tobacco studies before I'd put $10 on the accuracy of these numbers. I'd...well, you get my point, don't you.

If somehow, some way--yes, I know they say they will soon have a way, I have my doubts, but if--some day some real sensible tracking data ever comes available, surveying companies like Arbitron will fight like hell to suppress or just outright change the 'facts' because of the outlandish errors of their multi-million dollar, multi-decade long surveying scam would be exposed. You and I will likely never see the true media viewing facts in our lifetimes.

Sorry I went crazy there for a minute. It just drives me nutty to see this pseudo-science being used to make decisions larger than 'do I want a burger or pizza for lunch today'.

LAMBERT: They don't make a hell of a lot of sense, and the radio ratings -- with their paper diaries -- are really a load of suspect science. But that said it is remarkable how little these numbers and rankings change. B96 might pop up here, probably due to a promotion or the lucky placement of a couple diaries, but how do you explain KQ pulling the same audience share for so long? With K102 usually second? The so-called Personal People Meter is due in here next year, (Volunteeers where the gizmo which picks up signals off anything they listen to anywhere.)

Kountry is King!

Viva Dwight Yoakam!

LAMBERT: I've asked Claude and Rick for a list of their favorite "kountry" stars.

"Kountry is king"? May we now please move on from this arcane effluvia?

Other than Dolly Parton?

Bertram Jr. is correct, 50% of the positions on your radio show were indefensible. They just happened to be coming from the right. If you had not held your tongue, when B Jr and his goosesteppers called in, your show would have been cancelled far sooner that it actually was.

As a regular listener of Lambert and Janacek, I came to realize that it didn't matter when I tuned in, the drivel from the right seldom changed. It was good entertainment to listen to you challenging pseudo intellectuals who got their factoids earlier in the day from Rush.

And I really miss the original "Wine Guy."

LAMBERT: And I miss the sake-tasting after the show ...

BL= "...how do you explain KQ pulling the same audience share for so long? With K102 usually second?"

In the absence of logic...follow the money is the golden rule, isn't it?

LAMBERT: I think the argument here is what comes first, the unscientific numbers that ad reps use to set rates, or the dough?

The "market" sets the rates based on cost per points. Driven by demand, against available station inventory.

The higher your percentage of listeners in the demo, the higher the percentage of the buy you can command.

This being a largley unsophisticated market, KQ continues it's dominance of A25-54 largely via the dreadful morning show, and hangs on throughout the day with it's rehashed 70's playlist..

K102 does a decent job of leveraging the fact that country artists are the only ones selling CDs anymore, and they tour - a lot.

And their songs are generally about REAL things such as love, family, faith and country (anethema to liberals).

LAMBERT: "Anethema" (sic) as a train of thought is to you, the discussion was really about the accuracy (or lack thereof) of the Arbitron ratings. But as an America hating, troop-hating, freedom-hating liberal, I get confused a lot.

Please don't tell me country is coming back!

As Tom Petty once said, "Country music is just bad rock music but with a fiddle."

Being the founding member of the Militant Moderate Movement, I am concerned about the righties making up facts again (if lying us into Iraq weren't enough). The 'failure' of Air America? The strength of Liberals is their dominance of a new medium called the Internet. Radio is dying - propped up by paranoid loons and people who can't operate an IPOD. Radio is an afterthought to liberals. It means nothing because it is a nothing medium.

Democrats are raising more money through the internet, they are organizing through the internet,and they are spreading their SECULARIST Anti-America message to an unsuspecting public! Repubs are still trying to figure out how to get words in the big box of an email.

You think the 'failure' of Air America means anything? This country - regrettably - will swing way left. I just wish we could have a commonsense approach to government that doesn't leave me paying for a fiasco in Iraq, or some government study on gay grizzlies in Yellowstone.

LAMBERT: I believe the study you refer to concerned with the probability of gay grizzlies MARRYING in the near future. Most likely after being exposed to suburban madrassas in Eagan. And country music -- I forsee a day in the not too distant future when the only people listening to music radio are country fans and geezery Heart and Skynyrd fans ... who can't get their thumbs around an iPod.

"Ish Kabibble". I haven't heard that in a loooong time.

Oyvaysmear! What, you're trying to give Bertram Jr. shpilkes? He loves Tom Petty. And yet...

Didn't see KTNF there. Do they really have such a small audience it doesn't show up in the ratings?

LAMBERT: They were number 21 or 22. Criminally bad programming out there. And no they never turned me down for a job.

It is true, Tom Petty is perhaps the greatest American musician since Sinatra (though Petty writes his songs and plays instruments).

Name me another 30 year rock artist / band that has the integrity, the talent the hits and the sales to match him. Then throw in the Dylan backing band, Traveling Wilbury's and the "solo" albums.

I'll be at the X in July to see him; he has even resurrected Mudcrutch, his original band.

" I forsee a day in the not too distant future when the only people listening to music radio are country fans and geezery Heart and Skynyrd fans ... who can't get their thumbs around an iPod."

As Hillary Clinton (beer drinker, hunter, and God fearing bible thumper) would say, those words are elitist and out of touch.

LAMBERT: So what, like I have no chance in Appalachia?

I didn't realize that Leinfelder was so greatly affected growing up in Highland Park. He is such a mensch. Makes me want to plotz. Who will be the first local station to play Matis Yahu, the Yiddish rapper from Brooklyn. He is actually quite good.

LAMBERT: Leinfelder lights votive candles to Yehudi Menuhin.

"Repubs are still trying to figure out how to get words in the big box of an email."

C'mon, you know that's unfair. We all have at least one wingnut relative who delights in filling our inboxes with e-mails where you have to scroll down past ten pages worth of other people's addresses before you get to the jaggedly-formatted words shedding light on Barack Obama's secret Muslim credentials or how that set of single footprints in the sand indicates when Jesus was carrying you.

LAMBERT: Are you ripping Ms. Kersten?

First off....

"Name me another 30 year rock artist / band that has the integrity, the talent the hits and the sales to match him. Then throw in the Dylan backing band, Traveling Wilbury's and the "solo" albums."

How about Springsteen?

LAMBERT: Like Pawlenty, bertram was stunned ... stunned, I tell you ... to be told what "Born in the USA" is really all about.

I think what 'Born in the USA' really represents is Springsteen's imcompetance as a song-writer. He's trying to write an America hating downer, yet people take it to heart as a jingoistic anthem!

LAMBERT: What next? Are you going to rip the Beatles' White Album? "Exile on Main Street"? "Pet Sounds"? On some things the critical discussion is pretty well over. "Born in the USA" is one of them.

Alright. On some things I have to concede.

Springsteen didnt ever do much for me though. I always got the feeling he positioned himself very much as an iconic troubabdour before he really was one.

I like the Beatles and the Beach Boys quite a bit.

LAMBERT: Get some air. Get some sun. Declare an early happy hour, or the next thing you know you'll be fixating on Claude and Rick.