I should know better by now. In May, I said Thanksgiving would be the likely target. Now Christmas is in the mix.
That said, the natives are still chirping enthusiastically about their new home. From the outhouse to the penthouse.
Just imagine when they actually move in.
*The newest pain-in-the-ass commercial on TV, radio-less: The every-five-seconds played EBay, "Are You Ready--Come and Get it" complete jingle and moronic look. You'd think with all that high-tech money they'd have picked a better advertising firm. Whoever conceived of that musical monstrosity should be made to look at a Meg Whitman self-portrait for ten hours in solitary confinement.
*I barely ever listened to the "Radio Rabbi" on KSFO every early Sunday Morning but apparently many of you did--I say did because Rabbi Lapin was 86ed from the KSFO program shelf.
*All you really need to know about KRON News Director, Aaron Pero, is this old item I found. Pero gets some sort of deep pleasure by shouting and yelling at staffers. Still. Maybe he should have to watch Amhed Fareed and Henry Wofford.
*Here's a weather report from me that you all can use without the usual dreck from the weather people: We may or may not have some rain or sprinkles this week, or next week, or the following week. There's a lot of high pressure and some low pressure, OK, see yah later.
*Speaking of weather, Mike Nicco still mispronounces the word, "meteorologist" as "meter-rologist." Mike, it's annoying as hell and you of all people should know. On TV you can get away with it but when you're doing radio, it sounds ridiculous and lazy. C'mon Mike.
*Just watch, in December when we get about three massive storms and the heavens pour --then the "STORM WATCH" appears and Mill Valley gets flooded and the blue jackets appear. Then another one. And another one. I'm not a weatherman but I'm predicting we get above-average rain in December and January --I just ended the drought. Mike Pechner, you owe me a free lunch at John's Grill.
*While I was typing my column, Eli Manning just threw another interception.
*BREAKING NEWS! Allen Martin just parted the Red Sea!
*Of course Gary Radnich is anti-union. Until he needs one for all that overhead.
*Follow me on Twitter
Mike Nicco is my absolute favorite me-dee-rawlogist....please use your google for definition and pronouncer..Nicco is right.
ReplyDeleteWatching KGO news this morning, they reported on the DEA investigating the 49ers yesterday re: the training staff and transport of pain killers over state lines. By the way they reported it, you'd think the Niners were singled out. The Niners were one of six teams and I'm assuming this is the first of spot checks of NFL teams in the coming weeks and months. The way KGO reported it seemed completely sensationalized to the way ESPN reported it last night.
ReplyDeleteI would've admired KRON if they'd interviewed the authors of the book on the accelerated pace of televised news because it would've showed they were trying to be part of a solution to a problem we all face nowadays. Instead, the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil stance whittles away at Pero's and the station's credibility.
ReplyDeleteSo how badly is this move going to effect Gary and the Bentlys' commute?
ReplyDeleteI was laughing as I was reading the comments section of that Pero piece you linked from 2008. As everyone was going back and forth about Jan Wahl I kept expecting Stan to appear with a, "Another thing about Gary Radnich!....".
ReplyDeleteRich...after all of the things you've printed over the years about Aaron Pero, I don't think I'm the only one that wants to see a picture of what this guy looks like!
ReplyDeleteGot Google? It's not hard.
Delete12pm it's easier and much more fun when Rich puts up a picture and posting on the subject and the readers can chime in with stories and comments.
DeleteAaron Pero is a cowardly little bully with extreme anger issues and an attraction to insane, overprivileged women. He stomps around the newsroom shouting and yelling at people for things that are complete nonsense and cannot be bothered to hold himself accountable for anything that comes out of his own mouth or email. His communications to staff resemble the poorly-spelled and uncapitalized ramblings of a sociopath and when faced with the realities of his behavior and the subsequent high turnover of staff, he will only respond with a snide "if you don't like it, there's the door." His work has almost single-handedly driven the quality of a once-great American newsroom into tabloid sensationalist garbage and his personal behavior towards KRON staff and even his own family are enough to warrant that most who have dealt with him with any regularity could not even be bothered to urinate in his face if it was on fire. If only somebody above him would recognize the damage he's done and take an interest in actual improvement in the KRON brand, they would send him packing and be sure to do it in the middle of the daytime, so he could not sneak out like the petty little weasel he is, known to make sure he is absent from the office on people's final day at KRON just to be sure he never has to face a final confrontation from somebody he has no power over who might finally get the satisfaction of telling him to his face what a sniveling, lying, two-timing ratface scumbag bastard he really is. Legend has it that the person who gave Pero the News Director position later commented that it was the worst decision they ever made. But with any luck, when Pero finally does get booted out of KRON, a simple Google search will turn up lots of results indicating what a wormy piece of shit he is and at most he'll be able to manage a Hardee's restaurant somewhere in the midwest. I'm sure his faithful female companion will remain loyal.
DeleteThat song used in those eBay commercials is a remix of a crappy Selena Gomez tune from last year.
ReplyDeleteI used to work at eBay and can tell you firsthand that getting a TV campaign on the air is like pulling teeth with those guys. At one point, they ceased doing commercials entirely, figuring everybody already knew who they were... needless to say that didn't prove to be a good idea. Now, they've gone the complete opposite and are running commercials all day long. Moderation was never their strong suit.
The problem is eBay doesn't even know what it wants to do anymore - are they competing with Amazon, or are they competing with Craigslist? They don't know.
As you probably know by now KGO 810 is moving into the same neighborhood, right down the street from 900 Front, where I worked for a while. When KGO moved to hawthorne they made all the employees take a tour of the building so we could get our bearings. Once people saw the news room it was obvious everything was on the cheap, but there was something interesting said to us on the tour. I don't remember who gave the tour. It may have been Paul Hosley but can't recall. I do remember someone asking a question about access for the news vehicles, and the ability to get to stories. The tour guide said, "John Dickey wants to move everyone even closer to the baseball field so the reporters will have better access to the roads. He also knows this place may end up being a little tight and uncomfortable."
ReplyDeleteI laughed to myself. Move closer to the baseball field? Increase the rent? I could see the point about the news vehicles, but now that they're moving to arguably the most difficult area in the city to navigate I sense my gut reaction was spot on: these people are dishonest.
They don't care about the comfort as I was just told the new place is even smaller. And they don't care about employee access, as there's no parking. They also don't care about news people, since they supposedly are moving a lot of news people out, and their own branded version of CNN Radio in. "Sharing reporters" is supposedly a good thing!
What a tragedy for a once-great station. Glad I could say I was a part of KGO when it mattered.
Not only was Ted Ramey not filling in for Kate Scott last week- as he usually does- but Radnich made some crack about Ted being "out of a job" or "not working"..something like that. Funny to Radnich.
ReplyDeleteWe really are becoming a country where the haves laugh at what the have's less have.
Here we stand, naked, and without our Rabbi! What, what shall we do?
ReplyDeleteGood riddance to "our" favorite rabbi. His hateful speech is similar to Michael Savage's except the rabbi has a more elegant vocabulary and accent. The rabbi is savage except shrouded behind a yamuka and tifilin. What will the rabbi's favorite Israeli caller Hanna do now!?
DeleteDoes anyone know if those Ebay commercials are nationwide or if we're getting an extra-heavy does in the Bay Area? I can understand them wanting to pump up their sales for Christmas but there's a lot of tech company advertising I suspect that is primary aimed at the Bay Area to make a company appear to have more of a presence than it actually does.
ReplyDeleteHow would narrowly targeted advertising make a company appear to have a *wider* presence?
DeleteAnd yes, it's nationwide. It's a big account with a big budget.
Mike Nicco can pronounce meteorologist any way he chooses, as far as I'm concerned.
ReplyDeleteIf he says what time the fog will lift, or when the rain will begin, in western San Francisco, you can set your watch by it!
If only KGO would "shelve" their own religious guru, Brent Walters. While he does have a vast knowledge of religious history and doctrine, he is NOT a radio person....all he does is prepare his script, and read from it.....so esoteric and dry - yawwwwnn! He's actually a college professor, and should stick to that.......
ReplyDeleteI listened to him in his early days and he was interesting due to his knowledge of the subject matter. What I noticed quickly is that he is very thin-skinned and does not like callers to challenge him. His latest spot for his show says a lot about him as he smugly talks about the genuine and the phony. It's religion, and while there are historical truths in some of it, the rest is based on faith not fact.
DeleteAgreed. It is beyond my comprehension how Walters has maintained his gig. Unless he has "unholy" pictures to hold over management's head? There's no one better to hold court on a religious show than the one and only Bernard Ward. Rich, did you catch MZ's carnival act on the Saturday Special on KSCO? He floated the idea of hiring Ward...
Delete> The newest pain-in-the-ass commercial on TV, radio-less: The every-five-seconds
ReplyDelete> played EBay, "Are You Ready--Come and Get it" complete jingle and moronic look.
> You'd think with all that high-tech money they'd have picked a better advertising firm.
> Whoever conceived of that musical monstrosity should be made to look at a Meg
> Whitman self-portrait for ten hours in solitary confinement.
It's actually from the biggest advertising agency in the Bay Area, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, creators of the Got Milk campaign and many others that were great, at least at one time. But the eBay campaign, like the newer Got Milk offerings, sucks, because Bay Area advertising, once a hotbed of creativity, isn't anything close to what it used to be, and like the TV stations employment in them is more a matter of who you blow than what you know. And they're all mindlessly chasing the dotcom VC dollars anyway, not bothering to think or concept; that's so "1990s."
The really sad thing, which I've seen no investigative journalism body touch, is that so much of this VC money for the still-not-profitable-after-a-decade dotcoms is coming from the pensions of brick and mortar workers who actually produced something useful. They then retire and find out there's nothing in their pensions because some 30-year-old doofus with an MBA from Stanford decided dotcoms were where the returns were. Meanwhile the guy whose company actually made a slow but steady and predictable profit is derided because his industry is "yesterday." At least yesterday businesses made real money.
Amen 3:18
DeleteTrue what you say about creativity, or the lack of it. In any field, creativity in the U.S. at least, is dying. It's all about getting rich FAST today, and creativity is a slow boil and often doesn't yield results this quarter. And now, with every click and comment tracked and parsed, they wanted results THIS WEEK. They won't even wait a quarter.
DeleteRich is right, it is meteor-ologist I should knew, anyway, you are on for lunch Rich!
ReplyDeleteSF Gate is getting dumber and more inane by the day.
ReplyDeleteSee my comment at 3:18 PM. Same soup.
Delete