Were there any surprises in the newly released radio ratings?
Not exactly, but a few observations are in order. Starting with the fact that while country music station KFKF FM remained Numero Uno in listeners 6 and older in January, its share dropped from 11.4 in the Holiday ratings book to a 7.9.
Why the steep drop? Continue reading
A new novel by the author Susan Minot (“Child, Slave, Soldier”) was reviewed favorably in the New York Times this past weekend. It made me think of the time I went to see her speak at the Unity Temple on the Plaza a few years ago and I was literally the only male in an audience of two hundred plus people. It appears to even the most casual reader that the American market for fiction is strictly segregated along gender lines. The readers of Danielle Steele are a distinct and separate audience from those who read Tom Clancy, to give obvious examples.
The challenge is particularly great for an author who is making the switch from non-fiction (less gender specific) to fiction (rigidly divided by sex). I had the pleasure of meeting Patricia Beard a few months ago. An accomplished author with nine non-fiction works to her credit, “A Certain Summer” is her first novel.
Set in a beach resort on the East Coast in 1948, it tells the story of a young wife whose husband is still missing in action four years after D-Day. The protagonist, Helen Wadsworth, has a young son of high school age, who is as reluctant as she is to let go of the hope for his father’s return. Their lives, mother and son, are further complicated by two would-be-suitors, both veterans, both attractive to Helen but in very different ways.
The dominant motif in the book is paradox. Continue reading
Eight airlines that service KCI are working with the city to update the airport and make it more convenient. Am I the only person pushing for a self-service airport security section? Since I’ve been married, I’ve gotten good at giving myself a pat-down.
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A Leawood orthopedic doctor won $1 million in the December Mega Millions jackpot. That might be the most depressing sentence you will read all year.
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After seeing Colin Kane three years ago in New York, funny guy Dennis Miller said he’d be the next big thing in comedy…
Looks like Miller might be right. Colin is a six foot four, well-built, very handsome young man who started doing comedy in his hometown of New York City as a host at Caroline’s, the nation’s number one comedy club.
Many top managers and agencies tried to sign him five or six years ago but he listened to the owner of Caroline’s who told him to hold off, keep doing standup and get advice from the other comics who worked at the club.
The list of comics who have helped Kane ranges from Lewis Black, Katt Williams and Dave Attell to Patton Oswalt and Lisa Lampanelli.
Colin became the darling of New York City’s comedy underground.
The catch: He’s one of the most sexually explicit onstage comic ever. Continue reading
![Amber Heard gets flirty with Kevin Costner [USA ONLY]](https://www.kcconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/amber-heard-blonde-for-three-days-to-kill-02.jpg)
What a mess…
Is this movie a Parody? A Love story? Or an absurd Hit Man Thriller?
After watching 3 DAYS TO KILL I’m still looking for the answer to that question. If nothing else it could easily pass for a made-for-tv movie with a few doses of extreme violence thrown in to pacify the ticket-buying action movie crowd.
The setting is in Paris where government hit man Kevin Costner is back in the killing biz. Which is bad news for the bad guys.
Sure he’d promised his estranged wife and daughter he was done with the dirty business for good.
Just one problem. Continue reading
Sporting Kansas City recently announced that Teal Bunbury will be shipped off to the
New England Revolution in exchange for a 2015 first-round pick and some allocation money.
Once a promising young stud who ended his rookie campaign with a strong nine goals, Teal was eclipsed over the past couple seasons by more technical players like Dom Dwyer, Soony Saad, Claudio Bieler, and CJ Sapong. Hell, even Jacob Peterson was chosen in front of Bunbury most of last season.
The move wasn’t a huge surprise, since it was known that Teal wanted to be on a squad where he’d see significant playing time and that wasn’t going to happen in KC. Continue reading
Kelly Urich
The Point 99.7 FM
Let’s get something straight right up front…
The following January radio ratings are for listeners 6 and older, Monday through Sunday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. These are the broadest measures – and because of that – the most accurate ratings.
What they do not address are the specific demographics stations use to sell advertising. For example women ages 25 to 54, men ages 18 to 36, etc. Those numbers are made available only to subscribers – like ad agencies and radio stations – who pay tens of thousands of dollars and more to access those specifics.
Now on with the show: Continue reading
Let’s talk about the rioting on the Plaza…
More to the point, the young black kids and teens who – like their mostly white counterparts – find the upscale shopping and dining Mecca to their liking as a safe, fun place to hang.
The main difference being, because they generally come from less affluent families, the kids don’t have much if any money to spend. Or other halfway appealing parts of town they can easily get to. And of course, because of their number and the color of their skin, they make affluent whites and others uncomfortable – very uncomfortable. And that scares the bejeezus out of the owners of the Plaza and the retailers nd restaurateurs that operate there.
Which makes for a lose-lose deal. Continue reading
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About time, Beck…
The eccentric California musician is set to drop his first album in about six years, when he releases Morning Phase on February 25th. But just for my buds, here’s a sneak preview of the entire album for you to stream for free. At first listen, it’s impossible not to hear the similarities between this effort and his 2002 masterpiece, Sea Change.
Indeed, Morning was recorded at the same studio, using the same musicians, and the floaty vocals coupled with crystal clear tones are nearly identical.
Definitely worth checking out… Continue reading
It’s not easy being Randy Miller these days…
Was a time Miller ruled Kansas City’s radio roost. And to this day he remains a legend. He was what Erich “Mancow” Muller and Johnny Dare aspired to become…within reason. He cashed the town’s fattest radio paychecks – paychecks now dwarfed by Dare – and could do no wrong.
Hold it, scratch that.
Miller could do all kinds of wrong, but even when his on-air misdeeds rose to fireable offenses, another station in another market would come a calling with more money, resulting in more fame. Then another firing – yet more money – and on and on. Continue reading
I know what FYI writer Tim Engle wrote about deejay Randy Miller in the Star…
About the two guys who own a couple small time radio stations in and around Warrensburg who were willing to let Randy do whatever he wanted. I know what Hearne said about Randy in his story and that he told me Randy was talking last Friday about it being his last day on 98.5 FM The Bar.
I know that basically that Randy wanted to come back to radio and to do it all again. I even commented on the story giving Randy my full support – not that he needs it – because I totally could see where he was coming from.
Syndicate it, given some time, do a different toned down version of his old show, eventually from his home studio in Lone Jack maybe. Continue reading
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I’m playing these cards ultra close to the vest, but you heard it here first…
Sources say that the DEA is poised to drop the hammer on the scion of a highly regarded Kansas City jewelry family.
The details are sketchy but allegedly it entails the smuggling of both diamonds and drugs as well as some alleged intra-family misdeeds. It’s also said to entail the owing of enormous sums of money to other area jewelers.
If true, this could be the most shocking scandal in modern Kansas City history. Continue reading
Word that Randy Miller was mounting a comeback came as news to Mancow…
After all, the syndicated shock jock out of Chicago cut his teeth interning for Miller in the late 1980s. It was a time the Cow will never forget…would that he could. What made the news even odder, was that Miller would be returning after a decade off the air in Mancow’s former college stomping grounds, Warrensburg, Missouri.
“That’s where I started my radio career,” Mancow says. “I wish Randy every bit of luck. I wouldn’t deny him the ability to feed his family.”
The flip side of those goodwill tidings: Continue reading
I went to see a band called Neutral Milk Hotel on Thursday night, and it was outstanding…
For the uninitiated—and trying to keep this as brief as possible—NMH was a band founded by probably-sometimes-crazy front man Jeff Mangum in Athens, Georgia in the late 80s. Wikipedia describes their music as “experimental sound, obscure lyrics and eclectic instrumentation,” and I think that’s mostly pretty fair.
They released two albums—On Avery Island and the highly influential, critically acclaimed follow-up In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (which was a “concept” album about falling in love with Anne Frank, of course). Then Mangum cracked and the band disbanded. He spent the proceeding years as a recluse, living on friends’ couches and making music for nobody but himself before slowly reemerging within the past two years. And then they decided to tour, and man was it worth the 15-year wait.
But I digress.
This circuitous tale really only serves to get me to the following point: that the songs they played live on Thursday sounded almost identical to the recorded versions. Sometimes bands do that. (And trust me, this’ll be about the Royals in a second.)
Is there life after death for legendary Kansas City radio disc jockey Randy Miller?
For more than a decade the former ZZ99 and Q104 radio bad boy has been on ice – as in off-the-air – after a two decade career punctuated by high profile firings and paychecks that dwarfed that of other local radio personalities.
Randy Miller was the man here yet at the same time his own worst enemy.
I recall attending a press conference staged by Q104 in 1998 in which Miller inked what was touted to be the largest contract in Kansas City radio. A contract insiders estimated to be north of $300,000. I also remember writing about Miller getting fired by Q104 in 2002 before being fired by the WHB guys for a short-lived run on Hot Talk 1510 AM and sister FM station The Planet.
At Q104 Miller antics – such as an on-air giving away free house painting and then surprising the St. Joseph woman who won with an in-house striptease by the painter – preceded his firing. Police calls about roving, faux convicts in prison jumpsuits ringing doorbells in Mission Hills on Halloween reportedly lead to his departure from the Planet.
Combined with dramatically lower ratings, local radio then turned its back on Miller. Continue reading
Say what you will but buyouts—or so-callede mergers—among power players are the new capitalistic rules of the game…
The latest has # 1 cable operator COMCAST hooking up with runner up TIME WARNER CABLE.
The TWC stock price has been as low as about $ 85.00 during the past year. So with a possible buyout price of $ 159.00 TWC shareholders could leave the table with a hefty profit.
Not familiar with COMCAST?
Sure you are. They currently operate locally in Independence and Olathe. They also own the NBC Television Network, Universal Pictures and Studios as well as various NBC cable networks like MSNBC CNBC, etc.
Will the deal go through? Continue reading
It’s like this…
Damn few living legends that still matter walk the earth once their prime has passed. Time and market conditions change. One minute they’re Blockbuster Video – king of kings – the next, obsolete, gone. Such is life.
Take dinosaur businesses like the record and stereo stores that dotted the landscape of most major cities and small towns for decades. Hey, try and find one now…especially the latter.
These days what passes for halfway decent audio is mostly limited to stores like Target, Walmart and Best Buy. Stores any halfway discerning music aficionado knows better than to waste time shopping at. Because by far and away – with ultra rare exception – the quality of the gear is so poor.
Hey, but that’s life. Continue reading
Sarah McLinn
Ever read something so ridiculous you had to rub your eyes, reread it and it still made no sense?
You know, besides here on KC Confidential. We all have, but I have to tell you, I literally could not believe my eyes when I read the following graph in the Lawrence Journal World in a story about murdered 52 year-old CiCi’s Pizza owner Harold Sasko and his alleged murderer and former live in hottie, 19 year-old Sarah McLinn.
Check it:
“McLinn’s sister, Ashley McLinn, 22, of Topeka, has also shared her cellphone number (785-806-****) in hopes that her sister will call her. She said the family feared Sarah did not have her cellphone with her and wouldn’t remember their phone numbers.”
Note that I blanked out the last four digits of the young woman’s cell number. Continue reading
