Originally published by Riverfront Times 2006-04-12
©2006 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
Foul Frequency
PR flops. Staff upheaval. Shrill talk-show hosts. The Cardinals' flagship station can't seem to find the strike zone.
written by Chad Garrison, photos by Jennifer Silverberg
Former talk-show host Dave Lenihan's well-publicized gaffe last month was more than a colossal blunder. For those who've lost patience with KTRS ("The Big" 550 AM) and its general manager, Tim Dorsey, it reaffirmed a long-standing conviction that the station and its founder have lost all control.
A brash, cocksure advertising salesman once destined to take control of KMOX (1120 AM), Dorsey struck out on his own in 1996, launching KTRS to rival his former employer. But ratings floundered, and the station failed to attract any real attention until last August. That's when, to great fanfare, the ownership group of the St. Louis Cardinals announced they'd purchased a 50 percent stake in KTRS and planned to make it their flagship broadcast station.
Many in the media trumpeted the move as a grand slam for KTRS and a potentially lethal blow to KMOX, which rode its 51-year run with the Redbirds into becoming the nation's most dominant regional radio station. At the same time, the KTRS-Cardinals merger aligned two of St. Louis' most powerful and well-known investor groups.
On one side of the aisle sat the privileged Country Day boys of the Cardinals ownership: chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., former United States Ambassador to Belgium Stephen Brauer and banker Andrew Baur. Filling the bride's pews were Dorsey and his investor group, whose names include former big-league stars Dan Dierdorf and Ozzie Smith, actor John Goodman and beer baron Jerry Clinton.
Though the merger was billed as a union of equals, the honeymoon didn't last long. Immediately, the Cardinals ownership set about dismantling everything Dorsey and his group had built during their ten years at the reins. Gone was the earnest talk-radio format modeled after KMOX. In its place came shrill, in-your-face chatter, more akin to that found on rocker KSHE (94.7 FM).
Radio insiders say that the 59-year-old Dorsey, who is accustomed to calling the shots, now plays little more than a bench role. It's KTRS newcomers Bobby Lawrence and program director Al Brady Law who actually control the station, with the Cardinals sending Dorsey to the mound only when they need him to mop up one of the station's many publicity flops.
But on a Tuesday afternoon last month, the gregarious Dorsey carries the swagger of a starting pitcher as he strides about the windowless office of his Westport Plaza radio station. Mistakenly, he thinks most of the bad press is behind him. (It is two weeks before Dave Lenihan will draw national attention to the station for using the word "coon" when talking about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.)
Dressed in khakis, a starched blue Oxford and a tangerine tie, Dorsey has just wrapped up an interview with KMOV (Channel 4). Like many covering the Cardinals' move from KMOX to KTRS, the television reporter wanted to discuss with Dorsey the station's signal strength. At night, when the majority of Cardinals games are played, KTRS' 5,000-watt signal is considerably weaker than the 50,000-watt "Mighty MOX."
"The Post actually got this one right," Dorsey says, holding a well-worn copy of the August 12 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in which a team of reporters mapped KTRS' signal and found its daytime reach to be stronger than most critics believed.
"I think, overall, the stories about us are starting to turn somewhat," Dorsey adds. "They're not quite so negative."
Dorsey boasts that KTRS recently increased the Cardinals radio network to 115 affiliates in 9 states, filling in static-plagued pockets in Illinois, Arkansas and other locales where KTRS' signal does not reach.
He maintains that public outcry is at last waning over the controversial firing of nearly the entire on-air staff nine days before Christmas. He adds that listeners have fallen in love with John Rooney, who the Cardinals placed in the KTRS broadcast booth after handing Wayne Hagin his walking papers in November.
What's more, an over-the-top PR stunt in which the Cardinals ownership and KTRS conspired to "vandalize" several local Redbird billboards recently earned the station tons of free publicity. Though some questioned the ethics behind the prank, Dorsey is only too happy to show newspaper accounts of the antic that appeared in publications as far away as Chicago.
As for the station's ratings, which nose-dived from fourteenth in the market to nineteenth following the Cardinals purchase, Dorsey spins the numbers as meaningless. (Last month the station moved up to eighteenth in the market, even though its overall market share dipped slightly, to 2.5 percent of the listening audience.)
"Actually, we're surprised anyone was still listening," says Dorsey. "We basically imploded the station and started from scratch. Our thought is that we have three months to work out the kinks before Opening Day."
Dorsey estimates the Cardinals will bring some bring 750,000 new listeners to the station up threefold, he says, from the 180,000 to 250,000 people who tune in on any given day. Just thinking about the influx of new listeners has him as excited as a Little Leaguer the night before fantasy camp.
"I wake up each morning and say, 'Damn, we got the Cardinals! It really did happen!'" Dorsey exclaims.
As if on cue, he reaches into his pocket to retrieve a cell phone. On the other end of the line is John Rooney, who wants to know when Dorsey plans to arrive for his first-ever visit to spring training.
"Johnny boy!" Dorsey yells. "How ya doing? Yeah, I'll be down tomorrow. Do you have dinner plans that night? No? Well, you do now. Terrific!"
Friends say Dorsey has aged noticeably in recent years. He's lost weight; his hair has grown gray and thin. Although he insists he has the last say in the station's transformation, those whom he canned in December say the tears in his eyes told another story.
"I'm pretty sure if he had his druthers, I'd still be there," notes sports anchor Randy Karraker, one of the many on-air hosts ousted in December. "We had a great relationship. We played golf together. We were friends. But it's Al Brady Law who's calling the shots."
Frank Absher, a radio historian and media professor at Saint Louis University, questions whether landing the Cardinals broadcasts is truly as big a coup for KTRS as many have made it out to be.
"I remember seeing a tape of the press conference announcing the merger. [Cardinals president] Mark Lamping said for the record that the flagship radio station doesn't mean as much anymore," Absher says. "There's Dorsey standing there in all his glory, and his new partners are saying the station doesn't mean much?!"
Others offer an even harsher assessment of the Cardinals-KTRS partnership and Dorsey's tenuous position within it.
"Dorsey put together a deal he's not intellectually equipped to run," opines Steve Mosier, station manager at soul station WESL (1490 AM) and a former sales manager at KTRS. "Some people, instead of asking for help, they scratch and claw. Dorsey would rather say he's captain of a sinking ship than fix the ship."
To make sense of the criticism directed at Dorsey and KTRS these days, it's important to review a little history of the radio station and its ties to KMOX.
It was under the tutelage of legendary KMOX general manager Bob Hyland that Dorsey entered radio. An autocratic ruler who ran KMOX from 1955 until his death in 1992, Hyland hired Dorsey as a salesman and quickly went about teaching his understudy the industry. For the next fifteen years, Dorsey would work his way through the ranks, eventually becoming station manager of KMOX and the rumored heir-apparent to Hyland.
That transition never happened. In 1991 Dorsey left the station after the Cable Advertising Network of Greater St. Louis presented him a "godfather offer" he says was too good to pass up.
In 1995, three years after Hyland died, CBS sold KMOX to Westinghouse Inc. The new owners demanded the station turn a 40 percent profit margin. Unlike Hyland who kept CBS largely out of the station's affairs new general manager Rod Zimmerman seemed only too pleased to assist ownership in its cost-cutting. On Valentine's Day 1996, the station laid off nine full-time staffers, and morale sank to its lowest in memory.
Sensing opportunity in the upheaval, Dorsey brokered a deal with Charter Communications to join him in launching a station to rival KMOX. In April 1996 Dorsey persuaded popular KMOX hosts Wendy Wiese, Kevin Horrigan and Bill Wilkerson to join him in the venture, originally broadcast on Belleville-based WIBV (1260 AM).
It was a decision the former KMOX hosts soon came to regret.
"We were upset about Zimmerman and suckers for the sales pitch," laments Horrigan, one of many casualties from KTRS' recent format change. "What we failed to recognize was that the signal in Belleville was so terrible that even if people wanted to listen they couldn't, and particularly at night west of Highway 270, which is a huge market for KMOX."
Realizing WIBV was fading fast, Dorsey compiled a new group of investors. Taking their name from the Charcoal House, a smoky Rock Hill eatery where the group first met, CH Holdings emerged in January 1997 with a reported $10 million in financing enough to purchase KSD (550 AM).
Dorsey changed the call letters to KTRS, short for "Talk Radio St. Louis." But even with the stronger frequency and new Westport digs, the station failed to make a splash. Why? Former staffers and radio insiders blame Dorsey, whose meddling in station affairs, they say, prompted the running joke that the call letters stood for "Tim's Radio Station."
"The place was like the Bermuda Triangle for broadcasters," comments Horrigan, who adds that Dorsey let go and later rehired all three of the original KMOX staffers who joined him.
"Tim's a pure salesman. Best I've ever seen," Horrigan adds. "But he never had a strong radio guy running the place. Your dime-store psychologist would say Dorsey was trying to emulate Hyland, but Hyland had a gift for the business."
Dorsey's mercurial hirings and firings are something of legend. The station's morning-drive slot alone featured thirteen different hosts during a six-year span from 1998 to 2004.
Former employees say Dorsey was also exceedingly parsimonious, failing to provide shows with producers and not even handing out the standard trinkets key chains, coffee mugs to promote the station.
"In my five years at KTRS, the station did only two months' worth of advertising," recalls Karraker. "We didn't even have T-shirts to give away. Management's philosophy was word-of-mouth would provide ratings. Sometimes you can do that. When you're going up against a station like KMOX, with 75 years of history, that's not the case."
But for most staffers especially those who Dorsey lured away from KMOX adding the Cardinals to KTRS made all the troubles worth enduring. Finally, they reasoned, the station would possess the clout Dorsey had long promised.
Those thoughts vanished with the addition of Bobby Lawrence.
A handsome playboy and bird hunter who travels the globe in pursuit of quail and other feathered game, Lawrence wowed the staff the first time he breezed into KTRS' studios. Dressed in Italian slip-ons, a tailor-made suit and flashing a gold signet ring on his pinky finger, the station's new chairman spun visions of a glorious future.
"KTRS has ranked in thirteenth place in the market for much of its life," Lawrence says. "If we can do the things we've done in the past, we're going to have a winner for sure."
A part-owner of the Cincinnati Reds, Lawrence owes a good deal of his fortune to his Ohio neighbor, Cardinals general partner Bill DeWitt Jr. In the early 1980s, DeWitt invested in Lawrence's Cincinnati-based radio venture, Republic Broadcasting Inc., which later sold to Jacor Communications for $34 million.
As for DeWitt's return on investment: "He did great by us, and we did great by him," says Lawrence.
Lawrence went on to work for Jacor, serving as president and chief operating officer until its sale to Clear Channel in 1999 for a whopping $6 billion. During Lawrence's time at Jacor, the company gobbled up stations but earned a less-than-stellar reputation for its use of "shock jocks" and voice-tracking technology the practice of producing radio programs that are designed to sound local but can be run in multiple markets.
"Did we dare to be different at Jacor? Absolutely," says Lawrence. "But I don't want to be maligned for something we're not doing in St. Louis. For the most part, our shows are all locally produced. And about us using shock jocks at KTRS, that couldn't be further from the truth. We're not going to do dirty radio, but that doesn't mean we can't be controversial."
Lawrence claims it was his idea that the Cardinals buy into KTRS, back some seven years ago, when the team was negotiating an extension with KMOX.
"I called Bill and said, 'Listen, I don't know if this would make sense, but would you have any interest in pursuing a station that could broadcast the Cardinals?'" Lawrence recalls. "He said he was interested, but by then it was too late. They'd already struck a deal."
Lawrence made a similar call last year during a protracted rights-fees negotiation, in which KMOX wanted to reduce the reported $6.7 million it paid the Cardinals for broadcast rights in 2005.
While terms of the deal remain hush-hush, the word in radio circles is that their half in the station cost the Redbirds a paltry $2 million or one-seventh of what they're paying Albert Pujols this season.
As recently as 2001, Dorsey told the Post-Dispatch he'd received offers for the station approaching $20 million. Why, then, would he sell half of KTRS to the Cardinals for such a bargain? Because, say media insiders, Dorsey needs the Cardinals much more than they need KTRS.
"It doesn't matter if it was $2 million or $20 million," Dorsey says of the sale price. "We looked at this as affecting the long-term value of the property, and we think we'll really see the dividends three to five years down the line."
For the Cardinals, the acquisition of KTRS provides the club a powerful new revenue generator, allowing for even greater marketing incentives and corporate tie-ins.
Take, for instance, the new Saturday-morning show The Law in Your Life. Hosted by attorneys Michael Angelides and Jeffrey Simmons, the show is supposedly set up to offer listeners insight into the legal ins and outs of the major issues of the day.
On a pre-Valentine's Day show this year, Angelides and Simmons excoriated a U.S. Senate bill that would restrict the amount of claims asbestos victims bring before the courts. Not mentioned in their argument was that their Alton-based law firm, SimmonsCooper LLC, has won hundreds of millions of dollars representing asbestos victims and ranks as one of the biggest asbestos litigators in the country.
Also unmentioned is the fact that SimmonsCooper pays for the hour-long block on the station, and that the law firm happens to be a major advertiser with both the Cardinals and KTRS.
"It's a brilliant move to control the influences that help brand your product," says Lawrence. "That's why the Cardinals owners bought the minor-league team in Springfield. They want to be able to control all the aspects of Cardinals baseball."
Media's ownership of baseball clubs is nothing new. The Tribune Company owns the Chicago Cubs, and the Atlanta Braves answer to the shareholders of Time Warner. But a baseball team buying a media company represents something of a first though it probably won't be the last.
In February the New York Daily News reported that New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was looking at the Cardinals' investment in KTRS as a possible blueprint for the Yankees' acquisition of a radio station. Lawrence says he's also had two other owners approach him to seek help in obtaining a station.
Not everyone welcomes a wave of team-owned radio stations. Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz turned down an offer to work for KTRS following news the Cardinals bought into the station.
"At first I was flattered they wanted me," says Miklasz. "But then I started thinking about it. Ethically I didn't know how I could work for a station owned 50 percent by the Cardinals. Of course, the Post-Dispatch also owns a small percentage of the Cardinals, and many people said KMOX was a 'house organ' for the team, but in working for both I was never told to pull punches.
"I hope it's the same way with KTRS," Miklasz continues. "But I have my doubts. From the times I've listened to the station, the people hosting shows are very defensive of Cardinals management and very harsh to criticism."
Forget the Cardinals. Forget popular KTRS host Frank O. Pinion.
Forget even for a moment the guy who referred to Condoleezza Rice as a "coon."
The new voice of KTRS is Keith Kramer.
He's white. He's from Alabama. He identifies with the Confederate flag. He's been fired or let go from a half-dozen stations. And from noon until three every weekday afternoon, he'll talk to you about whatever's on his mind including such scatological topics as how he likes to hang his toiler paper. (As any "P1" listener code for his most devoted fans will tell you, Kramer insists his toilet tissue spill off the top of the roll, and he'll habitually place his left hand on the paper as he rips it with his right hand, thus ensuring a clean tear.)
On a recent Friday, however, the hot-button issue has moved from the bathroom to the bedroom. Sporting a goatee and a black bowling shirt with the words "Psych Ward" stitched across the back, Kramer wants to talk about grown men who live with their parents. As caller after caller rings the studio to rat out a friend or defend the filial bond that keeps him tied to his parents' domicile, Kramer responds in abject horror.
In front of him sits a keyboard full of canned wisecracks and sound effects. But Kramer's also quick with his own comebacks, the words "gay" and "retarded" being two of his favorite barbs. In the case of men living with their parents, Kramer has just one thing to say: "That's retarded!" he shrieks into the mic.
As well as lambasting his callers, Kramer really enjoys making up a good story sometimes, too good a story. In 2001 he lost his job at a Dallas station for concocting a tale that Britney Spears died in a car crash.
"Just Google the words 'Kramer and Twitch' [his former on-air partner in Texas]," Kramer notes proudly. "The story got picked up around the world. It was crazy!"
Minutes after exhausting the subject of men and their parents, the 35-year-old host switches gears entirely, launching into a skit in which he pretends to be an effeminate caller named Bill. For reasons unexplained, "Bill" has taken offense to the show's producer, Laurie Beakley, and launches into a lispy tirade, berating her work on the program.
"She's just a whore!" bellows Bill. "Nothing but a whore!"
National Public Radio it is not. But then, that's the last thing program director Al Brady Law wants KTRS to be.
It was with Law's arrival last October that KTRS staffers say they first felt Lawrence's true impact on the station. A radio vagabond who's worked with such broadcast raconteurs as Don Imus and Howard Stern, Law wears his moustache just as he does his hair long, slick and jet-black.
Some say he's a dead-ringer for the saloon keeper on HBO's Deadwood, a guy who feeds his adversaries to the pigs. Others draw comparisons to the Grim Reaper and say it's no coincidence that his first day on the job was Halloween.
"Am I a hatchet man?" replies Law. "Perhaps. No one hires me for a great station. My lot in life, for whatever reason, has become somewhat of a hired gun to clean up the town and hope to God no one has a faster gun than me."
With Lawrence and Dorsey's blessing, Law began to tinker with the station's programming. Cardinal Nation may span generations, but for Law the only segment worth catering to is males aged 35 to 44.
"This station was modeled after KMOX, but the problem is there already is a KMOX, and unless you can do better, why fight it?" Law muses.
On December 16, Dorsey, Law and station manager Craig Unger summoned the majority of the station's on-air hosts and fired them one by one, including such popular personalities as Wendy Wiese, McGraw Milhaven, Bill Wilkerson, Randy Karraker, Jim Holder, Scott St. James and Kevin Horrigan.
Surviving the purge was John Hadley, a sports reporter whose acerbic rants fit Law's new model for the station, and Frank O. Pinion, whose late-afternoon show a combination of homespun tales and puerile jokes has long been the station's most popular program. In place of the disbanded staff, the station would hire edgy, out-of-town talent, more interested in Hollywood gossip than local politics.
"It's called marketing to the lowest-common denominator," says Joe Sonderman, a radio critic for the St. Louis Journalism Review. "They're appealing to the people who made American Idol the most popular show in the nation."
Media insiders say Dorsey told several of the fired staff that he'd been outvoted in the station change, leaving many to question the perceived 50-50 partnership between the Cardinals and Dorsey's group.
"The cruel irony is had Dorsey not been an equity party, he'd have been out a long time ago," comments a media source who asked not to be named in this story. "He mismanaged the station from the get-go. But the talent who took the risk to join the station, they were expendable."
Dorsey maintains he never had complete control.
"Yeah, I've been a managing partner and the president of the station, but I've never been in control. I answered to 32 board members," he says. "Now, with the addition of the Cardinals, there are probably 50 owners."
If the on-air hosts were startled by the swift and sudden change, the station's listenership was even more surprised, and responded by firing off more than 2,000 e-mails in protest.
Still, Law remains resolute that a change away from the news-talk format was desperately needed, and he dismisses the notion that he's dumbed-down the station.
"This is the entertainment business," offers Law. "If information is a byproduct of that, then fine. But information without entertainment doesn't work."
And if there's a bullpen closer in the new KTRS lineup it appears to be Keith Kramer, a guy Law predicts to be his star.
"I think Kramer is going to be huge a real force in this town," predicts Law. "He has the talent and the brains. I find him immensely likeable."
Others do not.
Mike Anderson, moderator of the online message board stl.media.net, has established himself over the past six years as the region's most prolific if not boundless broadcast-media watchdog. During a late-night thunderstorm last month, Anderson critiqued the local television network's weather coverage live on his Web site as if calling a horse race.
"2:45 a.m. and 2's back on with the thunderstorm info, 4 drops out and 5 is still in regular programming. 2:50 a.m. and here's the rain. thunder's louder, lightning's brighter. no hail yet. 4 & 5 back with brief reports; 4 continues along with 2."
But few topics have captured Anderson's attention as much as KTRS' format change, and his message board reflects his dissatisfaction particularly with host Keith Kramer.
In the past two months Anderson has posted on the message board such tidbits as comments Kramer's wife, Christy, made on her MySpace blog, joking of her desire to smoke crack and perform a mιnage ΰ trois before turning 30. Other entries skewer Kramer for using a Confederate flag on his Web site, www.godofradio.com, and one post even confronts the talk-show host to a fistfight.
"If you had any stones, you'd confront me in person," writes Anderson. "But you never will. I'm 57 years old, old enough to be your father (presuming you know who your father is) and handicapped, and you're still afraid to take me on man-to-man."
Kramer labels Anderson a "harassing little turd" and has threatened to release potentially damaging information on him should the attacks continue. Even some of Anderson's supporters say his attacks on Kramer have gone too far, but Anderson remains unapologetic. The reason?
"A major-league radio station should have a major-league team working for it," says Anderson. "But what did KTRS do? They went out and hired guys who may or may not be qualified, who weren't working or who were barely working."
Kramer was out of a job for several months before landing at KTRS. Tim "Monty" Montemayor, who replaced Randy Karraker in the sports department, was such a greenhorn at his previous radio gig in Sacramento that he was forced to supplement his income waiting tables at a local Chili's. Jay Anderson, who lasted less than two months before being fired for Dave Lenihan, reportedly was on air just one day a week before arriving at KTRS.
Whereas many of the old hosts commanded salaries ranging from $100,000 to $150,000, radio insiders estimate the salaries for the new staff at between $75,000 and $100,000.
"A salary dump was certainly one of the factors in the change-up," says Joe Sonderman of the St. Louis Journalism Review. "The fact of the matter is Dorsey poured a shitload of money down the drain. He paid his hosts big money to move from KMOX, and they weren't pulling the figures. Now I'm told they don't even care about programming. They figure people will tune into the Cardinals and then never change the dials."
But there's mounting evidence the format change isn't going as planned. Last month KTRS rehired McGraw Milhaven after firing him just four months earlier.
"We listened to what our listeners had to say," says Dorsey, who shrugs off the notion that Milhaven's rehiring suggests an about-face. "The number-one complaint they had was that McGraw was no longer on the station."
Dorsey further maintains that landing the Cardinals will turn KTRS into the station he first imagined a decade ago. Besides, it's a move right out of his old mentor's playbook.
"I idolized Bob Hyland," Dorsey says. "He understood radio and St. Louis like no one, and he started to make that station great by building on its sport talent. First we got the Blues. Then we got the Rams. Now we have the Cardinals. If you'd given me a blank canvas ten years ago and I painted KTRS alongside the logos for all three teams, you'd have thought I was on an LSD trip!"
Dorsey also dismisses the notion that he mortgaged his dreams for the station in order to get the Cardinals.
"So we changed our lineup. Yeah, it's a shame. But then Stan Musial is no longer in the Cardinals lineup, either. We changed with the times."
Others say it's too bad another voice of the Cardinals is no longer with the team.
"I can't help but think of when Jack Buck was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame," Karraker says. "He gave a speech blasting this new in-your-face, vulgar radio, saying: 'We don't need to do this. We shouldn't do this. We're guests in people's homes, and we should behave accordingly.' And I think if Jack Buck were around today, he would not approve at all. And he'd tell the Cardinals that."
Says another media insider: "The question becomes: Now that they have the Cardinals, will people finally stop listening to KMOX and can we spoon-feed them shit?"
Reality and myth at KTRS:
An in-depth look at KTRS Station Manager Tim Dorsey's decision-making skills
by Frank Absher
St. Louis Journalism Review
April 2006
On July 5, 2005, Tim Dorsey, KTRS station manager and owner, was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying the arrival of the Cardinals and an increase in Cardinals-related programming wouldn't mean the departure of existing KTRS shows.
Months later, 10 employees, including eight on-air personalities were fired.
Ever since Dorsey left the employment of KMOX, he has made statements that are often contradicted by later statements or actions. Also, media stories have characterized Dorsey as Hyland's "golden boy' or "heir apparent." But no one who worked at KMOX at the time remembers Hyland employing those characterizations. For reasons not made public, Dorsey left KMOX and took a job in advertising at Charter Communications. Six years later, he held a press conference to announce that he was buying a suburban AM radio station and raiding employees from KMOX.
He lauded his first three hires, Wendy Wiese, Bill Wilkerson and Kevin Horrigan, saying the three were "the cornerstones of a St. Louis-based news, talk, information and entertainment format. We think Wilkerson, Wiese and Horrigan are the anchors of our program day.
"I would not be sitting here today were it not for the three people on my right," Dorsey said, gesturing to his new staff. "I have the three people I wanted. I have the heart and soul of KMOX.
"The KMOX listener will follow Wilkerson, Wiese and Horrigan," Dorsey said.
When the audience didn't follow his stars to the Belleville radio station, Dorsey blamed problems with the signal and its strength, problems that had been there long before he made the purchase. In fact, knowledgeable radio people had known this for years, which is why no one else was really interested in buying the station. How did Dorsey handle this reality? He came up with more dubious statements, none of which were challenged by the media.
"But Dorsey has plans to strengthen WIBV," read a Post article in 1996. "He says that a technical study is under way to determine how to improve strength and quality of the signal and that he will apply to the FCC for permission to increase its wattage.
"In the meantime, Dorsey said, an investment of just $150,000 in upgraded broadcast equipment will improve WIBV's sound and clarity."
Another article in April of that year said: "WIBV's new owners, led by Charter Communications cable company and Dorsey, want to make the station a regional force that can do battle with AM giant KMOX."
Another article on March 25, 1996, made an unattributed statement addressing the signal problem: "Carrying WIBV on cable could help the station overcome one of its biggest hurdles - its limited range."
The simple fact was that none of the station's previous owners had found a way to increase its coverage. What made Dorsey think he could do it, and why did the media accept his statements without challenging them?
The key to that second question may lie in the competitiveness of the media and the tendency to snipe at the guy on top. For years, under the guidance of Robert Hyland, KMOX was the unbeatable force in St. Louis media.
The station was able to set the advertising cost-per-thousand in this market because of the huge audience it delivered. Now, here was some little guy challenging the big corporate behemoth and generating great quotes, and the media must have been clapping their hands with glee.
In the March 26, 1996 issue of the Post, gossipmonger Jerry Berger ran a long personality feature on Dorsey. Some highlights:
"'I'm just a low-key guy,' insisted Timothy Carroll Dorsey.
"As he took a drag from a Merit menthol, Dorsey explained, 'I can't smoke at home, I don't like to smoke in my car, and smoking is not permitted in my office building.
"'(Robert Hyland) was my tutor. He was my mentor, and he was just very, very good to me. Most of what I have done, if not all of what I have done in the industry in which I have chosen to work, is a direct result of my association with Mr. Hyland.
"'We haven't really decided where we're going to have the studio. We're thinking about either the old KWK studios on Hampton Avenue (where space will be available when WKBQ and other stations move to Westport) or Sunset Hills. The transmitter will always be in Belleville.'"
On April 4, 1996, Dorsey was quoted again with another statement that proved completely false: "Sometime in September or October, he said, the studios will move to a building near Hampton Avenue and Interstate 44 in St. Louis. Dorsey cited two reasons:
"'To attract the kind of on-the-air guests we want, we have to be centrally located - and when celebrities like actors and politicians come to town, they usually stay downtown or in Clayton.'"
When he finally did move the studios, it was to a site nowhere near downtown or Clayton. It was to Westport Plaza.
Then, beginning Nov. 3 of that year, Dorsey was back in Berger's column: "The broadcast buzz is that Tim Dorsey has nixed the purchase of KSD-AM for the switch-over of his programming on WIBV. Said a source close to the situation, 'The EPA would have required him to remove the lead paint from the KSD tower at a cost of $2 million, in addition to the $18 million cost of the station.'"
Within three weeks, on Nov. 19, another Berger snip completely contradicted that piece: "AT PRESS TIME: At 1 p.m. Monday, WIBV radio's Tim Dorsey told his staff that he had obtained outside financing and had bought KSD-AM for $10 million. Dorsey has targeted Dec. 23 - the Monday after the last Rams' game - for putting his WIBV programming on the KSD band, 550 AM, and switching WIBV, at 1260 AM, to a syndicated format. The studios for the new KSD-AM will be in Clayton. Dorsey's last day at Cable Advertising Network will be Friday."
In April of that year, SJR's Larry Hoffman had asked Dorsey why he hadn't tried to buy KSD instead of WIBV. Dorsey's reply: "Because we're content with what we have at WIBV."
Notice the relocation of the studios from Hampton Avenue? And why wasn't Berger pointing out all these discrepancies/falsehoods? It took someone else at the Post to point those out, someone who had firsthand knowledge of the way Dorsey operated.
The information came in Bill McClellan's column Jan 3, 1997: "At any rate, I looked at Jerry's column. Here is the way it began: Flash! Tim Dorsey will launch the first salvo of his KSD-AM on Jan. 27, with morning drive's Bill Wilkerson and Wendy Wiese signing on at 5:30 a.m. and the new team of Kevin Horrigan and Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan on the air from noon to 3 p.m.
"Now it is true that Dorsey and I talked and he was kind enough to ask if I were interested in doing some work on his station, and I explained that I am awfully busy - my real life revolves around soccer and seventh-grade girls basketball - and while I couldn't even consider doing any radio on Tuesdays, Thursdays or Fridays because of deadlines, I probably could squeeze in a couple of hours on Mondays and Wednesdays.
"Agreed, he said. Terrific, I said.
"It made it sound like I was going to have a regular, daily gig. Like I was going to be a partner, for gosh sakes. I spent the next couple days explaining to everybody - Jerry's column is well read - that while the item wasn't exactly wrong, it wasn't exactly right either."
In late November 1996, Berger had written, "Dorsey has secured financing for the $10 million purchase of KSD-AM from EZ Communications, Inc. of Fairfax, Va. He has agreed to operate the station until the Federal Communications Commission approves the transfer. 'This levels the playing field,' Dorsey said Wednesday in an interview at his office in Sunset Hills. 'We now have the best talent in St. Louis and the best signal in St. Louis.'"
(As we all know now, the "best signal in St. Louis" is woefully inadequate at night, so much so that the owners of St. Louis' hockey team demanded that Dorsey find other affiliates in the market's outlying areas for their broadcasts so the games could be heard by everyone in the St. Louis metropolitan area.)
And then there was the question of who actually owned WIBV. Apparently nothing had been done to correct the perception that Dorsey was the owner. In fact, as was finally noted in the Berger column, "Dorsey doesn't yet own WIBV, but he's talking to Charter Communications about buying it. Dorsey is a minority investor in WIBV with about 9 percent of the stock."
Somehow Dorsey had talked the cable company into buying a marginal radio station and then giving him free rein to run it. Whatever detractors may say about Dorsey, he is apparently very good a talking other people into investing thousands of dollars so he can run radio stations and lunch with the big dogs at Beffa's. In 1998, Dorsey spoke to Post writer John McGuire about the restaurant, making sure the big dog message got across.
"It's our club," Dorsey said.
But there may be good reason to remember that old t-shirt that said, "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch." Tim Dorsey, the man who liked to be portrayed as Robert Hyland's golden boy, would end up selling 50 percent interest in the radio station he'd just bought. His investors coughed up $10 million to buy it. But less than 10 years later he would sell 50 percent interest in the station for a reported $2 million. On March 10, 1997, he made this statement to Berger: "Dorsey classifies his group as 'active investors: they're going to make sure that their investment is going to be a commercial success.'"
It was now time to unload the turkey in Belleville with the marginal radio signal. Again the gossip column carried information implying that Dorsey was a successful businessman.
"CH Holdings, Inc. has received a letter of intent from Legend Broadcasting in Chicago to purchase its WIBV-AM for about $2.6 million, confirmed Tim Dorsey. Dorsey is topper of CH, which also owns KTRS-AM."
Less than a month later, in February 1998, the backtracking began: "'We have an offer for the station (from Chicago-based Legend Broadcasting), but if that doesn't work out there is a good - a very good - chance we'll switch to all sports,' Dorsey said. 'We should know by the end of this week,' he told the Post.
"He said Tuesday that the chances of a deal being struck are 50-50. If the deal falls through and WIBV takes the sports route, it will rely heavily on syndicated shows but will retain Don Imus' program, which is not sports-related, from 7 to 11 a.m. Local sports talk could air from 11 a.m. to early evening.
In what appears to be a blatant effort to get some publicity, Dorsey was quoted again five months later: "KTRS' Tim Dorsey has parted company with sports guys Brian McKenna and Tom Casey, while he awaits word on a clock-in date for John Rooney, 'voice of the Chi White Sox.'"
Three months later there was no more mention of bringing in Rooney: "But now, KTRS has de-emphasized sports talk, dropping its nightly call-in shows."
Seven months later, now May 2000, Dorsey was singing a totally different tune. "KTRS (550 AM), which gained the Blues radio rights for the next three seasons in a deal announced this week, plans to add a sports talk show on weeknights, general manager Tim Dorsey said.
"'We're going to have a big sports presence,' he said. 'This is the best thing that ever has happened to this station,' which has been in operation since January 1997. He said the sports staff might also be increased."
And on June 3, 2000, a glimmer of the driving force behind Dorsey came out in another quote: "'It's a new world,' said KTRS manager Tim Dorsey, a longtime KMOX executive who left to start his rival station that began broadcasting in January 1997. 'This (the Blues contract) is the biggest thing that station has done since we started it. It truly legitimizes KTRS, if there are any doubters still left.'"
In December, Dorsey fired one of those three people who were the "cornerstones" of his format and part of the "heart and soul of KMOX," Kevin Horrigan. Horrigan's published statement in the Post was one that would often be repeated in the future. "Dorsey said I would be part of the team and had a real future. I have no reason why I was fired."
Bill Wilkerson and Wendy Wiese, the other "cornerstones" also became ex-employees.
And Kevin Slaten: "'I was always told we were doing great. I just got a $35,000 raise, a one-year extension. No one told me to change anything, and there were no internal problems. Then out of nowhere I'm fired,' said Slaten, who has been on the air since 1997. 'I really didn't see it coming. How could I?'"
Praise from Dorsey, it appears, is the proverbial kiss of death. Here's what he had to say about his new morning talent in August 2000: "'The new show, 'Ankarlo Mornings,' will debut Monday and will sound looser and funnier than the station's current broadcast,' said KTRS owner Tim Dorsey. 'He's very quick and very funny and can be a little off the wall,' said Dorsey, who signed Ankarlo to a three-year deal. 'People will get a smile from him.'"
Ankarlo lasted less than a year at KTRS.
In December 2000, Dorsey's quotes began to border on the absurd. He explained personnel cuts made necessary by high overhead as an effort to broadcast a better product. In this line of reasoning, he's spending less money, his newsroom staff is being cut, and the news product will be markedly better because he's using audio from KSDK (Channel 5) news.
"KTRS already has fired reporters Matt Murphy and Bill Phelan in preparation for the move. 'We really wanted to beef up our news department and offer listeners more information,' said KTRS owner Tim Dorsey, who said the station would still employ two reporters.
"Dorsey says the move signals his willingness to do battle with KMOX-AM 1120 on its turf."
And he resurrected the ghost of Robert Hyland again in December 2001, still grasping for legitimacy in a not-so-subtle effort to imply that he was a big dog. "We certainly aren't just a tagalong," he said.
"We're a big AM radio station that's going to be talking about the Rams 52 weeks a year. We've absolutely established ourselves as a sports powerhouse, what with the two teams and all our other (talk show) sports programming.
"'When Mr. Hyland was building KMOX, it was based on a foundation of sports,' Dorsey said. 'That's what we're doing here.'"
Two years later it was obvious that KTRS was not the second coming of, nor the new, improved version of KMOX. It had slipped to seventh place in the market.
Fast forward to August 2005. There's Tim Dorsey beaming with pride at a press conference announcing that KTRS would become the home of Cardinals' broadcasts. No one recalled a quote from Dorsey in an interview published in the April 1996 issue of SJR. He told columnist Larry Hoffman that play-by-play broadcasts don't "make sense economically. When you buy a rights package now you are buying the right to one thing, and that's the right to lose money."
It's up to readers to determine if Dorsey's comments in the Sept. 9, 2005, issue of Billboard Radio Monitor contradict that statement. "The Cardinals are going to bring KTRS an entirely new audience. Dorsey expects a 'dramatic' increase in KTRS' ratings and cautiously suggests that it might be able to overtake the No. 1 spot."
To No. 1 from No. 18, where it stands today? Well, stranger things have happened. Still, it was hard to tell whether Dorsey was smiling or gritting his teeth at the press conference announcing the ownership change of the station. He'd just accepted a reported $2 million for 50 percent of a station that observers felt could have brought at least $14 million on the open market. And there was the team brass telling the press that the flagship station of the baseball network isn't really all that important in the overall scheme of things. So much for the big dog image.
By all accounts, Dorsey has very little influence in what's happening at the station nowadays. Some detractors may say that's a good thing. Back in 2001, the Post ran an article that showed some chinks in the armor of his operation.
"'The station held so much promise, but Dorsey did not know what to do with it,' said former reporter Matt Murphy, who now writes for the Suburban Journals. 'One day someone is the Next Big Thing, and the next day they're gone. You can't do that and remain credible with listeners.'
"'There would be long stretches when I would keep giving out the number and no one would call. It could not have sucked more,' recalled Horrigan, who hosted a midday show. 'That was the grand delusion - to believe that I was the show and not the station. I had been a jerk. I needed KMOX way more than it needed me.'
"Said Wilkerson: 'To think that people would switch to a signal that was barely audible and then switch again was a critical failing of the whole situation.'
"Despite setbacks, Dorsey is proud of the station's niche in St. Louis radio and expects it to one day grab 7 or 8 percent of listeners.
"Board member Bill Frisella said the station has been a solid investment and that the signal alone is worth $20 million."
And 50 percent of the initial reported $10 million investment is
?
Comment here
(reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review )
Media Views:
Cards' radio transition has been a KTRmesS
by Dan Caesar
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Sunday, April 02 2006
The Cardinals shook the earth under many of their fans last summer when they
announced they were moving their radio broadcasts from KMOX, where they had
been for 51 seasons, to KTRS.
But that merely was the start of a KTRmesS, the first in a series of
developments that have been viewed as either negative, insensitive or
embarrassing.
Impact of move
KTRS (550 AM) has a smaller coverage area at night, when most of the games are
played, than does KMOX (1120 AM).
KTRS doesn't even cover the entire St. Louis market. To help compensate, the
Cardinals bolstered their radio network - including adding affiliates in the
nearby Illinois towns of Centralia and Litchfield. And they say potential gaps
in the Missouri communities of Washington, Louisiana and Perryville have been
covered by adding stations there.
"We pledged to Cardinals fans the very best possible radio network in baseball
when we entered into our partnership with KTRS," Cardinals President Mark
Lamping said. "And (this) is proof of that commitment."
But that "commitment" shuts out fans who are outside the reach of the network,
including many in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska
and Iowa who receive KMOX. That has led to a vocal outpouring of displeasure
from those who are affected. And it remains to be seen if there will be
significant gaps within a 150-mile radius of Busch Stadium once the season
begins (no night spring training games were aired).
All major league game broadcasts are carried on XM Radio, a pay satellite
service; they are available for a fee on the Internet. Still, many fans who are
outside the reach of the radio network have complained about losing free access
to the broadcasts.
The reason for the move to KTRS was money. Infinity Broadcasting, which owns
KMOX, paid the club about $6.7 million in rights fees last year. But the
station wanted to reduce the guarantee to about $4.7 million this season, then
implement a revenue-sharing plan. The club wanted a full guarantee.
"We went through a long negotiating process," Cards chairman Bill DeWitt said
at the time.
So DeWitt, who has a background in radio, and the other Cards owners went their
own way by buying a controlling interest in KTRS.
Hagin is fired
Shortly before Thanksgiving, Cardinals radio announcer Wayne Hagin was fired
from the radio booth in favor of Chicago White Sox broadcaster John Rooney, who
KTRS general manager Tim Dorsey used to work with years ago at KMOX.
Two key factors led to Hagin being dumped: Rooney being available after having
contract difficulties with the White Sox, the club he had worked with the 18
seasons, and the Cardinals wanting a new identity because of the change of
stations.
"We just had the opportunity to make the broadcasts better," Lamping said.
The move brought more bad publicity to the club, as Hagin was unceremoniously
dumped despite having gone above and beyond what was asked of him.
Then in a bizarre twist, Hagin ended up being a last-minute replacement on the
41 games televised by KPLR (Channel 11) when Bob Carpenter left. In effect the
Cards said Hagin wasn't good enough for radio but was good enough for TV.
Merry Christmas
The next move came shortly before Christmas, when most of KTRS' on-air staff
was fired.
"The Cardinals gave us a chance to attract new talent and unique talent from
around the country," station manager Craig Unger said then. "It opened up
doors. We have one opportunity to seize this, to do it right, to do it well."
Well, it hasn't gone well.
There has been a profound dumbing-down of the station, as it has taken an
in-your-face approach rather than maintaining a more conservative style. It's a
stir-it up tact.
But the audience has scattered. In the ratings period that ended in November,
KTRS was 12th in the market. Since then, it has fallen into a tie for 18th.
The numbers figure to rebound in the coming months with the baseball season.
But will listeners stay away the rest of the day when the programming clashes
with the wholesome, family oriented image the club has tried to project for
years? This is like trying to mix gasoline and milk. They simply don't.
Epithet, accusations
There is more mayhem:
KTRS already is on its third incarnation of
its mid-morning show in less than four months, after Jay Anderson and Dana
Daniels were dropped and then Dave Lenihan was fired for saying a racially
offensive word on the air. Adding to the unconventional circumstances is that
the NAACP recently urged KTRS to rehire Lenihan, who is white.
McGraw Milhaven, who was dumped in the pre-Christmas bloodletting, has been
re-hired. This makes the second broadcaster fired by the Cardinals who has been
brought back before the season's start.
Are these guys good enough or not? Apparently management doesn't know.
An ad campaign trumpeting the team's move to KTRS duped Cards fans,
who were led to think replicas of redbirds were stolen off billboards. But it
was a marketing stunt aimed at deception, hardly a good idea for a station that
already was in a tempest with fans.
Al Brady Law, who was brought in by Cardinals management to oversee
KTRS, was accused in February of harassment by one of his former employees at a
station in Toledo, Ohio. She alleged that Law sent several harassing and
menacing e-mail messages to her over the past year and a half, according to a
police report. Law denies doing that.
All this adds up to a stark bottom line: Cardinals brass wants a
different identity than they had at KMOX. They certainly have accomplished that.
