Will Hate Talk Radio Last Out The Decade?

WBT, Charlotte's News Talk 1110, broadcasts mostly local talk (plus Rush Limbaugh) and is the ratings leader in the market. Their signal is so big they can be picked up anywhere on the East Coast of the United States. Last week they announced they were firing popular comic hosts, Brad Krantz and Britt Whitmire.

At WBT, Brad and Britt” had aired in afternoon drive-time for the first year, then moved to early evenings.

The show had good ratings, Krantz said, but station management stopped supporting them after apparently receiving a few complaint calls from legacy listeners.

"We are entertaining. We are funny," Krantz said. "But we are not right-wing, and in the insane world of radio, if you are not a right-winger, then you are a Socialist, Marxist Commie.

"Right now, talk radio is a right-wing sewer. We refuse to swim in the sewer, therefore we pay the price."

Krantz had a regular character, Lil' Rush who spoofed Limbaugh right after Limbaugh's own show on the station. When they were originally hired, the station management had said it wanted to get away from all the politics and they chose Brad and Britt because they are "a lot more fun" with a lighter fair that had a wider audience appeal than staple Hate Talk Radio. Hate Talk Radio fans in Charlotte would go bonkers whenever Krantz made fun of Limbaugh's drug addiction-- which was often. And they never stopped complaining about it. When they signed off last week, there was some bitterness displayed.

“We’d just like to thank WBT management for their complete lack of support for us from the day we came on the air.”

That would be July 2, 2012, when Krantz and Whitmire had their first day under a two-year, “no cut” contract, a fairly rare thing in broadcasting these days. It meant that if the station wanted to get rid of the show before summer 2014, they’d have to pay the pair through that time.

“They were too cheap to fire us,” says Krantz, his trademark sarcasm revving into high gear, “and put something on ‘good,’ so they decided to punish the audience with this ‘horrible’ show rather than do the right thing. … For them to have taken off the cancer of ‘Brad and Britt,’ they would have had to pay out the contract. You’d think if they cared about the audience, they would do that. You know why we were still on? Because we weren’t bad. Really, we were good.”

Krantz says he believes that one key reason the show failed to resonate in Charlotte was because WBT has spent a decade aiming at arch-conservatives rather than a broader audience. Although the show was a departure from the politically focused fare that had filled the time slot over the years, Krantz says he thinks that many listeners thought he and Whitmire were too liberal for the airwaves, especially when it aired in the afternoon following Rush Limbaugh.

“We were hired to break the WBT noon-to-6 p.m. right-wing sewer that had been led by Jeff Katz, Tara Servatius and Vince Coakley,” Krantz says, listing the parade of talent WBT had in the afternoons following the 2006 departure of Jason Lewis. He was the most successful host for the time slot in at least a decade until leaving for a job in Minneapolis. “We did that, got high ratings but got no support from management,” Krantz says.

“Their core audience at WBT is like NASCAR and the Republican Party-- it’s too old and too white and you can’t sell commercials to it anymore. It’s the AM talk-radio curse. They’ve done it to themselves by building the station around Limbaugh…

“Tell this (exclamation that can’t be printed here) city of Charlotte, North Carolina, to (verb that can’t be printed here) off because they can’t handle anything but hate-Obama radio.”