Badger Blogger has been faithfully following the "Milwaukee's Next Talk Star" competition on WISN radio.
I suspect, between the snippets I have heard and the reviews on Badger Blogger, WISN may regret ever having this competition as it means rewarding the winner with a two-year contract with a minimum $50,000 annual salary. I do not believe a liberal or a leftist can win the contest, so WISN has little to fear from that. I do believe the winner could be someone completely inadequate for the job.
After all, being a morning talk show host five days/week is hard. You have to come up with topics, more topics than you plan to discuss, every day that are not only timely but likely to generate interest and phone calls. At the same time, there are parameters under which you must operate including good taste, language and general interest to a target audience.
For example, lesbian cows (from Thursday morning) hardly appeals to the target demographic for WISN. It may appeal to a group of sixth graders, it may even appeal to some listeners of Bob and Brian, but for the rest of us driving into work or working at home raising our children it's just stupid and gross. If WISN wanted stupid and gross, they could put on Howard Stern.
So far the remaining contestants have had to generate two hours total of interesting programming with a week to prepare. It doesn't appear they've succeeded. Asking any one of them to generate more on-air entertainment will be a ratings disaster the parent company Clear Channel will be unlikely to tolerate for long.
