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July 23, 2005

Off the Air

Here is sad news for anyone with a serious interest in Tennessee politics and policy discussion. I have been a guest on the Teddy Bart's Round Table radio program four or five times and always found it to be an enjoyable experience. Tennessee's political scene will be worse off for it being off the air. Here's hoping some way can be found to resurrect the program. (The Nashville City Paper broke the story of the show's demise yesterday.)

Bob Krumm has some thoughts about the show's impending demise, as do Jay Bush and Matt White.

Meanwhile, as a good and useful radio program is going off the air because the non-profit foundation that produces it is short a mere $150,000, the city of Nashville is about to spend $250,000 to fund the construction of a really ugly and large piece of "art."

UPDATE: If I owned a newspaper or teevee news program , I'd buy the radio show, keep it running, and assign a reporter to cover the show full-time who would produce a daily blog from the show - complete with audio clips - and write or produce news stories based on the guests and subjects discussed each day.

The synergy could be amazing, and could turn whichver media company did it into "Tennessee politics central." Here's why: News is regulary made on that show, though it is often not noticed by the rest of the news media.

A few weeks ago, Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. made waves by declaring on the show that he thought a recent Supreme Court ruling gutting 200-plus years of constitutional protections for private property rights was a "positive" ruling. Days later, realizing that public opinion was decidedly opposed to that judicial ruling, Ford flip-flopped.

That was news and it deserved big coverage.

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Comments

or maybe / NashvillePost.com / TN Business (Solidus listening???). Assign Drew (or Alex and we could finally get some tech news on the radio).

Posted by: Ed Dodds at July 23, 2005 08:36 AM

Bill,
As a frequent e-mailer to the show, I will miss the opportunity to ask Tennessee's political players questions that they so often dodge in other shows.
Teddy and Karlen strived to have educated and articulate guest on from both sides.
It's demise will leave a huge void in the arena of honest and balanced discussion of ideas.
Truman

Posted by: Truman Bean at July 23, 2005 08:56 AM

Teddy Bart's (and Karlen Evins') Round Table is suddenly an endangered species--or might it quickily transform in some manner? Bill Hobbs' idea was great: Keep the Round Table, produce blogs and audiofiles from it. One can point out the stories broken on the show, but beyond that are daily firm, coherent, local viepoints, making sense of our lives here in Middle TN. Is all media destined to become national, lowest common denominator, profit making throwaways. At times the listening was slow, but it was always an authentic voice, which we need, just as we need historic landmarks--perhaps we won't throw it away after all!?! Find alternatives! In the meantime, maybe obituaries for the show and as well as a more experimental sister show it once spun off will help us realize our treasure!

Posted by: Hampton Howell at July 23, 2005 10:13 AM

You're all missing the point. Podcasts and blogs are not going to put $98K in each of their pockets each year.

This whole thing was a scam from the beginning. Unless Karlen has pretty powerful friends, look for a Atty. General audit in the near future.

NPOs don't spend 40% of their budgets on two people's salaries and get away with it.

Posted by: Ricky Mangrum at July 24, 2005 05:04 PM

Ricky, you may be right on the money with your prediction of an audit. That's a LOT of money to pay two hosts for a two-hour show. The only other hosts in town making that kind of money have listeners and ratings and ad revenues. Most radio people in Nashville don't make anywhere near that, so anyone who says their salaries are reasonable don't know what they are talking about.

Posted by: Reason at July 27, 2005 07:34 PM
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