Changing tide

Hear that? It’s silence on the ass-end of the AM dial where WROW’s News Talk 590 once piped neo-conservative babble onto the airwaves from the crack of dawn through the frustration of the evening commute. Gone are the stuttering antics of WGY-transplant Scott Allen Miller. Silenced is the smarmy voice of afternoon propaganda chief Mark Williams. As quietly as it whisked in, the riptide of the local neo-con movement appears to be sweeping back out to the murky depths of politics where it was first churned.

And here plays the mournful song of the world’s smallest violin for their departure from the area’s talk radio. Can’t see it? Well don’t strain your eyes. There aren’t too many functional thinkers in the Capital Region that will sorrow over their departure.

In their roughly seven months on the air together, this dynamic duo managed to bring talk radio to a new low at AM 590, even surpassing the depths of the verbal groping former morning host Paul Vandenburgh pioneered whenever he’d invite any of the area’s female journalists onto his show. Miller, the former program director hired in November, skulked out of the Latham studios in June, without giving a reason and without causing as much as a ripple in the industry; he was unceremoniously replaced by Jackie Donovan, the former director of Clear Channel’s Traffic Network. Williams’ departure at least made the local papers because the programmers at WROW decided it was time to change the tone of his incessant and often deluded conservative jabber to something that might actually appeal to all but a handful of Bud-swilling, phone shouting fist-pounding right field wingnuts.

The times are tough for conservative radio. There’s really not much to brag about as the tentacles of the satiated Rovian juggernaut slowly pull away from government. The stock market has crashed, the housing market has burned and there are two costly wars that are continuing to sap the national economy. The Republican Party has nominated a centrist Washington insider for the presidency and has placed him alongside the female version of Dan Quayle. Even some nationally syndicated talk show hosts are finding it nearly impossible to trump either the Bush legacy or the future with McCain.

In absence of a cause to rally behind, local hosts such as Miller and Williams were relegated to grasping at straws. And when you lack the intelligence to discern a straw from a hay bale, this practice gets a bit cumbersome. Miller recognized early the changing tide of politics in the Capital Region and smartly pulled the ripcord. Williams, the less mentally spry of the two, plodded along until this month, when his station producers made it quite clear his shtick wasn’t going to cut it.

His replacement, the purportedly left-of-center Sherman Baldwin, told the Times Union the new afternoon show’s format would be “less harsh, less opinionated” and will have “more community involvement” than his predecessor. Williams, on the other hand, offered an interesting disparity by claiming WROW’s ownership insisted on adopting a format that would draw “a minimum of active community involvement and the controversy and expense that comes with such involvement.”

“To that end Scotto…and [WROW Operations Manager] Kevin Callahan and I have had a number of conversations and finally reached the conclusion this morning that circumstances over which we have little or no control are insurmountable,” he posted on his Website Friday afternoon.

By “circumstances,” Williams must mean WROW’s woeful and steadily declining listenership under Miller’s stewardship. And by “insurmountable,” he must be referring to the pink slip his station manager surely gave him Friday after his show was over. After all, you always fire employees on Friday. It gives them less of a chance to make a scene.

Nevertheless, the AM waves will drift a little easier over the Capital Region’s stratosphere absent the incessant chatter from this collection of arrogant dweebs. Some might say it’s schadenfreude to applaud the demise of two strapping hosts so full of hate, lies and vitriol. Many others would argue these two court jesters of the neo-con movement would have looked much better leaving the Capital Region with a fresh coat of hot tar and some soiled pigeon feathers.