Mr. KABC Out in Los Angeles

Yesterday we reported that lib talk had recorded a small victory in Boston when Tom Finnernan, took over the morning drive slot on WRKO. Today we report another setback. Marc Germain, aka Mr. KABC is out at the Los Angeles station, which once was dominated by left of center talkers like Michael Jackson and Gloria Alred.

Now the ABC (All Bloviating Conservatives) owned station will have no liberals on the weekday program line-up. Although no announcement has been made about who will be replacing Mr. KABC, we suspect that the time will give to Mark Levin who currently is carried from 9-10 pm. This seems to be consistent with ABC’s strategy in other markets, where they have dumped local talkers to make way for their newest right wing star.

One suspects that ratings were not the reason for canning of Mr. KABC. His late-night show was always the first or second most popular radio show during the 10 pm to 1 am time period.

Mr. KABC was a real survivor. I first started listening to him in the mid 90’s when he was known as Mr. KFI. He moved his show to KABC in 1996. The show was very unique. He would start out by saying we don’t have guests, no topics, and no call screeners. The name of the show was "Ask Mr. KABC" and the callers were all over the map, usually not political types. Callers were required to ask a question. Often those questions were quite bizarre, like "how fast does hair grow?" Or "what is heavier – milk or cream?"

Some of the features that he popularized were allowing callers to hang up on themselves, identifying the rare female callers, as "another KABC vixen," and his standard rejoinder when asked how he was doing – "better than most not as good as some."

While the Mr. KABC show was not political it was clear that Mr. KABC was moderate to liberal on most issues. As the station moved further to the right about six years ago by first adding Sean Hannity and then Bill O’Reilly. At the same time they dumped liberal radio’s most famous host, Michael Jackson and completing their line-up with a conservative gay guy – Al Rantel and a conservative black guy – Larry Elder. (KFI already had the consevative Jewish Guy --Dennis Praeger.)

The morning slot, hosted by another conservative, Doug McIntyre, gets creamed every day by Bill Handel and is even often beat by lib talker Stephanie Miller.

The question is not why did the ABC station can Mr. KABC, but why did it take so long? When Germain was doing his top-rated show at KFI he would always suggest that the show would not survive past the millennium. It looks like he survived more than six years longer.