Dennis Miller's Underwhelming Station Lineup

After a failed TV talk show and equally unsuccessful attempt to be a color commentator on Monday Night Football, Dennis Miller, will try to resurrect his faltering career, once again, on Monday with a syndicated talk radio show that will reportedly debut on 80 stations.

We say "reportedly," because Westwood One, which is syndicating Miller’s talk show, has only identified 11 of the stations that will be carrying the show. In a press release, announcing the launch, WW1 claims that 80 stations will offer the show, including seven in the top 10 markets.

Five of the seven are low-rated Salem Communications stations that will have to juggle their line-up of such talk radio heavy weights as Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Mike Gallagher, and Michael Savage to accommodate Miller’s three hour daily show. The other two top ten affiliates are Clear Channel second tier talkers-- KNEW in San Francisco and KTRH in Houston.

Here are the 11 station’s clearing the Dennis Miller Show that were announced by WW1 along with market rank and current ratings:

The combined share of these stations is less than a buck. In fact, KFI in Los Angeles reaches more homes in Southern California than all these 11 stations, including KRLA in LA, reach in the whole country.

Even the struggling liberal talk stations beat the Miller affiliates. In seven markets where they compete, the lib talk station beats the Miller station in four of those markets, loses in two, and ties in one.

Now remember, these 11 stations are the only markets that WW1 has announced prior to the launch. We will have to wait until Monday to find out what the other 69 markets look like. We don’t expect it will be pretty.

It appears that Michael Savage is the big loser on the seven Salem stations that are adding Miller’s talk show. Savage is being dropped from four of these stations – KNUS in Denver, WDTK in Detroit, WNTP in Philadelphia, and KYCR in Minneapolis and moved to less desirable time slot on KRLA in Los Angeles.

It will be interesting to see what incumbent right wing talkers get the boot on the other 69 stations that will be adding Miller’s Show on Monday. We will attempt to answer this question as the news leaks out next week.

While we are not big fans Dennis Miller, we remain open-minded about his upcoming show. WW1 has avoided the hard core right wing talk format offered by other syndicators like Premiere, ABC Radio Networks, and Talk Radio Network. They favor a more moderate stable of talkers including Imus, Tom Leykis, Jim Kramer, Don & Mike, Jim Bohannon, and Larry King. The only bonafide conservatives syndicated by WW1 are Bill O’Reilly and Lars Larson.

In any case we’ll take a straight trade of Dennis Miller for Michael Savage any time. Even with a player to be named later.