The Newbees! AKA Real Talk 93.3 There’s a theory in business that people who know little or nothing about an area of business are bound to succeed as they don’t know what they don’t know. What did Elon Musk know about electric cars when he started Tesla? What did Bill Gates know about a personal computer you could put on a desk? What did Gaston Glock know about handguns before he designed and built the Glock 17? What did Steve Jobs know about cell phones before he came up with the I Phone? I think you know where I’m headed with these questions. Which begs the question: What did Tracy Ellis know about radio before she decided to put on a talk radio station? Well, she did a weekly real estate show back in the day on KSLQ and most recently on 97.1. So will she succeed with Real Talk 93.3 just like Musk, Gates, Glock and Jobs did in their endeavors? Time will tell.
Yes, Tracy started out on a weekly real estate show on KSLQ (March 9th, 2009 to be exact). From the start she did a great job. Then she added a second weekly show on 97.1 She did that show up until a few months ago when 97.1 realized that her starting her own Conservatalker just might be competition. She says she owns 93.3 (with new call letters of KRTK), and 104.3, KVMO (Click on the call letters for a link to technical info on the stations). But the truth is she’s just renting both stations which are still owned by the same company that owns 101.7 K-Wulf, KLPW and a few other stations. So why did she and her husband Rick get into the radio business? Because they felt 97.1 was no longer a conservative station! They felt it was their mission to put together a station to preach the true conservative gospel. You have to hand it to them. They’ve put their conservative money where their conservative mouths are.
They’re off to a rough start. Less then a month in the stations have already had several staff changes. The signal on 93.3 sucks. The 104.3 signal covers Hannibal. Hannibal? Tracy keeps teasing that there are more stations on the way to fill in the huge holes in their current STL area coverage. But the announcements on the additional stations promised for “next week” never materialize. The Grand Poopah firmly believes that “as the tide rises so do all boats”, but so far the USS Tracy is taking on water and is listing just a bit (to the left???). I want Rick and Tracy to do well. Really. Maybe 10 years from now Rick and Tracy will own I Heart, Audacy, and Cumulus. Maybe they will also own Tesla, MicroSoft, Glock and Apple. But at this point I just hope they make into 2022.
So here’s the Grand Poopah’s P’s and C’s:
PROS:
- Brian Nieves. This guy is great. Yes, maybe I’m a bit biased as he started his talk radio career on one of my stations over a decade ago.
- Eric Nepute.
- Jimmy “Viper Voice” Fish
CONS:
The Grand Poopah is sorry to say that Real Talk 93.3 has been a train wreck so far. So I won’t even bother with a “CONS” list. I hope Rick and Tracy get things straightened out and make a lot of money in radio. But the Grand Poopah is pessimistic at this point, especially when they are competing with three other Conservatalkers that are professionally run and well programmed. The slice of the pie for conservative talk in the STL is already small (97.1 is the 13th ranked station in the STL). Slicing that relatively small audience up among four stations is not going to be pretty. And getting advertisers is going to be even tougher. Good luck Tracy, I love you. BTW, thanks for the nice letter from your attorney.
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