For decades there were two conservative talkers in the STL.\u00a0 \u00a0KMOX 1120 AM and KFTK 97.1 FM.\u00a0 Things changed early in 2021 with the death of Rush Limbaugh.\u00a0 KMOX ran the Rush show for a while after his death but opted out of political talk in the 11 A to 2 P slot and decided to put on a local non political show.\u00a0 Around the same time KMOX and KFTK switched afternoon hosts.\u00a0 \u00a0Conservative PM drive talker Mark Reardon was moved from KMOX to KFTK.\u00a0 \u00a0And not so conservative Dave Glover moved over to KMOX\u00a0 to afternoon drive.\u00a0 \u00a0The result was the conservative talk block on KMOX from 11 AM until 5 something PM was gone.\u00a0 And KFTK became even more conservative (don’t tell Tracy that!!!!) with Reardon being on from 3 until 6 PM.<\/p>\n
But that was just the start of conservative talk mania in the STL.\u00a0 \u00a0Two more conservative talkers were gearing up to compete with KFTK on FM.\u00a0 And then seemingly out of nowhere a fourth conservative talker hits the airwaves.<\/p>\n
Frist the Refugees made their appearance in early July on 101.9, a translator that used to run the Boost Christian format.\u00a0 \u00a0With the exception of Vic Porcelli the Refugees are all former staffers from KFTK head by Jeff Alien and Joe Rush (the former xylophone player from the group Rush that still bears his name).\u00a0 \u00a0Jeff and Joe were both execs with 97.1 when Emmis owned 97.1.\u00a0 \u00a0Joe got axed when 97.1 was sold to Entercom\u00a0 (now Audacy) and Jeff got blown out about a year after the sale.<\/p>\n
And then in early August the Newbees started broadcasting on 93.3, an infamous station originally started by Randy Wachter in the 80’s\u00a0 \u00a0Back in the day it was KNSX running a new rock format.\u00a0 \u00a0The station would go on to win the award for most fines by the FCC for a single station in a single day (4 major fines of $7K each!!!).\u00a0 \u00a0Randy lost the station in a court battle and for years the station was operated (when they were actually on the air) by a court appointed receiver.\u00a0 \u00a0The Newbees are headed by Rick and Tracy Ellis, a husband and wife multi-millionaire real estate team.\u00a0 \u00a0 Rick and Tracy did a weekend real estate show on KFTK for years.\u00a0 But they became increasingly upset that KFTK was becoming too liberal for their tastes under Audacy.\u00a0 \u00a0The Grand Poopah asks the question:\u00a0 \u00a0Marc Cox, Brian Kilmeade, Annie Frey, Mark Reardon and Sean Hannity are liberal?\u00a0 Kinda like saying the ladies on stage in Sauget are wearing too much clothing.\u00a0 \u00a0Well anyway, Tracy and Rick decided they were going to go ULTRA conservative.<\/p>\n
And then in mid August a FOURTH conservative talker appeared on the scene.\u00a0 John Beck, who also lost his gig as Grand Poobah when Emmis sold off their STL stations, flipped KMJM-FM (now KTLK-FM) from urban music to conservative talk branded as 104.9 The Patriot.\u00a0 \u00a0It’s interesting to note that Jeff Alien, Joe Rush and John Beck had worked on putting a conservative talker on 101.5 but couldn’t get the financing nailed down.\u00a0 \u00a0That’s when I Heart offered Beck the Grand Poobah job for their STL cluster and left Jeff and Joe to fend for themselves.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Confused?\u00a0 I’m trying to make this simple.\u00a0 \u00a0But it’s not.<\/p>\n
Over the next few installments here on Radio Poop your Grand Poopah will take a look at each of the four conservative talkers and give you the pros and cons of all four stations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What’s happened that the STL Radio Market now has FOUR Conservative Talkers? The Grand Poopah tries to explain. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poop"],"yoast_head":"\n