The Great Boston MediaWatch Dogfight proceeded apace last Friday, with both local media hall monitors assessing the Boston Herald’s new Garage Broadband Radio station scheduled to debut this week.
Start, as usual, with the Underdog: the Herald’s Wayne’s World webcast, Press Party, which you can’t actually access from the Herald’s pathetic website – you need to go through the Googletron here.
Regardless, the segment about Boston Herald Radio (maybe here, maybe not) originally had a set-up piece by Party gal Jaclyn Cashman that went further into the tank than the New England Aquarium. (It was subsequently reassigned to Erica Mora.)
Then the Press Partyniks – Joe Battenfeld, Cashman (has a Boston Herald Radio show), Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson (has a BHR weekly segment), Truth Squad staffer Hillary Chabot (has a BHR show), and Suffolk University’s “Dr.” Bob Rosenthal (where’s his BHR show?) – went to town.
Representative sample:
BATTENFELD: How are you going to appeal to younger listeners?
CASHMAN: Well, I am younger, so therefore I know what younger people care about, I think.
Okay then.
The rest was just a promo/lovefest.
Crosstown at Big Dog WGBH’s Beat the Press, the conversation went very differently:
Representative samples:
Talk radio is something people listen to in their cars.
The timing seems off – right wing talk radio has been struggling in this market in recent years, not thriving as it once had.
Two different worlds, yeah?
Campaign Outsider 
So…print journalists on TV and “internet video” talking about “internet radio” on tabloid websites. When does the screenplay come out?
No screenplay, Mick – it’s improv.
The New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago radio ratings were released by Arbitron Monday afternoon. In Numero uno, Rush&Hannity outlet WABC-AM had the lowest raw rating and cumulative audience all-year. Ditto (did I really write “ditto”?) for Los Angeles Rushcaster KFI-AM. But the most drastic dive was for Chicago Rushcaster WLS-AM. A cume drop of about 100,000 listeners and a raw rating way below the other big-time AMs in Chitown: WSCO-AM, WBBM-AM and WGN-AM.