Talk Radio Shop Talk: Mad About Maddow
This is lots less about politics than it is about winning radio technique; though that seems to have eluded many in radio.
- MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow scored the biggest ratings in the history of her show when she revealed a copy of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return anonymously mailed to a reporter. 28% higher than her previous best.
- Admittedly, it is radio tradition to do cartwheels when WE spike, and to diss other guys when THEY do. Still, the social media backlash – from sorehead talkers and several radio gurus -- was discouraging. Personal political filters were evident as the unison damned Maddow for sustaining viewers’ attention for two whole quarter hours…as though that’s not how we too get paid. Big hype! Big letdown! Only two pages!
Here’s the mercifully-short version:
- 9 seconds into her script, Maddow explained that she held “a PORTION of Donald Trump’s tax returns.” At that point, those professing betrayal could have retreated to Fox News in time for Tucker Carlson's first gaping scowl.
- At 1:05: “We're going to show you exactly what we've got.” Still time to flee. Apparently few who later complained did.
- She promised viewers who would tough-it-out that “context” was ahead, and “explanation and discussion of what further avenues of reporting this may open.” In less time than it takes Kellyanne Conway to change the subject from wiretapping to Obamacare, Maddow TOLD viewers that the-questions-outnumber-the-answers.
- And, she stressed, “maybe THE most important part of this story discussion is that, for some reason we cannot discern, [the tax return has been] made available...it has been handed to a reporter.”
- Context: President Nixon’s “I am not a crook” utterance, during Watergate, was not ABOUT Watergate. Nixon was fined for taking improper deductions on a backdated donation of Vice Presidential papers. “And presidents and presidential candidates have released their taxes ever since,” often simply the first two summary pages that Maddow brandished that night. During the 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton “released every year of her returns back to 1977.” “I’m under audit,” Trump shrugged, although, Maddow reminded, “since Watergate, every single president and every single vice president has been audited by the IRS every year they were in office.” So Trump's reluctance is conspicuous, making even this two page disclosure what we call “news.”
Accordingly, Maddow suggested, “when you get an excuse that doesn't make sense, you have to look for another reason.” Whereupon she delivered what too few radio talkers bother with: a scripted segment intro:
- Item: Palm Beach mansion, purchased by Trump for $40+ million in 2004, sold four years later to “a Russian oligarch who paid him almost $100 million” (then razed it!). “Could Trump tax returns shed light on whether any reasonable outlay of expenses on Trump's part might explain why someone would want to pay Donald Trump more than double what he paid for that property after only a few years, at a time when housing prices in that area were dropping and not rising?” “At a time,” she noted, “when Trump owed tens of millions of dollars to Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Bank was breathing down his neck to get it.”
- Item: That Russian buyer is a big shareholder in The Bank of Cyprus, a notorious Russian money-launderer. The bank's Chairman is Deutsche Bank's former CEO. The Bank of Cyprus’ Vice Chairman “until recently was our new Secretary of Commerce, longtime Trump friend Wilbur Ross. Couldn't the tax returns sort this out for us?”
- Item: During the presidential campaign, that same enigmatic Russian’s private plane “was spotted at least twice, at local airports, when Donald Trump campaign events were happening nearby. At least once, his private plane was spotted on the tarmac right alongside Donald Trump's private plane.” Apparently not intriguing to those who hollered about Bubba Clinton plane-hopping to chat-up the Attorney General. Since Trump became president, The Palm Beach Post reports that the Russian's massive yacht -- upon which his helicopter lands -- was docked alongside the yacht owned by “the single largest financial backer of the Trump For President effort and single largest financial backer of Breitbart and the person who basically installed Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon at the top of the Trump campaign after Paul Manafort was fired for his ties to Russia and Ukraine.”
- Item: That U.S. Attorney Trump abruptly fired – after previous assurances that he’d stay on – “was pursuing a federal case against Deutsche Bank.”
Cue theme from “The Americans” on FX. Anyone NOT intrigued by “inexplicable dumps of foreign money into the president's coffers that cannot be explained in normal business terms” still could have escaped to comfy Fox News after only 7 minutes and 17 seconds. Seems like few morning-after social media soreheads did.
This is NOT about politics.
In cable TV, ratings are a sprint, not a marathon. In radio, PPM markets suffer dysfunctionally low sample size, so every…single…Quarter Hour…counts…A LOT. Small markets’ two-book rolling averages can reward a spike for 6 months.
As if Maddow’s new ratings high that night wasn’t measurably successful enough, both web sites where she told viewers they could read Trump’s return immediately crashed, overwhelmed by traffic. What radio station wouldn’t crow about that?
Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Talk Radio, a self-refreshing daily story about-which NO minds are being changed… a Time Spent Listening bonanza for those whose technique isn’t compromised by their personal filter. Yet many talkers seem to be. Lots who boasted that they refused to watch the Academy Awards spent the next day blasting Oscar winners. One radio talker whom I otherwise respect assured his listeners that he would NOT be watching President Obama’s final State of the Union Address, which he disparaged the following day.
I never learned the Selector software (a song rotation tool). Unlike music radio gurus who used Social Media to pronounce Maddow’s win a loss, I specialize in News/Talk radio. Over a decade, I managed two big Washington newsrooms, one at WTOP and the other at USA Today. The self-awareness necessary to separate facts from point-of-view is the price of admission. Who, What, When, Where, Why. Many who scorned Maddow’s coup seem to let Who she is pre-empt What she said. I’ll bet they don’t even remember her saying what I’ve transcribed above. Find the clip.
If you're a radio talker, and can prep as conscientiously – and can sustain attention as artfully — as Rachel Maddow did that night, send me an aircheck.
Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com) is a media consultant working at the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. Follow him on Twitter @HollandCooke.