Good anology. I think we can’t sell Art short for his talent tho. I think he would have been successful anyway, maybe not as big. Perhaps he would have picked a different topic of talk. The Paranormal is over exposed. I used to love it but lately even I have found it getting trite. There’s no denying Art had the gift for doing an interview and putting on a show. HW on the other hand showed she is not likeable and that causes everyone to question everything she says and does. Who wants to listen to someone they don’t like. It’s that simple.
Its worse than the market being saturated. The infrastructure and conditions to make a new talk radio star on the backbone of a terrestrial radio network isn't there like it was in 1993. Its now the age of multimedia and social media madness and 15 minutes of fame.
That was what Bart was getting at, talent is only part of the equation. If there were an equivalent of Art that had a notion to take on paranormal talk in 2018 he would struggle just to get Jimmy Church numbers. If he had the right people around him he would get Dave Schrader big. The field is too fractured, fragmented and diluted to create any superstars. The time for this type of star is in a time capsule along with arena rock.*
Coast is a dinosaur propped up by a terrestrial radio conglomerate that continues under momentum alone. If it were to collapse tomorrow, nothing would replace it. The net result is the hundreds of smaller shows would get a temporary 1 or 2 % boost to their numbers and 40,000 shut-ins would run to Premiere with petitions from change.org with no result. Of course, they would call it a "conspiracy."
Something is up when some of these shows get 100 times the views on youtube after the fact than they ever had listeners to the original stream or live radio show.
What could have Art change to? Political talk? That market is saturated as well. Science talk? NPR snooze-fest?
*From the rock analogy in the last post it would be like comparing the cultural influence of Greta Van Fleet to the original Led Zeppelin. At best Greta fills a niche in the market and in the long run they will do pretty well, but they will not bring the 1970s back