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THE
STATE OF TALK RADIO
WMCS-AM 1290's STATION
MANAGER DON ROSETTE TALKS WITH WATCHDOGMILWAUKEE.COM
by John-David Morgan
When it comes to news media, Don Rosette's memory is like a bayou-country alligator trap, and there's much to remember of his 33-year career in radio. The 62-year-old WMCS-AM 1290 station manager has seen talk radio transform from journalistic news and information services to media dominated by shock jock entertainers, some who will stoop to racial and ethnic slurs to be provocative.
That, of course, is a reference to the flap WISN radio's Mark Belling caused before the elections when he referred to members of Milwaukee's Latino community as "wetbacks," a nasty slur for illegal immigrants from Mexico that many white Texans apply to just about anybody of Hispanic heritage.
Belling, WISN News/Talk AM 1130 and the station's parent company, Clear Channel, have been in the hotseat locally. Still, inciteful programming is the rule rather than the exception in talk radio. Talkers on WTMJ-AM NewsRadio 620 reacted to the outcry against Belling, not by criticizing their arch-conservative competitor, but by deriding Latino community advocates.
Rosette's WMCS, Milwaukee's Community Station, is the exception in the Milwaukee market, providing what Rosette calls "a forum for intelligent debate." Since its inception in 1980 until last year, the station was dedicated to serving the community with a variety of news magazines and R & B sounds. Last spring, WMCS went all talk and brought "The Eric Von Show" back to the airwaves, establishing the program as its drive-time centerpiece. Rosette piloted WMCS through the 1990s before taking a few years off on a working hiatus in Texas. He returned to manage the station and its new all-talk format last summer.
"The Eric Von Show" airs weekdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., offering the city's lone, urban progressive alternative in the time slot when AM radio listeners can also spin the dial to the left -- and far to the political right -- and find "The Mark Belling Late Afternoon Show" on WISN. As Von's voice piped through the speaker system in WMCS's offices during my recent visit with Rosette, the juxtaposition of the two programs was not lost on either of us.
Though reluctant to discuss Belling specifically, Rosette believes that the WISN host's appeal to ethnic stereotyping and racism "shouldn't have a place in radio." But he does believe Belling's slur was calculated, made with only a small measure of risk given the dominant trends in talk radio.
"[Milwaukee's] not unlike any other market, where you have shock jocks, DJs and talk show hosts who want to entertain by being provocative," Rosette says, speculating that Belling "knew what he was doing. He got a paid vacation out of it."
The trends indicate that it's getting scummier out there radioland. Shaking his head with some sense of wonder, Rosette mentions Laura Ingraham, who got her radio start on "The Scum Report" on "Imus in the Morning." Ingraham now has her own show, another syndicated forum for right wing views. "She was doing a scandal sheet, and, now, all of sudden, she's a conservative," he says. "She's a quick study over 100 studies" in radio-right affect.
Despite the recent addition of Air America and syndicated programs by Democratic activists such as comedian Al Franken, Rosette doesn't see commentary on the nation's airwaves seesawing toward anything resembling balance, and that should come as no surprise. In most markets, he says, "penetration is light" for radio left. Shock value and angry, repetitive rhetoric is still what "hits it big." It wasn't always that way.
Rosette, originally from Louisiana and a graduate of Southern University in Baton Rouge, began his radio career in Houston in 1968 as a full time news reporter at KYOK-AM. The station also played music, but the focus was on the news. "It was something," he says, impressed to this day that there were seven full-time reporters on the KYOK staff, and two staff news cars.
But that wouldn't last. The pressure to survive led to cutbacks; Rosette moved to the station's sales side in the early 1970s. Former Green Bay Packer Willie Davis, owner of WMCS, bought KYOK in 1982, promoting Rosette to station manager. KYOK maintained a news focus, but market pressures eventually came to bear. Davis sold the business in 1988 and Rosette took a job in Jacksonville, Florida.
Davis brought Rosette to Milwaukee in 1990 to run WMCS, a station that for ten years had served the North Side of Milwaukee with its brand of community-focused programming.
"25 years ago [when Davis founded WMCS] that was a big, big deal," Rosette says. "I still think it's a big deal. You give the listeners what they want in terms of community programming, the type of programming that is going to make the community better -- better in how information that people can use is disseminated and better in galvanizing the different factions of the larger community and the minority communities."
While WMCS has survived with this philosophy, they are alone in the Milwaukee radio market. If a station or network wants "to hit it big," as Rosette says, the market dictates that shock value will win the listeners. Rosette points out that even the Fox Network began with some broadcasting of community events and public affairs programming, but soon went for the shock value and ratings.
"Here was a network that decided it was time to start playing with the big boys, and they did," Rosette says. "Take Rush Limbaugh: There was ad money there. By 1994 his program was being run across America."
I mention that Limbaugh's success coincided with the Clinton presidency. "Sure," Rosette agrees. "Limbaugh [and others], they hounded him every day." It was good for ratings, and for business.
WMCS has preserved its community focus, but also offered some political balance, sometimes to the displeasure of its decidedly liberal North Side listener base.
WMCS's Von, a frequent on-air critic of former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist's education and inner city policies in the 1990s, is the leading progressive radio voice in Milwaukee, if not the state of Wisconsin. While the tone of his program is thoughtful and respectful, Von's politics are no local secret. In 2003-2004 he was a media and community coordinator for Mayor Tom Barrett's election campaign.
Until recently, WMCS also aired Linda Chavez's nationally-syndicated program. Chavez is "very conservative," a bias that did not sit well with WMCS listeners. "They called and complained," Rosette says. "They don't want to hear that conservative viewpoint. ... But it was nice to have her on, to give us some balance."
WMCS's new schedule offers financial, legal and other advice programs in the early afternoon time slot leading in to Von's show.
Diversity is "what it's all about," Rosette emphasizes. "I think there is strength in diversity. I think anytime you bring different cultures together, all of them come together with differences that can make us stronger as a people. We are stronger because of our differences.
"You cannot have one mindset and call it strength. It's proven that when you have different factions at the table the product is stronger and the community is stronger."
But even diversity has not brought younger listeners to the table. While this is an age-old dilemma for the staid culture of news and politics, media consumption audits now indicate that traditional media has lost the generation under 30. The hip hop generation is not buying in to the old formats.
The returns from the 2004 election clearly underscored the generation gap, as young adults failed to get to the polls in great numbers. A post-election New York Times analysis showed that Gen Xers (people aged 30-44) comprised the largest portion of the voting population, edging out the much more populous Baby Boomer age group (45-60). The 18-29 age group, however, lagged far behind in voting. Twenty-somethings, like Baby Boomers, vastly outnumber Gen Xers.
"When you figure out how to reach them, you tell me," jokes Rosette, whose favorite program is NBC's "Meet the Press with Tim Russert." Rosette likes Russert's direct and incisive interview style, no frills. "You know on that show, you're going to get the tough questions," he says.
The Fox Network solution of adding frills, shock and schlock to the news is little more than an extension of the attitude that Limbaugh and others adopted in talk radio in the 1990s, regardless of whether the younger generation is tuning in. This ever-increasing trend throughout media, as Rosette points out, has created an atmosphere in which hosts like Belling resort to ethnic slurs, then balk when asked for an apology. Compared to what can be heard on "Savage Nation," airing late nights on WTMJ, Belling's insult was tame.
At WMCS, a suggestion that Rosette often hears is that the station should liven up its broadcasts by adding hip hop and rap to the mix. He has resisted, believing that most of the messages in the music are negative. How does he envision the station closing the generation gap, if it's possible?
"Stay the course," Rosette advises. "You've got to stay the course and expose those things for what they are. You've got to be in control and can't give in to those things provocative.
"Here [at WMCS], we get out marching orders well from Mr. Davis," Rosette says of WMCS' owner. "With his properties, he has said we will be community-minded and have a sense of values. We use this medium for better community, better families, and he has stayed true to that. I have no doubt that that is what we do -- and in Houston, we did it there too.
"People say, 'You'd feel differently if you played hip hop.' Well, maybe that's why we don't play hip hop.
"It's too powerful, this medium. There is a responsibility."
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