Urban Unrest

24 July 2006 | Business | Ernesto Aguilar

So, knowing readers would be curious, I spent some time this morning listening to Roula and Ryan (replacements of Atom Smasher and Maria Todd) this morning. Not a lot of time — I’m not that much of a masochist.

Smasher and Todd were one of the top-rated morning shows in Houston, but were recently canned in favor of Roula Christie and Ryan Chase, themselves fired from KHMX in favor of Sam Malone, KRBE’s popular morning host, who’d reportedly been fired by KRBE’s new owner, Cumulus.

Keeping up? I’m trying, but it’s a bit soapy, to say the least.

I was expecting the Roula and Ryan show to be somewhat different from the pair’s 96.5 gig. Conventional wisdom would indicate that, if the act didn’t draw listeners before, it might need some tweaking before coming back. I was surprised it was pretty much the same show, with a few new elements. Noticeably absent were references to KHMX (replaced by comments about KRBE involvement nearly a decade ago), though I caught at least one subtle shot at their KHMX replacement, Sam Malone. However, the show was more notable in its technical issues (callers who didn’t know they were on, level cues, etc.) than for staking a major win for KRBE, in my opinion. For what it’s worth, I didn’t catch many comments from Malone, not that I could listen long to him. Judging by comments on this blog, he seems to stand to gain some disaffected KRBE listeners.

One of the discussed additions to the show was news breaks. The 7:58 news break was:

-Tour de France
-Tiger Woods [complete with dance music background halfway during the actuality]
-Homeland Security will cut money to disaster victims

Yes, I understand it’s not a news show, but does this qualify as news?

All said and done, I left feeling my initial reaction that Roula and Ryan are likely a fill in until Cumulus quietly woos a bigger player (or one that will appeal to the older demographic the company states it wants) was right. Still, Houston isn’t such a huge market that may be worth a major morning investment by the new owners of KRBE. It’ll be fascinating to see how this shakes out. I doubt the top two morning shows (a hip-hop program and a Spanish-language show) have anything to worry about.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!