Chris Krok

Any thoughts on his show?

Is there any thought in his show?

While not my cup of tea, I'd have to say, yes, thought does go in to his show. Certainly he intends to polarize, gaining attention and water cooler talk from fans and enemies. The fact is, love or hate the host, both sides listen. The love side hears more they agree with while the hate side gains a bit more dirt to reinforce that. Coming from an on the air position years ago, this would not be my choice but perhaps it is his or the choice of his program director. The question is how well that works in gaining advertising dollars. If it works, then that persona must be the right one. In the end, it is all about business and making money.

One thing we have to remember is radio personalities have some acting in their blood. That acting can be the very opposite of their real personality. Just as you wouldn't think an actor or actress in a movie that, say, kills someone in the movie to be a murderer in real life, the radio personality can be much the same.

I've listened to many of Krok's shows since he's been on WBAP. As of this writing, he's at about 680 shows, which might be a record stint for him. I tend to agree with his point of view most of the time. Yes, I believe he prepares for his shows pretty well. He does have an army of enemies out there and there's even an anti-Krok website. My beef with him, besides his annoying "HERCULES! HERCULES! HERCULES!" is just as much a beef with WBAP in the way they present the show than with just Krok. He comes on at 4pm, which is the third hour of Michael Savage, and is only on air for one hour. I can't understand the logic of WBAP knocking out Savage's third hour instead of airing his show in its entirety. Then Krok comes back at 8pm to midnight. The thing that bothers me is that Krok is live only from 8pm to 10pm, then WBAP repeats those two hours at 10pm to midnight and every time they come back from commercial, the WBAP pitchman says "The Chris Krok show continues, LIVE on WBAP" when it's NOT live in those two hours. Any live radio broadcast is full of commentary that instantly dates itself and when you repeat a broadcast, the commentary is no longer relevant in many cases. For a good example, during the recent severe icy weather, Krok had WBAP's meteorologist Brad Barton live in the studio discussing the weather for about 20 minutes during the live broadcast. This part of the show was later repeated twice and in those repeats, the weather situation had drastically changed. Instead of repeating 2 hours of a show we just heard, WBAP could be airing something fresh, but repetition is an epidemic in radio these days.
Krok also has a Facebook page and he does have it set up so that people can make posts, but the posts instantly disappear into a black hole and never appear on the page. I've messaged him about this and he replied that "sometimes Facebook blocks it out", which I don't think is the case. I think he may have it set somehow so that his enemies can't make negative posts. Also, even though Krok seems to prepare well for his shows, he rarely makes any posts to his Facebook page outlining the subjects he'll be talking about on his upcoming shows. Only a tiny number of listeners are able to actually call into a show and make their point, so I think he should use Facebook to fill in that gap, but he doesn't.

Wow, amazing that WBAP does this. I'd be carrying Savage and run Krok live without repeats. There's certainly enough good product out there to cover a 24 hour broadcast day. Sounds like really poor programming decisions are being made and I'm sure the research supports this.

Talk radio takes lots of prep work. In fact, you run the risk of setting a cut off point on research (deadline if you will) for each show being found to be wrong. Years ago a newspaper guy told me it was amazing how the truth wound up being a lie. As he put it, an event is a moving target and the layers of the onion are always being peeled back, so each layer might disprove the truth as it was known at the moment the deadline arrived. So, if you have a topic that changes by the time you hit the air, you need other topics to fill the time. You can bet there's enough info for the talk show to go twice as long. Then you have to plan things out and make sure you get every point made at the right spot. It's much like telling a lengthy joke. If you don't include every little detail in just the right place the punch line never works.

is it any wonder wbap has a 2 share. same for klif. They can't even get rid of the audio distortion. CUMULUS SUCKS

I think if 'BAP had their druthers, they'd delay Savage(or not carry him at all) until after Mark Levin, and give Krok the 2-5pm slot. This mess reeks of Cumulus corporate overriding local programming control. I do know many stations have a similar setup, preempting the third hour of Savage for local programming.