On KQRS, Tommy B said that if KQRS had to do a cut, let it be him...

Very noble, but it asks 2 things:

1. Is Tom is an employee of KQRS and not a hired contractor as someone else said in the previous post re: the KQRS Morning Show I'd posted?

2. If Tom goes, would the listeners remain? After all, when Archie Bunker hid out in All in the Family's 5th season, those three episodes were rather dull... does this mean all his fellow talkers would lose their jobs too?

They are sister stations, KQRS and KXXR and reach out to similar demographics. We can wish but there will not be a mass shift over to KNOW 91.1 in the morning.

But a lot of 30 & 40-something's here at work listen to KQ as well. I can tell because of their repetition of ignorant talking points.
I remember back in 86-87 when Tommy B first came on board, I really liked him a lot. Most of the talk was about sports, the Twins were going to the World Series.
They brought Mark Rosen on board (Curtis from Ch 5 was a dud), Sansevere who was fine as long as he talked sports.
Terry Traen stayed mostly in the background.

Nowadays, for me, listening to that show is just a head-shaking eye-rolling experience for me. A complete waste of time. Brice is the biggest ignoramus on the show.
Yesterday Tommy laments the cruel things the protesters said about him and his co-workers last summer and if they tried coming to his house, boy what a surprise would await them. This is typical - accountability for the statements of others but none for him.

Yipes, I did not know they were sister stations.

When they bought KQRS and the old 93X, KRXX, which they changed to 93.7 The Edge KEGE for a while and then back to 93X KXXR. ABC/Capital Cities wanted their piece of the pie when Clear Channel and CBS were buying up everything in the Twin Cities radio market and beyond.

A lot of liberals like myself enjoy the KQ Morning Show. Tom Barnard is one of the best talk show hosts around. That can't be argued. That's a fact. Look at the numbers. I will address some of the questions asked. Tom in a KQ employee. If Tom quit his crew (Bryce, Teri, etc...) would either be let go or doing all night shifts. And when KQ is on vacation or Tom is off like last week I listened to Bill Press & Stephanie Miller. You would be surprised at how many liberals listen to the show.

because it never takes long for one of them to say something that annoys me so much I leap from my bed to turn them off - then I figure I'm out of bed so I might as well stay that way.

They are not AM 1280 The Fascist or KTLK, after all.
I listen from time to time as well. When the topic turns to the Twins, Vikings, etc., I catch myself stopping what I am doing and listening.
That Mike guy with the weekly Hollywood report is fun, too.

Any society is ultimately judged on how it treats its vulnerable. And what one person sees as a minus can still be utilized in other situations. Sometimes, turning lemons into lemonade can be quite advantageous.

Other times the lemon only deserves being squashed, but that's another story...

That is a Air America station out in California. Of course both are Clear Channel stations. :(

Speaking as a liberal, Tommy used to go on and on about how good the unions were for employee's. Then he got hooked up with the non-thinkers like Sansevere and Passolt. When ol tommy got in trouble with the Hmong community way back, he started pouting and felt all 'hung out to dry' by the progressives. That is when he changed and that is when I stopped listening.

Thinking like a liberal, I dont know if Stretch is still on the show, but they booted the thinkers or they just up and left because of the direction the show was taking. Mark Rosen, Tony Lee and now Tommy doenst have anyone to counter him when he invites water carriers like norm coleperson on the show.

As a liberal, you dont have to announce your a liberal in your posts dude, its assumed your a liberal because your on DU.

... I think with some regularity. I did not live here in the '90s, so don't know what the show used to be like.

If I flip to KQ in the morning and Stretch is there, I am more likely to stay with the station. IMO, he raises the level of the show significantly in terms of discussion and humor, regardless of the topic. Tom also seems to at a higher level when Stretch is there. The two of them can - at times - get started on some good conversations but get disrupted by the others (by plan, I imagine).

I don't consider Stretch's comments on the show to be all that "liberal" or "progressive" - his comments on air seem pretty much in the center to me (and for that, he gets tagged as the "leftie").

But to be honest, I typically don't flip to KQ unless there is nothing of interest to me on a couple of other stations I tend to check first.

Which makes him more interesting, as when he thinks he can go left or right, and when he spouts gibber it can go left or right too. In both cases it's more often right-wing, but I haven't been counting. But if he'd add up some of the thought with the gibber... and there have been times he's done that too... still can't agree with him on everything, but anyone who agrees with someone 100% of the time has problems.

Sansevere almost got my attention when he said what many have said about how we're "being conditioned" to higher gas prices. Or was that on tv, and not during the AM radio show? Oh well. Of course, any of us could say the same thing. Let's all become disc jockey radio show clerks like him... :D

Over the years, I've only caught little snippets of his show now and then, as I search for music while driving to work. It's always amazed me how often I surf by and find him talking about excrement. But the quote that floored me came in the spring of 2003, right after the "successful" conclusion of the "shock and awe" phase of the war in Iraq. Barnard was uncustomarily apoplectic, actually shouting into the mike. His rant went like this:



I've sometimes wondered if he's changed his opinion as the war drags on over the years. Maybe some of you regular listeners could tell me.

But then again, I turned him off as he was going on and on on how honest Ari Fleicher was back in 2001.

He's a fuckmaggot. And I hope he hermetically seals himself up in his house and never, ever, ever bothers the world again.