Studying Time: 8 minutes
WTMJ was as soon as the head of conservative speak radio in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, with the station’s possession change and its contemporary, news-driven method, WTMJ has moved away from conservative rhetoric — reflecting a shift in Milwaukee’s demographics and media panorama.
“It’s very a lot modified now. I imply, fairly considerably. They’re clearly transferring away from conservative speak radio,” mentioned former WTMJ host Charlie Sykes, a pioneer of right-wing radio in Wisconsin who helped pave the way in which for the 2010 election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
The conservative status lengthy caught with WTMJ, however in recent times some imagine the station is popping left.
Meeting Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, mentioned WTMJ is now a “left wing” station that has confronted a “precipitous decline” in rankings because it “left conservative speak radio.”
“They’ve tried to have liberal speak radio in Wisconsin for 20 years, and it’s all the time failed, since you nonetheless should get listeners and it’s a must to get advertisers,” Vos mentioned. “I’ve a sense that except they’ve deep pockets from some billionaire who desires to say, ‘I’m going to assist make Wisconsin extra liberal by having liberal speak radio,’ it’s not going to achieve success. However you recognize, the free market’s a free market.”
Sykes mentioned WTMJ’s change may replicate the shifting political leanings of the Milwaukee suburbs. Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — the WOW counties — have been as soon as the “beating coronary heart of the brand new resurgent Republican Get together,” however since 2016 have turn out to be extra liberal.
“Radio is all the time going to chase the viewers, and there’s nothing radical about this,” Sykes mentioned. “They’ll all the time attempt to go the place the viewers is.”
Present WTMJ radio hosts Kristin Brey and Steve Scaffidi name the station’s shift pure. The station has began to attraction to youthful generations by producing extra podcasts, YouTube movies and digital content material, Brey mentioned, focusing extra on age than political leanings.
“I feel it’s extra of a response to how the overall media panorama has modified versus what the political leanings are on this area of the state,” Brey mentioned.
Scaffidi says it will be unimaginable to continuously match the political leanings of their viewers.
“If we have been going to in some way magically attempt to realign ourselves with how the demographics are altering, how do we all know they’re not going to shift the subsequent election?” Scaffidi mentioned. “I imply, you’d be continuously altering, it wouldn’t make any sense.”
Over time WTMJ has modified from the within out. From location to possession, to values, to hosts, to matters on-air, little or no has stayed the identical.
WTMJ started in 1927 when The Milwaukee Journal purchased the radio station and turned it into the highly effective platform that exists as we speak. TMJ was once a trifecta of native TV information, the newspaper and the radio station beginning in 1941 at Radio Metropolis, 720 E. Capitol Drive. Now they’re all individually owned entities.
“What made it totally different from just about each different station like that within the nation was the sports activities franchises,” Sykes mentioned. “And this can be a large viewers. I imply, it’s laborious to overstate how large it was that this was the foremost flagship station of the state of Wisconsin.”
In November 2018, Good Karma Manufacturers purchased WTMJ. After 80 years at Radio Metropolis, the station relocated to the Third Avenue Market Corridor in early 2022. Good Karma Manufacturers was based in 1997 when Craig Karmazin bought three radio stations in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. GKB began as a broadcast firm however later advanced into the media and advertising enterprise that exists as we speak. The corporate’s predominant associate is Disney-owned ESPN.
“So that they’re sort of scrambling round for his or her identification and apparently have simply merely determined that they’re gonna get out of the conservative speak radio enterprise, they’re going to concede that to WISN,” Sykes mentioned.
Questions on a possible WTMJ shift started in 2018 with the possession change. Karmazin has donated to a number of Democratic political campaigns through the years, together with these of former President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer and Dan Kohl, a Democrat who challenged Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman in 2018. He has additionally donated to Wisconsin Democratic candidates like former Gov. Jim Doyle and former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
WTMJ assistant program director Mike Spaulding mentioned the station is not going to tamp down any political opinions and nonetheless presents conservative views like Scaffidi’s. He says WTMJ has merely “opened up the tent” to extra listeners.
Spaulding additionally downplayed the possession’s curiosity in Wisconsin’s political panorama, however admitted that Karmazin was open about eager to take the station in what he calls “a brand new course.”
“We wish to inform folks. We wish to allow them to know what’s occurring and finally have them make their very own selections on what is true or flawed for them,” Spaulding mentioned.
WTMJ and WISN in Milwaukee are the state’s two strongest wattage stations. WTMJ’s broadcasts could be heard throughout jap Wisconsin and a few of northern Illinois, shaping political opinion in and outdoors Wisconsin.
In February 2024, after the retirement of longtime conservative host Jeff Wagner, WTMJ added 5 native reveals to cowl information that impacts Wisconsin residents. One consists of Brey’s “Spanning the State” section that covers in-depth tales round Wisconsin.
“What I’m enthusiastic about with WTMJ is their pivot to do extra information … though I’m not a journalist I, just like Steve, I care about information, and I care about info and I additionally care about exhibiting either side,” Brey mentioned.
It’s unclear how the shift has affected WTMJ’s rankings over the past yr. WTMJ’s score dropped by 1.2 share factors in December 2023, and no additional rankings have been recorded as a result of WTMJ not subscribes to Nielsen Audio Rankings. WISN’s rankings grew by 2.7 share factors between April and July 2024.
WTMJ’s conservative status
Totally understanding WTMJ’s evolution requires understanding the way it earned a conservative status. It began with Sykes.
In 1992, Sykes was supplied his personal present at WISN, however left a couple of yr later for a spot at rival WTMJ because the host of “The Charlie Sykes Present.”
“What was totally different about my coming to TMJ was at that time, TMJ did nothing that we name speak radio,” Sykes mentioned. “There was little or no political content material. I used to be clearly the primary.”
At a time when Rush Limbaugh and former Gov. Walker have been rising, Sykes elevated conservative speak in Wisconsin.
“We have been the middle of actually an intense polarization, the entire battle over Scott Walker and Act 10, it’s laborious to actually recreate how intense that was and the way partisan and tribal the debates turned,” Sykes mentioned. “In order that clearly was one of many markers of change of the present, which turned much less dialogue and extra advocacy.”
Sykes propelled Walker’s profession and Republicans extra broadly. Folks within the Milwaukee suburbs already leaned conservative, and Sykes turned up the right-wing quantity.
“Once you’re on radio, there’s a unique relationship between the radio host and the viewers,” Sykes mentioned. “You’re of their heads day by day. You’re having a dialog with them. They assume they know you, you assume you recognize them. There’s a relationship. And for a really very long time I had a reasonably good relationship with the viewers.”
Sykes mentioned he thought he was sharing “the opposite facet” of the story on the time. It wasn’t till he resigned that he realized he performed a job in fomenting a motion to reject fact-based journalism from conventional information shops — one thing Sykes derided for years because the “lamestream media.” As an alternative folks tuned in to hosts pushing a political agenda.
“I feel what I didn’t absolutely acknowledge was the way in which that conservative speak radio was turning into its personal ecosystem,” Sykes mentioned. “, once I began, there was no bubble as a result of there have been so few conservative voices. By the point I left, it was starting to kind into that, that hermetically sealed bubble.”
Trump’s 2016 election was the turning level
The 2016 presidential election turned conservative speak on its head. Sykes opposed Donald Trump’s marketing campaign, and in March 2016 he referred to as out Trump on WTMJ reside. Sykes condemned Trump’s feedback in opposition to girls, particularly a tweet Trump had made insulting Ted Cruz’s spouse.
“Is that this your customary, that if a supporter of one other candidate, not the candidate himself, does one thing despicable, that it’s OK for you, a candidate for president of the USA to behave in that very same approach?” Sykes requested Trump on the reside broadcast. “I imply, I count on that from a 12-year-old bully on the playground.”
Sykes mentioned when he performed the interview, his viewers was pretty supportive. Nevertheless, as 2016 continued on, extra folks rallied behind Trump. Sykes noticed the viewers slide right into a bubble. When Sykes deserted Trump, the listeners deserted Sykes.
“That was sort of the shock second the place you notice that we had been so profitable in criticizing a lot of the mainstream media that we had discredited fact-based media altogether,” Sykes mentioned.
Earlier than Sykes retired from WTMJ in 2016, he observed his viewers turned much less accepting of fact-based corrections. They didn’t prefer it when he criticized Republican rhetoric, Sykes mentioned.
“One factor was very apparent — that there was actually going to be no future in conservative media for Trump skeptics,” Sykes mentioned. “We had advanced to a spot the place I feel that conservatives needed conservative speak radio. They needed Fox Information to be a protected house for them.”
In October 2016, Sykes introduced he could be stepping down from WTMJ in December of that yr. After 23 years of radio internet hosting, he knew he was going to depart regardless of who gained the election that yr.
Pivot from conservative speak
After Sykes stepped out, Wagner, who had twenty years earlier run for legal professional basic as a Republican, stepped in briefly. However by the top of 2017 Scaffidi took over the slot with a brand new tone for speak radio.
“I didn’t change. I didn’t are available saying, oh, man, I’m gonna be like Charlie Sykes,” mentioned Scaffidi, who identifies as a Republican and was mayor of Oak Creek throughout the 2012 Sikh temple taking pictures.
Scaffidi used to name himself a conservative, however he thinks the phrase has been “uglied up.” Now, he prefers a unique C-word: compromise.
“The present has all the time been about presenting either side and taking a look at, OK, so that is the fact we reside in. Right here’s the politics of our nation. What are either side saying?” Scaffidi mentioned.
Scaffidi engages with a number of political views and clarifies his opinions versus the information.
“Among the different reveals at different stations, they do a extra one-sided dialog about politics,” Scaffidi mentioned. “I’m not curious about that. It’s lazy to me, and admittedly I don’t know what you’d glean from that.”
In February Scaffidi began the Political Energy Hour present to deal with concepts from a number of views. He invitations journalists, political columnists and authorized consultants on the present for an hour each weekday.
“I wish to make it possible for we actually perceive the problems,” Scaffidi mentioned.
Scaffidi has additionally defined how the station is diversifying, describing radio on his present earlier this yr as a male-dominated market.
“This market, particularly Milwaukee in southeastern Wisconsin, has been contaminated by … fixed noise, fixed screaming on a microphone by primarily previous white males, about politics in probably the most twisted vogue, which has, frankly, polluted our minds on these items,” Scaffidi mentioned.
WTMJ radio will more and more look to girls to solidify its future, he instructed Wisconsin Watch.
“My mission assertion from day considered one of my previous present seven years in the past was girls are smarter than males,” Scaffidi mentioned. “Ladies have loads of abilities that guys don’t have. And so when you can seize that, in no matter format this turns into, that’s fairly cool. And nobody else is doing it. In order that’s the half that excites me.”
WTMJ diversifying
Brey is among the many rising ranks of ladies on the radio station. She beforehand hosted “As Goes Wisconsin” on Civic Media following a stretch as a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel video producer. She is considered one of 4 feminine hosts on a employees that features six male hosts.
“I feel the individuals who bought employed, it’s to replicate extra of what Wisconsin really appears like,” Brey mentioned in an interview.
Nonetheless, Brey mentioned, WTMJ has room to develop in the case of extra broadly representing Wisconsin, significantly by way of race.
Brey mentioned her earlier office, Civic Media, confirmed a heavy leftward-lean — making a liberal echo chamber.
“It was loads simpler to say an increasing number of radical issues when everybody who you’re speaking to and everybody who’s listening sort of already agrees with you,” Brey added. “And so I’m actually excited to be right here to be doing a present that has persona, however doesn’t essentially have, ‘That is good. That is unhealthy.’”
Wisconsin Watch reporter Hallie Claflin contributed to this report.
Share your views on speak radio
Discuss radio nonetheless wields loads of energy and affect in Wisconsin politics, however the panorama is altering. Investigative journalism college students on the College of Wisconsin-Madison in partnership with Wisconsin Watch spent the spring 2024 semester reporting on these modifications, leading to a six-part sequence: “Change is on the Air.”
One piece lacking from that sequence: the views of radio listeners. Do you hear to speak radio in Wisconsin? Do you take heed to each conservative and liberal voices, or do you keep in a single media bubble? Do you take heed to native or nationwide packages? Or throughout your commute have you ever switched totally to podcasts?
Share your ideas on the state of speak radio in Wisconsin, and we could publish your response in a future a part of our sequence. Ship an e mail to: changeisontheair@wisconsinwatch.org.
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