Awful KFAN to Be Challenged in Twin Cities

Even if you consider the accordion-wielding, tattooed tapdancer business of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies a somewhat… unique endeavor – there was something unspeakably redemptive that completely saved this week. The folks at AM 1500 KSTP in Minneapolis / Saint Paul announced that they were switching their radio station from news to a sports talk format.

Hardly earth shattering – you say? Fair enough. But! Consider this. There is only one significant sports talk radio station in those Twin Cities at this juncture – AM 1130 KFAN. It is perhaps the worst radio station that has ever even been thought of – much less brought to audio fruition. With the advent of a new rival in its own market, KFAN is sure to suffer. And what makes KFAN suffer, brings to me visage a smile both wide and joyous.

A commenter by the name of ‘midnightt‘ on the Minnesota Twins official website had this to say after the news broke:

Best news of the day….KSTP is going to an all sports talk station in affiliation with ESPN. i LOVE IT because I have thought for years that KFAN is the worst sports station in the history of sports….

And normally the verdant paradise of this website would hesitate to indulge in hyperbole (hohoho)… but ya, that pretty much sums it up.

In broadcasting school, you learn things like the importance of making your show about your listeners… and not spending the entire time talking about every minute detail of your own life. You’re told this is a nice way to connect. Your teachers mention to you that it is, at times, a positive thing to sound as though you enjoy your job and have a fairly upbeat demeanor about what you’re discussing and… life in general. KFAN has stood firmly as a monument against these principles – and so many more.

The chief reasons behind my personal zest for the downfall of KFAN (which identifies itself in on air promos with an appropriately whiny & excessive voice over guy unpleasantly intoning the words, ‘The FAAANN’) stretch back to wheat fields on the Great Plains – and specifically to a great deal of time I invested in the cab of my dad’s John Deere tractor plowing those fields as a young Eastern Montanan. That task bonds you to your radio. It’s the only thing between you and going absolutely loony out there (some would argue this wouldn’t require any travel). Unfortunately, there is not a cornucopia of radio offerings in that portion of the world. You’re left to the companionship of bible teaching, country crooning, elderly rockers, or sports and news talk.

Rush Limbaugh was one of the big highlights of the day. The other real treasure came in the evening, when the tale of the Minnesota Twins’ games was woven in the tractor by John Gordon (Dan Gladden’s voice there too, but we’ve got enough negativity without going there at the moment…). But it was the intervening afternoon hours of fieldwork that were the tricky parts to fill. At that time, Bismarck, North Dakota featured an affiliate of KFAN’s radio network on AM 710 which filtered across the prairie to my ears. And it was when I inevitably rested the radio dial in that position that this angst was fostered.

"Common Man" Dan Cole - from KFAN's website

My initial glee at finding a station that spoke of Twins baseball soon crumbled as it became clear that KFAN hosts Chad Hartman, “The Common Man” Dan Cole, and Dan Barriero were only talking about the Twins because (a) there was nothing else going on or (b) someone had told them they had to. They sardonically taunted the team’s lightweight players, miserly ownership, and the outdated game of baseball (and it’s massive inferiority to the NFL) on normal days. When things were going particularly well for the Twins team on the field, KFAN reminded me that doom and dismal failure were lurking around the corner.

Those initial negative findings about the state of ‘The Fan’ were soon augmented. The macho nature of the dialogue, with which sports radio is understandably teeming, was on speed at this station. Even their top of the hour sports updates often just featured a guy grunting at you about beef jerky, Vikings cheerleaders, and Budweiser (we would never exaggerate, that would be unethical). What’s more, the air personalities were just remarkably unpleasant to the ears. While God & each of their respective mother’s had endowed these folk with love and worth, they were not inspired to exert any effort to pass as anything akin to compelling or remotely interested in their subject of discussion while on the air (unless it was the Vikings in the latter department). You could tell they would rather be somewhere else. In fact, “Common Man” Dan Cole spent most of his show telling where he’d rather be. Mostly this consisted / consists of his regaling his audience with his weekend exploits on the golf course with his friends.

The proverbial cherry of doom was placed on this growing allegorical sundae of radio sadness when I first heard hosts Barriero and Hartman stray from the realm of sport into their political observations. As the card carrying member of the right wing conspiracy that I am, hearing these beacons of negativity declare that GW Bush led us into Iraq on false pretenses on a campaign for oil and empire was just a bit too much. Their lack of knowledge on the topic was surpassed only by their confidence that they knew precisely what was going on. Needless to say, my listener-ship to The Fan dissipated to oblivion with haste.

Here’s hoping that a revamped KSTP can offer people a palatable alternative to The Fan, and bring low this monument to truly awful radio. The rumblings are that KSTP might be losing some of the local element that’s so important to attracting listeners as they take on some syndicated ESPN programming. Even so, the bar is set so low at KFAN that it’s difficult to imagine listeners possibly being prohibited from flocking to KSTP in droves – a stampede that will bring joy in its wake.