Kids of WRAS and GSU, Meet Your New Overlords!

Teya Ryan (President & Executive Director, GPB) to the left. Mikey McDougald (Chariman of the Board, GPB) to the right. And they are coming at you WRAS/GSU kids with some wow kinda “significantly different” news programming products you young people can get all up in.

Like that three helpings of Bill Nigut programming product on WRAS GPB! (If you add in Nigut’s TV show.) From Rodey Ho of the AJC’s blog post:

He [McDougald] said duplication during mornings and afternoon drive-time are common and that the local news content will differ. While WABE focuses on Atlanta, GPB’s news content will be “significantly different” with a promise to increase its news operation, he wrote, noting GPB’s state-wide reach.

McDougald wrote that WRAS will have three original programs including a 9 a.m. weekday news program that starts in the fall, a political roundtable that debuts today and a Saturday arts/culture show that launched last Saturday hosted by Bill Nigut. He hopes more original programs will come in the future.

And they’re just getting started! Help ’em power up a laptop desktop all by themselves when you get over there to GPB headquarters to do your blessed intern thing. They need strong young folk around to work their droopy farm into shape, especially now that they’ve got all that exciting, new, and “significantly different” Bill Nigut-powered programming.

But don’t ever forget who calls the programming shots and ideas at Farm GPB. Those two in the above picture! And their political media henchman, Bill Nigut, of course.

You kids have you some fun now, ‘ya hear! (The nearest Starbucks is .5 miles away. Across the Connector. Mapped it already for you. Start hoofin’. Ryan likes a Grande Latte no sugar at 10am sharp every morning.)

Get On Board The GPB Programming Theft Train!

 

In a rigid environment stripped of anything remotely representing a “two way street,” GPB’s Bill Nigut babbled non-freely away recently (Thursday, July 3, 2014) to AJC’s Rodney Ho about not one but two upcoming WRAS shows he’s stolen carved-out for himself. One being called, snort, “Two Way Street.”

Given that no one’s the least bit interested in organic Nigut dung radio product, but rather far more interested in the outrageous public relations heap GPB’s laid in the wake of their mindless decision to raid WRAS, Ho dutifully attempted to steer his Nigut chat time toward media issues people actually want to hear about. Only to be shut-down by a free speech wrangler named Mandy. From Ho’s Radio & TV Talk blog:

When I mentioned that some WRAS fans are making him the bogeyman, he shrugged. “As a guy who covers politics,” Nigut said, “I know people decide to assign a motive and give you an agenda. It has nothing to do with reality or who you are.” Twice while I was on this subject, GPB spokeswoman Mandy Wilson interrupted me to say, “We’re here to talk about Bill’s radio shows.” I wasn’t expecting Nigut to saying anything except positive things about the deal and he didn’t appear to mind talking about the deal. But with a publicist in the room clearly uncomfortable with me probing that subject, I backed off.

Because what Atlanta really wants is to consume news from news farms where the news product is locally-sourced by obstructionist publicists named “Mandy.”

But wait! There’s more! More Bill Nigut in our futures! Of course Bill Nigut just had to have another politics show all for himself, in the way a toddler hoards all the red and green trucks, now that he’s playing with his stolen programming booty there at GPB.

Blessing GPB’s Act of Media Thievery

I had to drive around during the day for a few hours yesterday, throughout metro Atlanta. I listened to the “new” GPB-ized programming on WRAS 88.5 (no longer “Album” 88.5 of course) through most of my drive time.

It’s exactly what I, and plenty of other Lois Reitzes-haters, have been hoping for on our Atlanta airwaves, which we’ve never had and often wished for as quality news programming in our cars/wherever from the 9am-3pm hours.

I never in a million years thought I’d get my wish, some 25-years later, on the backs of the kid-powered Album 88.5 programming that shaped my life throughout young adulthood

I felt absolutely dirty the whole time I was listening, knowing what an ill-gotten act of outright thieving and programming-gain it was on the part of GPB’s Teya Ryan and her nasty media henchman, Bill Nigut.

At least Nigut’s personal act of thieving windbaggery wasn’t yet ready for air. That’s an ugly lying in wait – to incite more than a mere blog post by one person.

Or is it? I wonder about my Atlanta/Georgia media peers being far too excepting of the status quo, the way they always have been. I expect they’re meeting already at The Atlanta Press Club to gush and drool over Teya Ryan and Bill Nigut’s programming coup. And hand them a manufactured award for what they’ve done to the kids of GSU, of course.

Now I feel dirty and disgusted. There is no amusement in this particular mostly Atlanta media matter. At all.

#SaveWRAS

How To Be An Old Media Bully. A Primer.

UPDATE: Seems GPB has abandoned their attempt at a “two way street” and removed all comments and commenting from Bill Nigut’s blog post referenced in this post and associated hyperlinks. Too bad. Loved the “Whatever Saruman” one! 

Bill Nigut is “thrilled” to be back on the airwaves of radio, via WRAS. That makes one person in Georgia. The rest of us? Not so much. (See the comments, coming fast and furious, at his blog post trumpeting his latest broadcasting theft thrill.)

Mr. Nigut’s on-air and in-real-life persona has always been loud, large, and obnoxious. He’s that person who insists on being heard through the din of a crowded networking event or cocktail party. Sucks the wind right out of any space, and takes it all for himself.

It helps that he’s a tall guy, but Nigut can bray and preen with the best of ’em. I once made the mistake of walking past Bill Nigut and Neal Boortz chatting together at some random Atlanta Press Club event. I was hurled three city blocks away by the gasbaggery posturing alone.

Nigut makes claim to being a champion for pretty much everything and everyone he can think of: the helpless, the homeless, the voiceless, the poor, but especially Richie Rich Chamber-types, in his windy GPB blog post declaring his latest radio show intentions with WRAS, awww shucks, ma’am style:

I am thrilled to be back in radio and hope you’ll join me to meet extraordinary people, hear important ideas and explore the rich arts and cultural work being done in Atlanta and Georgia. It should be fun; it should be illuminating, and if I do it right, it should make us all just a little more aware of what a remarkable place we live in.

Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Nigut is merely an old media bully worming his way into a place, space and time where he is not wanted because he believes his own hype, and is still in love with the sound of his own voice, and has sorely missed hearing it bellowing hither and yon from whatever Atlanta microphone he can grab first before anyone else has a chance to get there. Everyone knows this, because they’re watching it happen. In real time, more or less, given the enduring popularity of the #SaveWRAS hashtag.

GPB stole programming out of the mouths, minds and hearts of numerous Georgia State University students, and took it for a very select, very few one old media talking heads. No one’s believing a wisp of spin put on the matter by anyone at GSU or GPB leadership. They’re operating in an echo chamber, as that deafening sound you don’t hear anywhere in Atlanta is anyone other than Bill Nigut and Teya Ryan themselves coming to their own sorry little defense of what they’ve done to raid WRAS.

The best thing Bill Nigut can possibly do for his rapidly fraying Georgia media legacy, and trust me, he surely thinks he’s still got a shot at one, is to give the programming of WRAS back to the kids of GSU. Now.