Chip Franklin opines on politics, ratings, and commercials.
KGO radio’s afternoon host Chip Franklin is a rare beast in today’s talk jungle in that he’s a bit of a lefty. Recently he was actually touting a social program coming to Oakland that will pay young men at risk of shooting someone $1,000 a month not to do so. Other times, though, Franklin is more pure entertainer. Like when he blew up social media after a clip of him jawing with the father of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady went viral. The host, citing “deflate-gate,” asserted that Brady cheats. He also said he’d prefer to have the saintly Tim Tebow any day. Brady’s dad, a Bay Area resident, was listening, called into the show, and went ballistic. Unfazed, Franklin stood his ground. I caught up with the talk ninja recently as he tooled home to his Lafayette digs.
Paul Kilduff: Are you the same guy up here on the air that you were in San Diego?
Chip Franklin: Yeah. The difference is there is a broader range of people here. I’ve always been left of center on social issues. The recession changed my fiscal conservative beliefs, because deregulation and the ensuing fallout of that almost collapsed the economy. We were told a huge lie about deregulation. People were investing into mortgage securities believing they were 5 percent sub-prime when in fact they were 95 percent sub-prime and people knew this. And people who were making the loans were buying insurance from AIG, and AIG would have gone bankrupt to the tune of 60 billion dollars overall. It was a fiasco, and it changed the way I viewed politics—one of the reasons, I think, I got fired from those guys [KOGO] in 2013. I can’t give all of the details, but they had to pay off my contract. I had an opportunity for a couple of years to write and to look at all of that. I’ve created a different point of view for myself, more of a cynical view towards government.
PK: Fair to say that you became even more liberal from a financial standpoint?
CF: You’ve got to ask me the issue. I mean, for example, I’ve got a problem with public sector unions. They’re essentially paying money to the people that pay them money. It’s not real good. Mostly, I want to entertain people.
PK: KGO is not doing well ratings-wise. What can turn it around?
CF: You know how they do ratings, right? It’s a PPM.
PK: The Portable People Meter?
CF: Yeah, right. A Personal People Meter. People get those and they keep them for up to two years. The people get paid about $5 to $10 a month.
PK: Nice gig.
CF: People that listen to talk radio are engaged. They’re generally more successful. They’re people who are active politically, socially. They’re not the kind of people that are going to carry Personal People Meters. We’re really under-represented. I know that our personal endorsements and our advertising do real well. I think that KGO has changed over the years, and people are trying to adjust. Everybody is. When you see ratings, you are usually seeing age 12-plus. Let’s be honest; 12- to 25-year-olds don’t have much spending money.
PK: So if you parse the ratings down, to the important people driving BMWs, that’s all that really matters?
CF: That’s kind of pejorative. I mean it in more of a positive way.
PK: What do you say to the Bay Area NPR listening purist who hates commercial radio—especially the commercials?
CF: First of all, we share listeners with them. At least from the correspondence I get. People that don’t like commercials? I get it. Look at what you’re getting on network television when you fast-forward through those commercials. Do you watch any shows religiously anymore on network television? No, because they suck. Because the money has been taken away because of people fast-forwarding through commercials. There is nothing wrong with advertising. Here’s the thing about being on the right side of the dial: You can learn, sometimes, listening to those commercials. Sometimes, believe it or not, it might be something you want and you didn’t know about. It may alter or affect your life.
PK: Like a pillow.
CF: Whatever. The bottom line is that I get it. This is part of the Bay Area experience, the Berkeley thing. My point is you listen to the NPR crowd and you’re not going to hear them say something that evolves into the Brady thing that I did the other day. You’re not going to hear them say that Tom Brady cheats. I’m not a religious person at all, but I admire Tim Tebow. He is a man of character. He sticks to what he says. They won’t go into those areas. I’m not afraid to say that as an agnostic, I admire a guy whose religion bugs the crap out of me.
PK: Why don’t we see more of your kind of show on commercial talk radio?
CF: Maybe I can clone myself.
PK: How seriously are you taking Donald Trump?
CF: Most of the time a fart doesn’t really bother anything, but if you put a flame in front of it, it can actually hurt someone. That’s what Trump is. He said Black Lives Matters were a bunch of troublemakers. Then it was the Mexicans, calling them rapists. That has resonated in the ridiculous right-wing part of the Republican Party that used to actually have an idea. Now, with the possible exception of Jeb Bush, they don’t. They’re insane. They’ve lost their minds. Trump is a catalyst. He is that thing that you throw into the chemical equation that creates a dangerous reaction.
PK: Jon Stewart recently retired from The Daily Show. We’ve got a whole generation of people who are like, “My news is fake news.”
CF: What Jon Stewart brought to the table was irony. There is a sad, sad lack of irony in our culture today. Irony is the ability to see the unintended consequence of your actions. When you point it out and people realize it, they laugh. Sometimes it’s tragic, and sometimes it’s just funny. He was a master at that.
PK: Is it a substitute for real news?
CF: No. My son reads Reddit. That informs him really well. He’s online a lot and looks through the news threads. On Twitter you can follow exactly who you want to follow. I have a Twitter feed just of all of the news sources that I follow every day. That’s how I get a lot of my ideas. I think we’re in the middle of a change. It’s often hard to tell which direction the water is going, but keep your head afloat, and you’ll get through it.
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For more Kilduff, visit the “Kilduff File Super Fan Page” on Facebook.
Age: Yes
Birthplace: Alexandria, Va.
Astrological Sign: Open 24 hrs
Book on Nightstand: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
Motto: A bird cannot soar in a calm.
What would you do in the event of a zombie apocalypse? Switch channels
Website:www.ChipFranklin.com
Twitter: twitter.com/ChipFranklin
Best Outtake: I did a whole thing with a guy from Morgan Stanley talking about “Would you invest in pot?” It’s so funny because these investment guys, they sometimes say, “I don’t want to invest in pot, because we have values.” I’m like give me a fucking break, dude. You’ll invest in Northrop Grumman and defense contractors that make drones that kill innocent civilians overseas, but you won’t invest in a joint?
