The Herald says Imus ripped into Severin because last year, the WTKK-FM (96.9) host said he’s no longer appearing on the I-man’s show. The reason? He was tired of the insults.

Imus told Severin to get off the (expletive) stage or “I’m going to shoot you. Do you (expletive) understand what I’m saying to you? You get off this stage right now or I’m going to shoot you.”

The exchange was confirmed to the Herald by Severin’s agent, and an Imus spokesman.

WTKK parent company Greater Media released a statement calling the Imus remarks to “shoot” everin “unfortunate, and we trust that he will rectify the situation.”

The question everyone seems to be asking is whether Secretary Geithner’s time has come to bow out or is it simply an opportunity that Republican’s are working for all they possibly can. Is it opportunistic shenannigans? Or, was Tim simply the right guy put in place at the wrong time?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/18/rep-mack-calls-geithner-resign-fired-aig-bonuses/

There is good news for NewsTalkers...

New Coleman study stays spoken word can thrive in PPM - especially all-news and sports.

The broad average for spoken word rises when comparing 80+ stations under their first four People Meter months, to their previous four diary quarterlies. Their 12+ AQH share improved from 2.1 to a 2.4, says Jon Coleman at last weekend’s R&R Talk Radio Seminar.

Spoken word stations do a smidgeon better than that in 25-54s and 35-64s. (Particularly in morning drive.) And the biggest contributors, format-wise, are all-news stations and sports. While the stations defined as “news/talk” - which I’m guessing are mostly “talk” - indexed at a 102, pretty much even with their diary numbers.

Public radio stations that specialize in news/talk/information index at a 94 - worse than the diary. (All-news indexes at 140 and sports at 134.) So why the increases? Coleman Insights says it’s mostly a matter of better TSL, Time Spent listening. It’s true the cume rises compared to the diary, but less than it does for some other formats.

But even with the cume and TSL gains, Coleman says the better average share for the broad spoken word category “does not result in rank improvement.” Coleman’s been producing an ongoing series titled Mapping the DNA of PPM”, and the “spoken-word” pdf is here.

(Thanks, Tom Taylor - )

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Contact: don@newstalkradio.com