Contributor Mike Hotaling is the guest on the Scott Lonsberry show this particular day. As you’ll hear, Mike was also the host of a show called “Earth Speaks”, an environmental program aired on WQBK/WQBJ “The Edge”. At the time, Mike was also a Rock Jock on The Edge as well.
As our Contributor describes this, Lonsberry and the rest of WQBK was a Right Wing talk station. Said Hotaling,
“…it is indeed my very first of many many apperinces on the scott lonsberry show. you would figure a left wing environmentalist and a right wing conservative would be oil and water? the segments just kept getting better and I became a regular on his program. sort of on a local scale a Jon Stewart, Bill O’Rielly thing…. didnt agree on much of anything but you can tell they like each other.
…Local talk has all but vanished in most upstate markets… and most medium and small ones… its a shame… but I was involved in the tail end of it in the 90s… regular guest spots on scotts show, then they asked me to do my envionmental fm show live on wqbk so I could get phone ins… then they asked if I could host the garden show as well… when wqbk swiched to espn radio they kept my environmental show on the air because it had appeal to sportsman.
As for WQBK and what became of local talk in Albany, Hotaling says,
…” Dave Arcurra bought WXCR and took WQBK-AM to ESPN almost the same week… cost cutting measure. dave sold off the Edge, WXCR and WTMM(WQBK-AM) to clear channel in ’99”
We don’t usually post talk shows on this website, but here’s a great example of local talk programming done right, with local guests and local callers. As you listen, observe just how GOOD Mike Hotaling sounds as a Liberal talker, and Scott Lonsberry is fantastic as a Conservative. With so much polarized talk on the AM band, one would think that blending two opposites such as these guys (who are good friends, by the way) would work better than Rush, Hannity, Levin or any of the other extreme Right Wing talkers. But, perhaps we’re getting off topic.
Enjoy this 40 minutes of talk about the Albany area environmental cleanup efforts, with callers and weather reports as snow moves into the Capital Region.
