Lee Matthews back on air; Tulsa still lacks local talk radio

Talk radio host Lee Matthews is back on the air in Oklahoma City, but in Tulsa you'll only be able to hear him on the internet.

In early November 2024, there was a big layoff of iHeartMedia employees, including on-air talent. Lee Matthews, whose evening drive show had been simulcast 5 - 7 p.m. weeknights on KAKC 1300 and 93.5 in Tulsa and KTOK 1000 in Oklahoma City, was one of those suddenly off the air. In January 2024, Matthews's 6 - 8 a.m. morning drive show on KTOK only had been displaced by the nationwide "Your Morning Show with Michael DelGiorno." 1300/93.5 The Patriot is now syndicated talk radio 24/7. The station also recently replaced Charlie Kirk with Armstrong & Getty, a Sacramento-based morning show delayed six hours, and they added Houston-based Michael Berry to fill a two-hour gap in the evening. Armstrong & Getty and Berry are all based at iHeartMedia stations, so I suspect there is a financial benefit to using them.

Last week, on Inauguration Day, Matthews returned to the Oklahoma City airwaves on KQOB Freedom 96.9, with a weekday 4 to 7 p.m. evening drive program. Freedom 96.9 is licensed to Enid, with transmitter in Crescent and studios in Oklahoma City, and is owned by Champlin Broadcasting, which also owns KWFF Hank FM. (Champlin was also the name of an Enid-based oil company and refinery.) Freedom 96.9 also features former State Sen. Jake Merrick with a daily morning drive show from 7 to 8 a.m. The rest of the schedule is syndicated conservative talk, including Brian Kilmeade, Dan Bongino, Dana Loesch, Joe Pags, and Jimmy Failla.

Meanwhile, Tulsa remains without a daily local talk show. Tulsa Beacon Weekend, hosted by Jeff Brucculeri, provides a one-hour long-form interview every Saturday at noon, often on local topics. KRMG has occasional in-depth interviews with local newsmakers. KWGS's Studio Tulsa, a daily 30-minute interview with Rich Fisher, left the air in June 2023. But no station in town is offering the kind of local talk radio we enjoyed on KFAQ for nearly two decades, with local officials in studio to converse with their constituents, candidate and issue debates, and in-depth analysis from the host and local opinion leaders.

I have heard that there have been stations with an interest in offering local talk radio, but perhaps not for the kind of money needed to get someone to do three hours a day, five days a week, with all the off-air preparation involved.

To be honest, even when Matthews was on 1300, despite my early hopes, Tulsa issues never got much air time. Perhaps because of iHeart's prescribed format, the show's content segments were short, constantly interrupted with traffic reports and PSAs. A good amount of time was devoted to conversations with national iHeart reporters or talking to local callers about national issues, and there was often an interview with a nostalgic pop culture figure promoting a new book. It was fun to listen to Freddy Boom Boom Cannon and Juliet Mills, but I don't ever recall Matthews doing an interview with a Tulsa newsmaker. When Matthews was off for vacation or some other gig, the station simply moved Jesse Kelly's national show earlier, rather than have another local host substitute for Matthews.

Local talk radio matters. Conservative Republican voters will turn out and vote for RINOs in Republican primaries and progressive Democrats in non-partisan city and school elections because there isn't a mass-media outlet discussing local politics from a conservative perspective, there isn't a voice with a reach big enough to contradict dark money and big money. This is how you get faux-conservatives like Gentner Drummond, who couldn't win in 2018 when Pat Campbell was on the air, but could in 2022 after Pat's passing and the end of KFAQ. As I discussed in my City Elders talk in April 2022, the lack of an effective conservative mass-media voice is how you get a turnout for school board that's majority Republican but votes for the Democrat-backed progressive.

FOR THE RECORD:

From the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, captures of the schedules of KAKC and KTOK before the advent of Your Morning Show with Michael DelGiorno, after his show launched on KAKC and KTOK,

• KAKC schedule August 2023
• KAKC schedule September 2024
• KAKC schedule January 2025
• KTOK schedule December 2023
• KTOK schedule March 2024
• KTOK schedule January 2025