One of the reasons I have a tough time getting star struck is that in the years I worked in TV, I figured out  the difference between a talented hard-working person becoming a star and a talented hard-working person not becoming a star was luck and happenstance.

That’s why I think I admire people in business so much more. It not only takes talent and hard-work but intelligence and ingenuity to become a success in business.

But in my time as a TV station program director I was intrigued by the circumstances that would make one show a ratings success and another not so.

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For the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking that way again; ever since radio station KNST 790-AM announced it had snatched the local broadcast rights to the syndicated Glenn Beck program. They even brought in Bob Lee, the former program director who launched KNST as a news-talk station 28 years ago, to help make the big announcement. He and KNST morning host Jim Parisi took phone calls from listeners fawning over the fact that their lives were somehow complete now that Beck would be on the same station as Rush Limbaugh and some of the other heavy hitters among conservative talkers.

Really? Glenn Beck? The guy whose show aired live – or close to it – on The Source KCUB 1290-AM but couldn’t draw enough of an audience to pull that station’s ratings out of the dumpster? 

Regardless of politics, I get Limbaugh’s success. He was a trailblazer on talk radio doing things that had not been done previously. Do you remember Limbaugh’s predecessor in the 9 a.m. to noon time slot in Tucson? It was a guy named Michael Jackson. No, not that Michael Jackson. This one is still alive and in his 70s. Born in England, this Jackson did a talk radio show out of Los Angeles. They were dull. He was incredibly polite with his guests, but even in the middle of the day his shows could put you to sleep. Limbaugh, on the other hand, was direct, to the point and had comedy vignettes.

Jackson is a liberal and Limbaugh is a conservative but that didn’t have as much to do with it as the fact that one matched business with show — that’s why they call it show business — and put on a program people tuned in to hear.

Radio, being format driven, Limbaugh’s success spawned the all-conservative talk format. Sean Hannity has become a success following Limbaugh. Glenn Beck’s success has come from being the show that airs before Limbaugh in the Eastern time zone. He doesn’t have that same success in West because most stations wouldn’t dare sacrifice a lucrative local morning show to air him. Seattle is the only major market in the West where Beck’s show airs live in the morning — and he’s not the ratings winner.

Now the question is, will Tucson radio listeners rally to Beck in his show’s new environment, a nine-hour delayed broadcast airing from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.? 

If they do, it will be because he’s on the market’s top-rated talk radio station. It certainly won’t be because he has become any better at what he does than when he was on the other station.

E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.