Monica Crowley goes national

Monica Crowley, long-time weekend host on WABC, goes syndicated on Westwood One this weekend. The show will be live from Noon to 3 PM Eastern time (remember that this weekend is the start of Daylight Savings Time). The program starts out with about 80 affiliates.

Monica's claim to fame was spending time with Richard Nixon during his final years, and writing two books about Nixon's life. Since 1996, she was with Fox News Channel, and she moved to MSNBC in 2004.

Weekends on Talk Radio have traditionally been about Gardening, Home Repairs, Cars, Investing and most of all - paid programming for miracle health cures.

This program will sort out if there is any market for syndicated political talk on weekends. The other similar program is The Weekend with Mike McConnell, a local host in Cincinnati on WLW during the week.

One of the problems with weekend syndication is that many Talk stations have contracts to broadcast sports. Getting listener loyalty will be difficult if the program is frequently preempted by sports.

Good luck Monica!