QUICK TAKES - Jan. 29, 2009

Talk station KABC-AM (790) is turning to a former Republican congressman rather than a former Republican senator to fill the spot being vacated by conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly.

O’Reilly announced last year that he was giving up his nationally syndicated weekday radio show in the first quarter of 2009, and Westwood One, his distributor, said it had lined up former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) to take over. But KABC has decided instead to pick up the 2-month-old “The Joe Scarborough Show,” featuring the former Florida congressman and current host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.

Scarborough will be heard weekdays from 10 to 11:45 a.m., starting Monday.

The station will shake up its schedule in other ways too, with Doug McIntyre getting an additional hour in the mornings (5-10 a.m.), Mark Levin moving from nights to the 3-6 p.m. slot, Al Rantel switching from afternoons to 6-11 p.m., and Curtis Sliwa shifting from nights to 11 p.m.-3 a.m.

-- Lee Margulies