Talk Radio

“Violin, are you a backpacker or just an instigater?”

“And the answer is, if you don't like talk radio (limbaugh, hannity, et al). DON'T LISTEN.”

“You liberal bastards! You hate me because I'm beautiful.

1-800-DRLAURA”

“I read the first 2 paragraphs and thats it. I can only assume that the rest was bull #&%!$ too.”

“Move Over, Right Wing Radio - the Liberals Are Coming
by Thom Hartmann

NEW YORK - A political explosion happened this weekend in New York, and it may be the big one that gives Karl Rove nightmares. It could mean the end of George W. Bush's seemingly unending ability to tell overt lies to the American people and not get called on them by the American media.

At a Saturday talk radio industry event put on by Talkers Magazine, Gabe Hobbs, Clear Channel Radio's vice president of News/Talk/Sports, announced that in the near future this corporate owner of over 1200 radio stations is considering programming some of their talk stations "in markets where there are already one or two stations doing conservative talk" with all-day back-to-back all-liberal talk show hosts.

Using the analogy of how music radio stations wouldn't run different categories of music on a single programming day, Hobbs said talk radio was similarly "all about format." This, he said, is why liberal talkers haven't succeeded when sandwiched between conservatives - radio stations shouldn't mix formats but instead should market to specific listener niches. Understanding this, it's clear that only all-liberal/all-day programming can fill the demand for liberal talk radio, Hobbs' comments suggested.

The timing of Clear Channel's bombshell is interesting. Why this particular week and month?

Back last year, I wrote an op-ed first published on Common Dreams suggesting that there was money to be made by programming talk radio for the unserved majority of American voters who cast ballots in 2000 for Al Gore and Ralph Nader ("Talking Back To Talk Radio"). It's the nature of the marketplace to abhor a vacuum, and the hunger for liberal programming - as evidenced by its explosion across the internet and its great success in the few markets where it can be found - can be a very profitable vacuum to fill.

About the time I pointed this out, a group of wealthy Democrats pulled together ten million dollars, formed AnShell Media, and began the work of raising enough cash to put together a progressive talk-radio network. At the same time, the nation's oldest and largest progressive talk-radio network, i.e. America Radio in Detroit, expanded their programming to offer an entire day, 6 am to midnight, of live progressive talk shows, which are now carried on radio stations from coast to coast, on channel 145 ("Sirius Left") of the Sirius Radio Satellite, and streamed around the world on the web. Salon.com even weighed in last week, running a feature article about one of i.e.'s stars, Mike Malloy, and how he's so popular that his show is beginning to rattle the world of internet radio and has a loyal following on the network's affiliates.

At the same time, right-wing hosts are fading. For example, Bill O'Reilly's radio failures in Limbaugh-dominated markets, documented recently by Matt Drudge, imply the obvious: right-wing talk radio has reached market saturation and is no longer a growth industry. According to Geoff Metcalf on WorldNetDaily, the O'Reilly show is even paying stations - in one case over a quarter million dollars - to continue to carry the show.

The handwriting is on the wall for right-wing talk radio: To build profits, programmers must reach beyond diehard Republicans to unserved listeners. This means bringing in the center and left of the political spectrum. Thus, we're today seeing the early fuse-fizzing of the Next Big Boom in talk radio, and many in the industry openly acknowledge it (including Fox, which just syndicated liberal Alan Colmes).

But over the past year as this became increasingly obvious to those familiar with the radio business, the big media companies seemed unmoved.

If anything, they appeared even more committed to exclusively promoting the most hard-right elements of the Republican Party. MSNBC dumped Phil Donahue even though he was the most highly rated show on the network; hard-right talker Glen Beck organized pro-war/pro-Bush events all across the nation; radio stations ran highly-publicized Dixie Chicks censorships and CD-burnings; and both Limbaugh and Hannity went into Republican hyperdrive with born-again Bush-can-do-no-wrong riffs that defied traditional conservative values by embracing the bizarre idea that somehow deficits are good, taxpayer-funded photo-ops are wonderful, and insider politicians profiting from their knowledge and access are no longer worth mentioning. (All things Clinton was savaged and/or investigated for.)

Many industry watchers were dumbfounded at the overt bias and political boosterism. Even BBC Director General Greg Dyke weighed in, saying, "I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war." Across America and around the world, savvy media watchers wondered out loud why our giant networks and media companies would suddenly become so overtly partisan, loudly and unquestioningly kissing up to the Bush administration? And why did they ignore a multi-million-dollar audience of tens of millions of Democratic/liberal listeners - people with upscale demographics who advertisers would love to reach?

On my radio show a few weeks ago, I suggested the answer was simple - it was all about June 2nd.

That's the Cinderella date for the giants of the media business, the day when Republican activist and FCC Chairman Michael Powell will announce whether or not the FCC will allow further mergers in the media business - mergers that will help wipe out the few remaining small, local radio/TV stations and newspapers, and, most significantly, make literally billions of dollars in profits for the industry's giants.

This is all about paying forward, I said. The industry giants are ignoring markets and passing up profits over the short term in order to make bigger money over the long term. It's not politics - it's just good business. If Gore had been in office and his FCC chairman was inclined to approve further industry mergers, Gore would have suddenly found himself equally bulletproof in the media, much to his delight. At least until the mergers were approved.

Nobody in the industry was willing to publicly agree with me, but nobody denied it, either.

Now, it appears I was right, but the other shoe was dropped two weeks early in Manhattan, a block from Ground Zero.

Last week, Michael Powell announced that he was refusing to postpone the FCC vote on deregulation, and that he was personally in favor of loosening the ownership rules, making the outcome a slam-dunk. In giving the big media companies advance notice that they'd get what they want, Powell also unwittingly began the process of cutting off Republicans from an exclusive lock on hundreds of millions of dollars a year in free political advertising provided by the constant national drumbeat of right-wing talk hosts. Thus, Karl Rove's nightmare.

Now that they're past their concerns about how this administration will decide the media consolidation issue, the media giants are now breathing a bit easier, and getting back to the business of making money.

The demands of the huge unserved market of Gore voters and progressives is real, and internet empires are being built on it. For example, www.radiopower.org just last week announced they'd surpassed the 1.5 million-user mark for their progressive talk radio webstream. The webstream of www.ieamericaradio.com regularly maxxes out with numbers that make terrestrial stations catch their breath, as well as successfully syndicating their programming on terrestrial radio stations across the United States. The strongly left-leaning Democracy Now radio show has exploded in listenership, and the new liberal talk star Nancy Skinner has gone from zero to 14 stations in fewer than three weeks, syndicated by both i.e. America and Doug Stephan's network. Peter Werbe and Mike Malloy from i.e. America Radio Network are doing great, even picked up by Sirius, and Michael Horn, CEO/President of Cable Radio Network CRN Radio News (syndicated on cable systems nationwide), announced at the Talkers conference this weekend that he, too, was looking for good liberal talk show hosts.

Although the right-wingers love to claim that they simply balance NPR (the claim was raised again at the Talkers event), it's an argument that commercial programmers know is specious. NPR never has and never will run hour after hour of a single commentator ranting about the wonders of one party and the horrors of another. Centrist and left-wing talk radio is still an emerging product with a huge unserved market.

This is why Powell's announcement - once the vote is final and irrevocable on June 2 - will begin the transformation of the landscape of talk radio in America. Freed from the need to curry favor with the party in power, the multi-billion-dollar media machines will get back to the profitable core of their business: serving programming that meets the needs and desires of a wide range of listeners while delivering advertising to consumers.

Get ready for liberal/progressive talk radio, coming to a commercial station near you. After June 2, of course...

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the award-winning, best-selling author of over a dozen books, who started his radio career in 1968 and is now the host of The Thom Hartmann Program from noon to 2 pm EST, nationally syndicated on the i.e. America Radio Network. www.thomhartmann.com

www.commondreams.org”

“Liberal talk shows have been around a long time. They are launched with great fanfare, get lots of listeners at first, slowly struggle for a few months, then quietly disappear from the dial.

No one wants to listen to liberals on the radio. There's no 'conspiracy' to keep them off the air. Liberal talk shows do not exist because there is no profit in it.”

“He's probably crying because his parents have just lost their jobs.”

“Maybe they should get new ones then!”

“Don't be so sure, people. I am the last one to give much credit to Clear Channel, et al. But, one thing they know how to do is make money. And they make a lot! They wouldn't be thinking this way if there wasn't some profit in it. Nothing's carved in stone, but they may know a little more about it than you armchair generals do...”

“When is your twelfth birthday, genius?”

“Self Portrait! Well, folks, at least we now know what he looks like...”

“I agree Gordon. Remember when Donahue was getting ready to go on MSNBC? [YAWN!]”

“Long live the G man!”

“well, good luck violin.....just think, i'll be able to accuse you of regurgitating nothing but talk radio hate speech.....


i don't blame ya man.....it must be pathetic believing all that drivel and realizing that people just don't buy the bunk anymore....




bet hey, i mean that in a good way.....heh heh


liberal talk radio......BAAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHAAAAA!”

“"people just don't buy the bunk anymore...."

thats why gore had more of the popular vote than bush did, huh?”

“so you agree it's bunk......


BAAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHAHHAAAAA ! ! ! !”

“strat, youre a nice guy but youre an effing idiot. notice the quotes and use of sarcasm

BAAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAAAHAHAHAHHAAAAA ! ! !”

“ehhh....scoops ole buddy....i think he's serious dood....”

“Sooooooooooo.... how long do we give Bush to find the WMD before we crank up the impeachment process again? Until after the next election?? BOL!

Too bad the Republican congress let the Special Prosecutor statute sunset, HMMMMM?

Just to put it in perspective, how many people died as a result of Clinton's BJ?

(turn up that "Jeopardy" music!)

Times Up!

What Is... zip, zero, nil, none, nada?”

“Clinton preferred taking out those dangerous aspirin factories. Not to mention a few camels at an abandoned terrorist camp.”

“Yes, Clinton had a cruise missile shot at bin Laden, and that's the same reaction he got from the Republicans at the time. One might think that killing bin Laden in the 1990s would be a Good Thing (heavy irony).

Bush waited until AFTER 9-11 to do anything at all. Why?

And what happens if the dreaded WMD are never found? There were supposed to be thousands and thousand of pounds of the stuff. Don't you find that curious?

I know Strat doesn't. But Strat seems to worship Bush as some sort of demi-god.

Clinton targeted the so-called 'aspirin factory' to destroy WMD that weren't there, but at the moment it looks like Bush invaded an entire country with the same result.”

“Well, the cry before the war was "the 108 inspectors need more time to find the WMD!! Give them enough time!" Now, barely one month since the war ended, we hear "Where are the WMD? Why haven't they been found yet?"
I agree that it will look bad for President Bush if none are found, but I think it's probably just a matter of time. The NYT is reporting mobile labs have been found which experts say can ONLY be used to manufacture chem/bio weapons, and Iraqi scientists are reported to have wanted to talk about WMD but feared treatment as war criminals, so I believe the pieces are starting to fall into place. (Was that a run on sentence?)”

“For some reason I got the impression that we'd make fairly short work of that... with all the 'intelligence' we had and a couple hundred thousand soldiers on the ground (versus 108 UN inspectors). I think they've checked all the places Colin had in his photo collection, but came up with zip.

Yes, I saw the tape of the ransacked truck. No one ventured a guess as to how long it had been in that condition. It didn't appear to be any sort of eminent threat.”

“then why didn't he comply?”

“Well, I do believe that I heard somewhere that, "Bush was ordained by god".

And he has done conquered the Promised Land......or was that the Cradle Of Civilization?”

“With all due respect, SW, the U.N. inspectors were critisized for accomplishing nothing and declared impotent by the U.S. government. They were accused of standing in the way of a 'clear and present' danger to our national security by this time consuming process that was going nowhere. Sec Powell declared in front of the U.N. and the world that he had definitive proof (you know, the pictures with the circles and arrows) that our intelligence knew of these WMD. Well, if the U.N. inspectors were so impotent in their search of the country for these weapons, then what does that make the folks who are looking for the weapons now? And turning up the same results, I may add...”

“Clinton had no balls! To busy eating Mc Donald's!”

“Leave it to this moron to come up with an intelligent comment as usual. Why don't you cut and paste the usual picture?”

“Its like looking for a needle in a hay stack! Kind of like you looking in your pants for your wiener!”

“I think this clown would rather eat paste.........like the other kindergarteners.”

“So, what makes you think they inspectors should have had higher expectations of them in doing their job, considering they are both looking for the same needle? Now you can insult me again...”

“You really think the inspectors had a chance of finding anything! Think about it! If I were leading you around with a leash I certainly would walk you right to the spot! Let me ask you this. What do you think the US should have done in this situation?”

“My main point of contention with the gov't was that I felt they were not forthright with the American people. I never believed the threat was a imminent as it was made out to be. As of now, the 'clear and present danger' factor has not been proven,IMO. The reasons for removing Hussein changed form so many times in the course of the war. And the media played right into it. I believe that taking Iraq was part of Bush's plan pre 9/11. 9/11 just made it an easier sell to the American people. I just have problems with untruths that stake people's lives on the line. I'm just a citizen like you, my friend. The only power I wield is that one single vote that my constitutional right promises me. I have no intention to give it to the administration in power right now...”

“What Is... zip, zero, nil, none, nada?"
~tilt

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained."



"Bush waited until AFTER 9-11 to do anything at all."
~tilt again

So, you were expecting the events of said date? Why, then, didn't you warn the rest of us?”

“Why did no one warn us after that August 6, 2001 security meeting that Bush had? You know, the one right before he took a month long vacation after being in office for 6 months...”

“What I should say is why wasn't the 'broken' airline industry 'fixed' when they became aware that certain air disasters had a credible possibility of becoming a reality. Why were cabin doors still made as poorly as they were 25 years after El Al airlines offered to help our airlines learn a little about the right way to do security? why weren't marshalls placed on flights? Need I go on?”

“You people amaze me! Do the US a favor and move to France! Would you rather wait until someone personally comes over and places a bomb on your door step. Your to bitter about Bush to even see the situation for what it is! Do me a favor and pawn that ideology on the people families that suffered losses on 9-11!”

“Don't you dare lecture me on 9/11!! My family and I worked day and night following that event providing relief to the emergency workers. I can still smell the place and taste that #&%!$ in my lungs, my friend!! Where were you?”

“Yo, treebeard, dissent vill not be tolerated!”

“He just struck a bad note there, Tom. Sick of idiots telling me to leave the country. Then the 9/11 comment from this troll who probably doesn't even live anywhere near here...”

“I can not verify where you were treebeard. For all I know you were in Kansas. Don't call it a lecture call it a wake up call. If it is true that you were on hand to experience all of this then it is beyond my comprehension on why you would not want to prevent future incidents. Once again I stand here amazed. I hope you speak French!”

“Because I disagree with the methodology? That's why you hurl the French thing at me again? Repitition is a great ally of unoriginal thought. You are a mindless numbnut. Free thinking scares the hell out of you, doesn't it? If you don't agree with the call, you pick up the football, say it's my ball and pout all the way home, I bet.If indeed you are an American citizen as you seem to imply you are, then use your vote to re elect the President. But, don't put me down because I don't agree with you. I stated what i consider to be intelligent arguments to bolster my position. You simply go on the attack and tell me to leave the country. Do the math here, genius!”

“I'm amazed at your lack of understanding UU, or then again maybe I'm not. The whole argument is not that people don't want to stop this ever happening again, but whether they think Bush's actions will make this more or less likely.”

“Don't worry Treebeard, UU's not even a particularly smart troll. He doesn't even understand most of what people say.”

“I know, Ynami. but I'm on a roll... :)”

“UU is just a typical reactionary.......Dubya Butch's most loyal constituency.

Leave the country?
That kinda soup sandwich was stale 35 years ago.”

“My job is done in this thread. Have fun in the tree house kids!”

“Run away! Run away! Don;'t let the door hit you in the ass, chicken breath!”