Following the same footsteps as Air America Radio a few years ago, commercial Progressive or Liberal (same thing) talk radio disappears in markets replete with their disciples, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Well, except for NPR that, so far, taxpayers are forced to subsidize.
2014 will mark the beginning of a massive change for liberal talk radio across the country. In New York, WWRL 1600 AM will flip to Spanish-language music and talk, throwing Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and Alan Colmes off the air. In Los Angeles, KTLK 1150 will be dumping Stephanie Miller, Rhodes, Bill Press and David Cruz off the air in favor of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In San Francisco, KNEW 960 will leave Miller, Hartmann, and Mike Malloy without a radio home in the market.
With listener participation down to friends, relatives, and employees, they are moving to the free, as in no commercial sponsorship required, media on the internet (short wave & smoke signals) like the wildly popular (somewhere behind Al Sharpton) Pensacola-based Ring of Fire radio show. The progressive show run by lawyers Mike Papantonio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who recently disabled reader comments from their website, and bans conservatives from commenting on their Facebook page. And, they don’t take phone calls on the fly either. They can’t. If they did, they’d be forced into defending their indefensible talking points.
This kind of ‘protecting the bubble’ censorship is not exclusive to the Ring of Fire show. It is indicative about why they can’t hold a broad audience. Except for their lemmings that do listen, their angry and derogatory tone does not attract sponsors or a broad spectrum of listeners. Mike Malloy, in the show that bears his name, is a prime example. Unlike Papantonio, Malloy will take calls. But he didn’t like one he got from me over a subject that we will be talking about again soon. Extending unemployment benefits. Malloy didn’t want to hear that Republicans wanted to extend unemployment benefits if Congress would cut an equal amount from somewhere else in the budget, like the PayGo law required. Instead, he suggested that “right-wingers” practice self mutilation instead of calling his show. See Liberals And Speech, Part 3, Right-Wingers, Cut Your Hand Off for details and the full audio.
Seems Malloy was prophetic 25 seconds into this clip, “let’s see if he calls this program if we’re still on the air.”
Link: Liberal Commercial Talk Radio Disappears in NY, LA, SF in 2014
