Clear Channel Debt To Blame For Liberal Radio Failing

12-26-13

Louis Errol is the political anchor of NY1 News in New York. He has an opinion piece in the New York Daily News about the format flip about to happen at WWRL-AM in New York (Errol was once the morning man at the station). WWRL is changing from "progressive" talk to Spanish. His reasoning for the flip is Clear Channel's debt, not the possibility that listeners do not find liberals entertaining on the radio.

Errol writes, "The biggest pressures squeezing liberal talk radio are commercial ones. Deregulation of the airwaves allowed conglomerates like Clear Channel to borrow billions from Wall Street and begin buying up stations by the hundreds. Saddled with debt, Clear Channel has ruthlessly standardized its 840 stations and squeezed each for maximum profit. That meant eliminating progressive talk from its stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland."

Errol also writers, "Angry progressives claim such moves could also have a political motivation: Clear Channel is owned in part by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once run by Mitt Romney. That?s possible, but it wouldn?t explain the problems besetting stations like WWRL, which is owned by Access 1, a family-owned media company. Conservative radio hosts point to the struggles of their liberal rivals with great glee, but that is whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that conservative talkers are serving an aging, shrinking audience, while listeners who want a liberal take on the news can find it on hundreds of National Public Radio stations.

Read Errol's entire opinion piece HERE

(12/28/2013 3:12:40 PM)
Bite your tongues! The great Pittman and his henchman Hogan are radio 'visionaries' and their moves cannot and shall not be doubted or questioned. They know what they are doing and it is right because they do it! All hail these 'two wise men' for they are radio messiahs. Meanwhile, let's go to the French Riviera on the company dime and refinance our debt at an astonishingly high interest rate at a time when interest rates are at historic lows. Can you say Enron and criminal-Inquiry please!
(12/27/2013 4:35:07 PM)
Yup. Joe knows.
What's even weirder still is that there are many - maybe a substantial majority of radio executives - who would actually argue against this proposition.

Wack-a-roonies rule the airwaves because - if even intuitively - they have an understanding of how to manipulate... using radio as only one example.

(12/27/2013 3:39:44 PM)
The reason liberal talkers have failed is that they aren't fun to listen to. It just feels like one long lecture from a bitter, mean, know-it-all. Maddow, Olberman, etc., all sound the same- and they aren't people that I was to spend time with.

The much derided Glen Beck, even if he's wrong most of the time, is actually enjoyable to listen to. As soon as liberals figure this out, if they ever do, then they'll have an audience. Until then, no thanks.

(12/27/2013 11:20:53 AM)
Not that everybody appreciates the ramblings of another smart-ass, weed-hoppin' "ferigner", but here is the reason anyway;

Broadcasters on the right of the spectrum have learned to be bombastic, excited, excitable and enthusiastic to the point of delerium. (Or maybe, that's just the way they are.)

Liberal broadcasters, however, tend to present as lower-key, reasonable and rational individuals.

Electronic media, which includes us, is the last place to deliver rationality and reason - in other words: pure content - with any expectations of impacting on or influencing a broadcast audience!

For a Liberal to be successful on the radio, somebody is going to have to light a fire under their arse, first.

It's true. It's in all the papers! :)

(12/26/2013 11:12:05 PM)
C'mon now, the move to squelch so called "Progressive" or Liberal talk radio is totally driven by politics of ownership (and banksters ownership is beholden to).
In the few markets where any other viewpoint than extreme right has been actually given a shot, it's done well. Seems KLSD did much better under Air America than it did when it became the 5th sports talker in San Diego. And what a shitty signal on that one!

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(PROGRAMMING) A Liberal Succeeding at Radio

9-26-2012

So, you've pretty much converted from TV to full-time radio. I know a lot of the people in the biz that used to be TV-only actually enjoy the immediacy of radio better. What about you?
I haven?t converted from TV to radio only. I appear on TV almost every day on either Fox News or Fox Business. I love having opportunities on both mediums. The immediacy and interactivity of radio is more akin to social media; and TV, especially on Fox, gives me a broad platform for my views.
You are on a radio network, like its cable behemoth, that is thought of as a conservative outlet yet you very proudly proclaim you're a liberal. That's pretty funny. Any thoughts?
Radio networks aren?t like TV networks. I?m in syndication in radio, which is a different model than a television network. Unlike a network, syndicated shows are cleared market by market. Fox is in the business of getting eyes on its TV properties and ears on its radio shows; ideology doesn?t play into it from my perspective.
Why did you leave Hannity? Some in the industry said it was nothing sinister -- that you were just tired of the show and wanted to move on. Are they right?
Nothing sinister at all. We had a great 12 years. When Obama won and there was a Democratic  House and Senate, my work was done.

You have a fairly entertaining radio show -- I love the caller interaction -- it can get fairly heated. How much of that is shtick and how much is real?
My views are real. My opinions are my own. It gets heated because we talk about hot-button issues about which people are passionate. You can do ?schtick? and be entertaining without sacrificing your core beliefs and values. It?s how you package your views that can make a show stand out. We do little bits of business like ?Radio Graffiti? and ?Sudden Death Radio? that appeal to listeners regardless of ideology.

Conservative radio dominates the terrestrial landscape. Yet, your brand of "liberal content" is quite lively. If liberal radio drew ratings and buzz, wouldn't that trump politics?
It always trumps politics. Rush Limbaugh didn?t become as successful as he is simply because of his political views. In fact, early Limbaugh talked more about social issues than simply politics. Liberals need entertaining hosts, but there also has to be a willingness to put liberals on big sticks. When Air America was trying to make its way, it often was put on underperformed AMs with poorer signals than the larger, heritage stations. You need both entertaining hosts and the right platforms so liberal hosts have a fair shot against the more-established shows and signals. And you need open-minded programmers. I?ve been canceled from stations where I had excellent ratings because the station wanted only conservative hosts. This makes no sense to me, if the goal is to get as wide an audience as possible. I don?t want only liberal listeners; why would a station want only conservative ones?

You just wrote a new book about being a liberal? Tell me about it.
It?s called Thank the Liberals for Saving America. Almost every advancement we?ve made has been because of liberals/progressives -- I use the words interchangeably -- and often with stiff opposition from those I refer to as regressive. Our founders were beyond liberal -- they were radical and instituted a system of governance more progressive than English common law. We today are living the liberal dream of our founders. The other premise of the book is that we are all liberal to some extent. We live a country where we cherish our freedoms and love to use the word ?liberty? which comes from the same root as the word ?liberal,? meaning ?free.?  Life makes us liberal. Just one example: When Dick Cheney accepted that he had a gay daughter he became more progressive on the issue of marriage equality than President Obama was at the time.
What do think of the state of terrestrial radio?

The bar to entry is lower now because anyone can have a radio show online. You just need an Internet connection and a computer with a microphone and you?re in business. Terrestrial radio needs to use the social media to connect with its audience. It?s not enough to just be a radio station or a radio show without the extra reach the virtual world offers. We have a chat room on my website (Alan.com) where listeners gather during my show to talk about what we?re doing on the air. My site features stories all the time that we talk about later that night. These posts get sent to my Twitter and Facebook pages. And we have a growing number of listeners who hear the show online. The idea is to be available and to interact on as many platforms as possible. That?s why we say here that ?Fox News Radio is everywhere.?

Rich Lieberman is a veteran SF Bay Area news blogger covering radio and TV since 2001.His media blog, "415 Media" (http://www.richliebermanreport.blogspot.com) is the #1-read industry sheet in SF.

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Stephen King Hires Liberal For Morning Show

Yep, that Stephen King. King owns two stations in Bangor, Maine where he held a rare press conference yesterday to let the community know he's hired 50-year-old Pat LaMarche to co-host a morning show on WZON AM and FM starting September 12th. LaMarche ran for vice president as a member of the Green Party in 2004.  LaMarche will co-host the show with 43-year-old Don Cookson, a former television reporter. King said, "We're a little to the left, but we're right." Nothing is more fun than standing up to a bully,? LaMarche said. ?There?s an awful lot of bullying going on out there right now.?

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Sirius XM Adds Show With Liberal Website Daily Kos

Sirius XM Radio has announced that it will launch a live, interactive four-week radio series with Daily Kos, the liberal online political news website. Daily Kos Radio will launch on August 13 at 10:00 am ET, and air Saturdays through September 3 live from 10:00 am ? 1:00 pm ET on liberal/progressive talk channel SiriusXM Left, ch. 127. Daily Kos contributing editors David Waldman and Armando Llorens will co-host the show from SiriusXM?s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

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