Late night talk radio innovator Art Bell has died at the age of 72. He passed away in his sleep, at home in Pahrump, Nevada on Friday, April 13.

For the night owls, insomniacs, late-shift and early-morning workers, Bell was a comforting voice crackling through the AM airwaves on his shows “Coast to Coast AM” and “Dreamland” from the late 80s until 2007, when he left broadcast radio. He was known for lending an open mic and an open ear to all forms of beliefs and experiences lying outside the mainstream, from alien abductions and near-death experiences, to conspiracy theories and pirate radio. Guests and callers alike could expect a respectful reception from Bell, who yet managed to balance his receptivity with a mild skepticism, sometimes signaled only with a drawn out “Ummmm hmmmmm.”

In many ways Bell popularized and nationalized a form of freeform radio that had been in existence for at least a couple of decades prior. It’s actually not a far leap from Bob Fass’ “Radio Unameable” show, airing on New York community radio station WBAI since 1963, to “Coast to Coast AM.” Sure, Fass’ program has always been more distinctly political, strongly aligned with the counter-culture, giving airtime to Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies and broadcasting live from the 1968 DNC in Chicago. But Bell was not allergic to politics. Though it tended to be embedded in a foundation of a cynical sort of libertarianism, wary of government conspiracies and cover-ups, rather than forthrightly oppositional, left-wing or anti-capitalist.

Yet, “Radio Unnameable” is just one of the most well-known examples of late-night call-in radio born in the 60s, that then found a home on community and college radio stations when the taming of FM corporate rock radio exterminated freeform from the commercial airwaves. Talk of conspiracies, fringe health practices and even aliens have nearly always had a home on community radio, especially in the hours when management and other staffers aren’t listening, and may barely care about what’s being broadcast, especially since the FCC’s “safe harbor” rules pretty much eliminate the risk of fines for accidentally (or purposely) airing a profane caller’s rant.

For instance, last year my colleague Matthew Lasar recalled Mae Brussell, who held forth on shows like “Dialogue Conspiracy” on community stations in California during the 1970s and 80s. And that’s just one particularly durable example. Certainly many overnight conspiracy call-ins have come and gone, leaving nary a trace.

Yet Bell, himself, was always careful to maintain the role of moderator more than an evangelist for conspiracy theories, even though his choice of guests and repartee with listeners revealed his sympathies. Perhaps he was at least a little aware that his national prominence and job security might rely on such balance. He couldn’t rely on the bigger national advertisers that his daytime counterparts like Rush Limbaugh had, giving them significantly greater revenue leverage when their more indiscreet partisan (and worse) ravings triggered public blowback.

By the late 90s “Coast to Coast” could be heard just about anywhere in the U.S., on hundreds of stations. One taking a late-night road trip across the country could easily stay tuned in to the show just by hitting the seek button every couple of hundred miles. Of course, this was thanks to the industry consolidation wrought by the Telecom Act of 1996, and the fact that airing his show was likely the most economically viable choice for many AM stations.

It should be noted that “Coast to Coast” was (and is) distributed by Premiere Radio Networks, the nation’s largest radio syndicator, owned by the nation’s largest radio owner, iHeartMedia, formerly Clear Channel. It’s likely that “Coast to Coast” replaced dozens of local talk shows, as stations got bought, budgets got cut, and airing a satellite feed became cheaper than having a live human in the studio. While living in Central Illinois I can remember when Chicago’s clear channel WLS-AM dropped the locally produced Nate Clay show from weeknights in favor of “Coast to Coast,” sometime in the early 2000s.

Still, when the receivable late night alternatives often were limited to right-wing garbage, endless sports talk, tightly-playlisted automated music and easy listening, listening to Bell could be an entertaining relief. You didn’t have to believe in order to find interest, and not everything on the show was unbelievable. I enjoyed listening to him interview folks like Merle Haggard, physicists Michio Kaku and pirate radio expert Andrew Yoder.

Because of his willingness to give airtime to all manner of conspiratorial thinking, pseudoscience and fringe views, some might draw a line from Bell’s work to the post-truth, “fake news,” conspiracy-mongering broadcasters and internet media outlets of today. But I think it’s unfair to target him with much individual blame. He was never a fire-breathing partisan, and he didn’t invent this form of open-minded call-in radio so much as refine it and popularize it.

I think his friend and fellow broadcaster Whitley Strieber clearly identifies in his own remembrance what was unique about Bell:

“He was more a listener than a talker by nature, and he had a very open mind. It wasn’t that he would believe anything, but rather that he wouldn’t disbelieve things simply because they violated consensus reality.”

I’m not here to defend Art Bell, nor is his work and legacy immune from criticism. He certainly made some of his living selling an unknown fortune in MREs, gold and other survivalist accoutrements to paranoid listeners preparing for the meltdown of global order. Not every idea he gave platform to was benign or harmless. But I think that even if he had never taken to the airwaves, politically we’d still be where we are today.

Radio, however, wouldn’t be the same. And for a good two decades, syndicated corporate talk radio would never have been as colorful or entertaining.

Although “Coast to Coast” has continued on with replacement host George Noory, Bell acolytes would contend it’s a pale imitation of the original. I agree with that sentiment.

For better or worse, Bell didn’t leave behind a school of broadcasters following in his footsteps.

To learn more about Bell’s life, career and influence I recommend The Washington Post’s obituary as the best I’ve read so far.

The post RIP Art Bell, Who Brought Freeform Call-In Radio Nationwide appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio shows about the medium itself have a long and storied history, from the early days of radio when the ability to receive distant audio signals over the air was a wonder in itself, to the contemporary shortwave scene, wherein atmospheric conditions and technical tips are subjects of interest. Of course, this year our own radio show joined this tradition, but in no way do I mean to imply that shows about radio are a thing of the past.

The International Radio Report Turns 30

I wrote about some of these shows six years ago in a post about podcasts (or radio shows available as podcasts) that cover radio. But I was again reminded of this category when the SWLing Post published a press release for the upcoming 30th anniversary broadcast of the “International Radio Report,” originating at CKUT in Montreal. With the occasional turnover of hosts, the IRR has kept over-the-air and internet listeners apprised of relevant radio news on the AM, FM, LW and shortwave dials.

From the release:

The program, originally hosted and produced by Sheldon Harvey and William Westenhaver, initially dealt exclusively with the world of international radio broadcasting, or shortwave radio, featuring information on radio broadcasts from around the world that could be listened to on shortwave radio. Over the years the scope of the program evolved and expanded to also include information and developments in local and national radio broadcasting, campus/community radio, pirate and clandestine radio and, eventually, Internet and digital radio. The program also covers developments in radio equipment, radio technology, and more.

Though this may seem a fringe interest to non-radio-nerds, radio broadcasters exert powerful influence on the politics and culture of nearly every nation. Here in the U.S., just imagine what our current politics would be like without right-wing talk radio. Elsewhere, government repression results in the censorship or shut-down of broadcasts, or even the jamming of signals coming from abroad. In Zimbabwe, for example, clandestine broadcasts from neighboring countries continue to be a thorn in the side of its autocratic leadership. This is the stuff IRR has covered for three decades.

I’m pretty sure I first heard IRR about a decade into its existence, catching archived RealAudio streams at the CKUT website. At the time–circa 1996–I had started my own bi-weekly community radio show tackling radio and media democracy on WEFT-FM in Champaign, IL, called “Radio Free Conscience.” I turned to the IRR to help keep me informed, and provide knowledgable analysis. I largely stopped listening several years ago when I found it difficult to find online archives or get regular updates to the show’s podcast feed.

These days the IRR archive on the CKUT website is up to date, which means I can resume listening. I’m particularly interested in tuning in live to the special 1-hour 30th anniversary broadcast on Sunday, November 19 from 10:30 to 11:30 AM EST on CKUT-FM 90.3 in Montreal and online at www.ckut.ca. The broadcast also will be archived at the station’s website.

World of Radio

An even longer lasting show is “Glenn Hauser’s World of Radio,” which launched in 1980. Over the course of some 37 years Hauser has delivered weekly 30-minute updates about the global radio scene, with more emphasis on shortwave and listener reception reports, all delivered in his trademark Stentorian, matter-of-fact style.

Launched in the days before a public internet or practical audio streaming, WoR has been carried on AM, FM and shortwave affiliates across the continents. I think it’s fair to say that because WoR has been such a constant and reliable resource, the show is one of the ties binding together the international shortwave listening community.

The radio show is complimented by print digests that summarize the week’s stories and reports.

Wavescan

Adventist World Radio produces Wavescan, primarily covering distance shortwave listening (DXing). The show also sometimes presents stories from broadcasting history, such as the Oct. 22 feature on the first broadcasts of U.S. presidential voting results 100 years ago.

The show is heard on Miami-based commercial shortwave station WRMI, which leases time to interested programmers. A number of other DX-focused shows in Spanish and Italian are also on the station.

DXing News from Havana

“DXers Unlimited” is perhaps the longest-running show in this round-up, having launched in 1961. This English-language show on Radio Havana, Cuba is hosted and produced by Arnie Coro.

En Español (y Ingles)

The shortwave service R.A.E Argentina al Mundo broadcasts Actualidad DX weekly in Spanish and English, focusing on DXing, ham radio and other issues in communication. The Spanish version is available as a podcast.

The website Programas DX features a directory of other DX shows in Spanish on a number of different shortwave services, collecting recordings into a single podcast feed.

The Shortwave Report

Finally, I want to mention “The Shortwave Report.” It’s not a show about radio, but rather a weekly compilation of news stories broadcast by international shortwave stations, intended to expose the audience—primarily in the US—to a wider spectrum of views and events than heard on domestic media.

Produced by Dan Roberts, “The Shortwave Report” has been going strong for about 20 years, and is carried on community radio stations like WFHB, KXCR and WGXC. Back in 2006 I interviewed Roberts for my “Mediageek” radio show and podcast, and he explained that part of his mission is to educate listeners about shortwave radio.

Glenn Hauser has a list of radio-related shows, mostly on shortwave and online, though many are noted as defunct.

These are all the shows I know about. What shows about radio am I missing, that are actually broadcast on the airwaves, be it AM, FM or shortwave? Let us know in the comments.

Feature image credit: Splitshire at Pexels

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Monday night at midnight Eastern Time is the much anticipated return of Art Bell. Though originally planned to be an online-only show on the Dark Matter network, 21 AM and FM stations and two shortwave stations have now picked it up. Most of the stations are outside major markets, with the exception of affiliates in Salt Lake City, Toronto and my city, Portland, Oregon.

I was happy to learn about KXL-FM signing on to Midnight in the Desert. When I first reported on the new show, I noted that while I welcome Bell’s return to broadcasting, I prefer being able to simply tune it in on my bedside radio rather than having to use my smartphone or laptop. Now I’ll be able to do that here in Portland. *Midnight in the Desert* will replace two hours of the paranormal themed Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, which is based at KXL.

Last Tuesday Bell participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything. Although most of the questions were about past interviews and other paranormal topics, he did field some about his new show, and radio in general.

The biggest reveal is that he plans a test show for Sunday night, where the central question is, “what do you want to see?” Odds are that most of the show will be listener calls on just that topic. He also assured that all calls to Midnight in the Desert will not be screened, and that Fridays will be “open lines,” meaning that listener calls will make up most of the show.

One reader asked him what he thinks of iconic radio host Phil Hendrie’s impression of him. Bell said he “loved” them, and that “they really are funny.” For the equipment geeks, he shared that he uses a Beyerdynamic microphone (he didn’t specify a model, but I’d guess it’s the M99) and a Symetrix vocal processor.

Responding to a question about what inspired him to get into radio, Bell said that he got started with ham radio at age 12, and was on commercial broadcast by 13.

First radio job, small FM on top of a mountain in Franklin, NJ. Religious FM. Read the news every hour. Station manager didn’t like people too close to the mic. So he’d come in and yank the chair out from under you while live on the air!

And, certainly to the delight of his fans, Bell also made clear his opinion on the condition of his old show Coast to Coast AM. “I think the current host of that show does it a disservice,” he said. "The current state of that program is the genesis for Midnight in the Desert.

I’ll definitely be tuning in for Sunday’s test show–though I’m not sure it will be on broadcast–as well as Monday night Midnight in the Desert debut. I will also report back my impressions of the new show.

The post Art Bell Returns Monday Night, Possible Test Show on Sunday Night appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Art Bell. As a former overnight DJ and grad student who kept relatively nocturnal hours for a good portion of the 90s, I admired Bell’s unique ability to engage guests and callers in topics that ranged from scientifically plausible (the theory that there have been multiple Big Bangs) to hilariously absurd (blood-sucking Chupacabra) with equanimity.

While some critics pilloried him for uncritically harboring all manner of superstition and psuedoscience, I enjoyed his Coast to Coast AM as a sort of straight-faced performance art that provided an entertaining alternative to most late night commercial radio, offering stimulating company to night shift workers across North America. Heck, I remember tuning in for a show tackling pirate radio, in which he discussing the topic straightforwardly, neither treating it as enticingly taboo nor recklessly dangerous. (In fact, Bell was himself a radio pirate in the 1960s while serving in the Air Force at the Amarillo air base.)

Bell held court over nationwide nocturnal amplitude modulation for some fifteen years before going into semi-retirement in 2003, handing over the weeknight reins to current Coast to Coast host George Noory. Bell then took the mic for weekends until 2007, then doing occasional fill-in slots until 2010 when he retired. That first retirement only lasted until 2013, when he had a brief foray into satellite radio with Art Bell’s Dark Matter on SiriusXM for six weeks.

July 20 is when Bell will return to broadcasting once again, according to a FAQ posted to his own website. This time he’ll be on the internet station Dark Matter Radio with a live weeknight program called Midnight in the Desert, airing midnight to 3 AM Eastern Time. The show won’t be on terrestrial broadcast, with one exception. Apparently Tennessee-based Christian shortwave station WTWW will broadcast Bell live to the world.

As much as I like and use internet radio, I have to admit it’s a little disappointing that Bell won’t be back on AM. I have fond memories of road trips over the Midwest interstates where I listened to Coast to Coast, hitting the seek button when one station faded, knowing I’d soon encounter another transmitting the show. It’s unlikely I’ll go through the trouble of tuning my shortwave receiver just to recreate the experience.

Nevertheless, I will probably check out Midnight in the Desert, although at 9 PM Pacific Time it’s on a few hours too early here in Oregon. I’d go for the podcast to timeshift it after midnight, but on-demand episodes will be reserved for paid subscribers, and I’m not that much of a fan (though DAR.fm might do the trick). Anyway, on-demand isn’t really the proper Art Bell experience–he’s really meant to be stumbled upon, in the middle of a nearly inscrutable interview that you’re surprised comes slowly into focus.

I’m sure there are Radio Survivor readers who will scrunch their noses at my praise for Art Bell. I get it–his nutty melange of guests and strange blend of libertarian, conservative and occasionally progressive political stances (pro-gun and anti-abortion, but pro same-sex marriage) is admittedly out of step with much of the radio we normally highlight. But, again, it’s a mistake to take him a face value. He may never actually wink at us, but neither did Andy Kaufman.

Plus, c’mon, he did this commercial:

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The Pew Research Center released its annual State of the News Media report for 2015. One fact struck me that I haven’t seen otherwise commented on elsewhere: only 30 Spanish-language radio stations in the US air news and talk programming, out of more than 500 Spanish-language format stations total. That’s seems really low to me.

What isn’t clear from Pew’s Hispanic Media Fact Sheet is whether those 30 stations are exclusively news/talk formatted or if they are counting music stations that also air a little bit of news, even if only during drive-time (the former is most likely, as I’ll explain). Still, at just 6% of all Spanish stations, the percentage that are news/talk still seems low.

I guessed that across the board news/talk stations account for more than 6% of all radio in the US. To make that comparison let’s just assume those 30 Spanish-language stations are news/talk formatted, not music stations that feature some music. Separately, Pew counts a total of 1,990 news/talk formatted stations in the US, out of 15,442 full power radio stations. That means 13% of all stations in the US are news/talk formatted.

If we assume that the 1,990 news/talk station count also includes the 30 Spanish-language stations, then let’s say 1,960 of news/talk stations are all or majority English-language (or at the very least not Spanish-language). Subtracting the number of Spanish-language stations from the total station count gives us a count of 14,942 that are likely English-language (or possibly multi-lingual). That adjustment still leaves the percentage of news/talk stations at 13%. Not particularly high, but still double that for Spanish-language radio.

While the quality of commercial radio news/talk programming often leaves much to be desired, I still argue there’s real value in having access to dedicated news/talk broadcasts where listeners can expect to get regular updates, even if just at the top and bottom of the hour. The value grows when there’s a major news event or crisis or during election season. That’s why I’m taken aback at how few Spanish-language news/talk stations there are, which creates a meaningful service gap for Spanish speaking listeners.

To the best of my knowledge there are two Spanish-language commercial radio news services in the US. CNN in Español claims 125 affiliate stations, most of which are music stations that presumably air headline news reports. Univision America news and sports programming is heard on three affiliates in New York City, Miami and Puerto Rico.

Radio Bilingüe is the all-Spanish National Latino Public Radio Network. It operates twelve full-power stations that broadcast a 24/7 mix of news and music programs, including a live daily call-in and a weekly news magazine. Another 92 affiliates broadcast some Radio Bilingüe programs, nine of which air major daytime blocks.

Scanning through the affiliate list I see that many of the stations that don’t air major blocks of shows are community or public stations with the majority of programming in English. This, I’d conjecture, makes these broadcasts less attractive to listeners who prefer Spanish programming, especially if there are all-Spanish stations in the same market.

Spanish-language radio has been a growing sector, so it’s disappointing to see that news/talk service lags behind radio overall. At the same time I’m glad to see that about a quarter of all Spanish stations are affiliates of a news service. The ability to quickly bring in a national news feed in Spanish allows a station to provide better public service when needed. Nevertheless, it seems important for reasons of both civic engagement and public safety that Spanish-speaking listeners should have better access to full-time news/talk programming, that is more equal in proportion to what is available to English-speaking listeners.

The post There Are Surprisingly Few Spanish-Language News Stations appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Talk radio veteran Darryl Parks is a harsh critic of how the format continues to lose touch with most of the radio audience who aren’t white male baby boomers. In a new post this week he takes aim at Rush Limbaugh, describing the leading conservative talk host’s “fall into oblivion.”

Parks notes that Limbaugh’s program is sinking in the ratings in New York and Los Angeles and has been shuttled off to lower ranked stations. Now it’s rumored– as first reported by Robert Feder–that his Chicago affiliate is preparing to dump ol’ Rushbo, too. A spokeswoman for WLS-AM owner Culumus Media has denied that rumor, though Parks says, “three different Cumulus executives have told me on different occasions they wish they could get rid of Limbaugh’s show and they can’t sell it.”

What’s best about Parks’ tough love missives for talk radio are the behind-the-scenes details he drops about how the business really works. It’s common knowledge that the Limbaugh show is produced by Premiere Networks, which is conveniently owned by iHeartMedia, giving it easy access to hundreds of stations. But Parks fills out the story, revealing that along with requiring stations to carry Rush, “the local stations have to pay a ‘rights fee’ in addition to the barter commercial inventory they broadcast from the network. There was no negotiation whether to broadcast the show or what fee was to be paid.” Barter inventory are the commercials included by in the show that stations air without compensation.

As a result, he says this non-negotiable requirement to carry and pay for the program, “forced local stations to lay-off other talk hosts, producers and gut news departments. Talented people left the radio business and the death spiral for talk radio began. It began years ago.”

I knew about the barter obligation, but I didn’t know that even iHeart’s own stations had to tithe, too. But I guess the heavily indebted company has to find some way to keep writing checks to fulfill Limbaugh’s $400 million contract.

It’s important to point out that Parks identifies as a Republican, lamenting how talk radio has missed the boat on reaching younger generations. He says he tried to warn Clear Channel execs of the impending fall, but his advice fell on deaf ears.

Me, I see this as just more evidence as to how the commercial radio business is a victim of its own greed, myopia, and mismanagement, typified most clearly in the way iHeart doubles-down on Limbaugh at the expense of anything that remotely resembles fresh programming. Radio isn’t dying, but their AM talk audience, and hosts, are.

The post Why Rush Limbaugh Is Dragging Down AM Talk Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I love movies about radio. Here are some classics to give to your friends for the holidays.

Pirate Radio (2009). The fictionalized story of Radio Caroline, “the boat that rocked” the British Isles from offshore in the 1960s. Fabulous performances by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nighy. My favorite Nighy line from the film: “Carl? – Yes. My favourite godson. – Have we met before? – I don’t think so. No. There was a lost decade, so I always have to check.”

Pump Up the Volume. The 1999 film about a teenage unlicensed operator (Christian Slater) who pretty much takes over Arizona with his wild and crazy monologues.

Do the Right Thing (1989). Spike Lee’s classic about a black Brooklyn neighborhood facing gentrification. Radio plays a crucial role in this very relevant movie, with stellar performances by Samuel L. Jackson as community radio deejay “Mr. Senor Love Daddy” and Bill Nunn as “Radio Raheem.”

The Fisher King (1991). Jeff Bridges plays a down on his luck talk radio host who rescues himself by helping a homeless man (Robin Williams).

Good Morning Vietnam (1987). Robin William plays an outrageous host for US Armed Services Radio: “Hello, campers,” he declares. “Remember, Monday is malaria day. That’s right. Time to take that big orange pill and get ready for the Ho Chi Minh two-step.”

Talk Radio (1988). Based on “Talked to Death: The Life and Murder of Alan Berg,” a talk radio host discovers that his nasty, abrasive tone is very contagious.

Born in Flames (1983). Radio plays a crucial role in this lively futuristic movie about two feminist insurgencies who present their grievances on pirate radio stations.

Private Parts (1997). The life and works of that great, great man: Howard Stern.

Dead Air (2009). Talk radio host meets The Zombies.

Talk to Me (2007). The career of legendary Washington, D.C. radio host Ralph Waldo (“Petey”) Greene, whose on air summary of Berry Gordy is worth the price of admission: “Mr. Gordy’s a very important man, and he’s done a great deal. And I love the way he takes the little brothers and sisters, broke-down runaways, the downtrodden from the projects, and he gets them off the streets. Then he puts a few dollars in their pockets, teaches them how to talk and how to walk, then sends them right back out there to bring him a whole lot of money. So I’m sorry if in any way I made him out to be a pimp.”

I’m sure I’ve left lots of movies out. Please put your faves in the comments section.

The post Ten essential radio movies for the holidays appeared first on Radio Survivor.

How will they decide who to vote for? This year it appears that radio will play a huge role in their choices.

An estimated 100 million Indian citizens tune into radio every day, the above NDTV feature says. India’s Election Commission is pouring money into public service announcements to get out the vote. But it looks like the political parties are also investing in radio like never before, bombarding commuter ears with political ads that can last from three seconds to three minutes. A ten second ad costs 1,000 Rupees or more, around 16 USD.

In 2009 political parties spent only around two to five percent of their campaign budgets on political radio ads. “Now it is anything between 10 to 50 percent,” the NDTV reporter notes.

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I don’t know about you, but the cable show The Soup has long been one of my top five guilty pleasures. Judge me as you will, but I simply must know what Honey Boo Boo, Gary Busey, and/or Justin Bieber did or said over the last 72 hours. Thus I keep my eyes peeled to Chat Stew, Tales of Home Shopping, and, of course, The Clip of the Week.

Alas, The Soup does not cover radio very much. Happily, I have a supplementary source. Every day the search results for “radio” on YouTube come into my email browser via RSS. This affords me a limitless cavalcade of, shall we say, offbeat content.

For example, about a year ago a BBC presenter had little drinky winky or two (or eight) on her final lunchtime show on BBC Radio Stoke. Here is the YouTube recording of her performance:

“For the last time on lunch time letttttt’s seeeeee . . . ” she pleasantly slurred “Yoouuuuuua [artful pause] pick the mussic! Oweahhhh! . . . It’s a P – A – R – T – Y because I said sooooooo . . . !”

The UK Guardian newspaper summarized the rest of the stint:

Ah. And it didn’t go well? Not great, no. She sluurrred her worrrdds so much it took about five minutes for a listener to text in about it. Which – in classic sozzled style – she denied, announcing on air: “I sound drunk. I’m not drunk. I’ve had a couple of drinks. I’m not drunk. I’m sad.”

After which she sobered up and snapped out of it? If only. She then decided to rebel against her producers and do away with her playlist, telling listeners: “Let’s just throw it all out! I don’t get told what songs to – No, I do get told what songs to play! But I don’t get told what songs to play on the last day of my shooooowww!”

Then she put a song on, downed a pint of water and got her act together? No, she then proceeded to fumble with the equipment, play a jingle instead of a song, and screech: “It’s my last day and nothing’s working! Why is nothing working? Nooooooo!”

I judge not, lest I be judged. Back in my party days decades ago (I’m a  boring teetotaler now), I was running the board at a community radio station when some producer handed me a very elaborate conspiracy theory rant to play. As the lengthy tirade about secret operations, glaring anomalies, and suspicious coincidences wafted across the airwaves, I found that it all made so much more sense after my sixth long swig of apricot brandy.

“Well, there you has it folksh,” I recall myself saying at the hour. “Don’t forget to give during the nexsht pledge drive.”

On the other hand, I can’t recall ever showing up in a studio with a pick axe in my hands. To wit: “Murder Mook” (below) over at Angry Fan Radio. I’m sure that his presumably Angry Fans understand what he is talking about. I am not sure that I do. “Ain’t no hate over here,” Mr. Mook assures us, as he twirls his axe. “Real shit.” Then something about “getting some good battles . . . ” Where should I send plasma and bandages?

Then there is the Hickock45 Radio Show, “your Internet shooting companion, coming to you from the bleak hills of Middle Tennessee.” “I’ll try not to mention Dolly Parton,” the self described “King of Rambling” promises. “It’s funny that I always have her on my mind, right?”

After a lengthy mediation on heroes and heroism, Mr. Hickock45 gets to what  I presume is the point:

“What else was I going to talk about? What firearms do I have? I know what I have. I’m carrying right now, let me unload it, a big slug comes out of it, believe it or not I’m carrying the Springfield XDM, actually the 45 I have, I don’t know why, I just decided to carry it some . . . oh, I know one reason, I got some work done on the trigger and it’s better now, just like the nine millimeter, feels great, can’t talk about who did it yet because I’m not sure what all he did and all that sort of thing but the trigger is nice and crisp now and so I am more motivated to carry this little bugger; still bothers me having six rounds, get it hot again in case somebody sneaks up on me while I’m talking to you guys. Wouldn’t want me killed for lack of shooting back, especially while I’m talking to you all?”

If you actually listen to the clip, you can hear the weapon’s components click in the background. Speaking of the right to bear arms and talk about them ad infinitum, one of my favorite YouTube radio clips involves an updloaded argument between talk radio denizen Michael Savage and a Ron Paul supporter back in 2012, the Obama redux election year. Despite being repeatedly called “hysterical,” the caller did pretty well until she mentioned that she supported anti-war Democrat George McGovern forty years earlier.

“So you’re confirming what I suspect,” Savage shot back. “Most people who support Ron Paul are dyed-in-the-wool liberals.”

I summarized the firefight up on Radio Survivor, and no less than 84 Ron Paul fans posted furious feedback over the next few days. These included comments like this:

“Savage resorts to Trotskyite debating tactics, in calling anyone who disagrees “hysterical”, “mentally ill” or a “crackpot”.

If anything, this clip exposes Mr Savage to be just another brick in the neo-progressivist wall. His cold war mentality forces him to rave on about socialism, while turning a blind eye one the fact that the so-called “conservatives” are cut from the same cloth when it comes to supporting the welfare/warfare state machine.

That’s how the system works: independent of the “culture wars” that rage on in the media/blogosphere between “liberals” and “conservatives” (i.e. progressivist infighting), the machine, funded by the “above parties” monetary central planners, rolls on.”

Yow! What astounded me was that for the next twenty four hours, the responses clocked in at around one every fifteen minutes through the evening, then one every hour through the night, then back to one every fifteen minutes again. Impressive. Did Ron Paul have followers on 24 hour blog comment call?

Happily, not every YouTube radio clips is about guns, booze, or politics. Answer five questions correctly and you get a Pokemon radio card!

Or you can watch Vladimir Putin stare-a-like Nicky Romero do “protocol radio”!

Or you can enjoy Radio from Mars!

I guess there’s something about YouTube that brings out the radio Martian in all of us. Got a favorite radio YouTube channel? We cover radio/music content sharing communities  every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.

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I was saddened to hear the news that celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne died yesterday in a San Jose hospital at the age of 77. A mainstay of numerous television shows and the host of her own Internet radio show, Browne was a master of broadcast media.

I remember seeing her regularly on the San Francisco-based television talk show People Are Talking (which aired on KPIX-TV from 1978-1991) when I was a kid. Browne has reported that she was a guest on the show for over a decade. One particular appearance is etched in my memory because of the passionate way that Browne warned the viewers at home and the live studio audience about the dangers of playing with Ouija boards.

I was probably 12 years old at the time and her pronouncements about the Ouija’s power to “let the devil in” terrified me. Despite that, I ended up playing with a Ouija board with a close friend and our sisters soon after. When we asked the board who we were talking to, our hands mysteriously moved to spell out G-O-D. At that point I was officially freaked out, thinking that it was the devil in disguise.

Although I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed Browne’s theories, it was hard to ignore her when she touched upon local ghost lore when she was our hometown psychic in the late 1970s (she actually lived in my hometown). Around this same time, pop culture was filled with examples of unexplained phenomena. The creepy TV show In Search Of was quite popular (hosted by Leonard Nimoy and featuring segments about the Loch Ness Monster and spontaneous combustion) and re-runs of the Twilight Zone aired on local TV stations.

Being a preteen, I was at the perfect age for investigations into all of this strangeness.  I started reading scary Stephen King stories and occult-themed books from the junior high section of the public library. Sylvia Browne hit the cultural zeitgeist at the right time and publicly investigated the supposedly haunted Toys ‘R Us store right in her backyard in Sunnyvale, California. It still amazes me that she held a seance in the same Toys ‘R Us where my parents bought my Christmas presents.

Sylvia Browne re-creates her Toys ‘R Us Seance on “That’s Incredible”

Nearly a decade ago, after I had a brush with death while driving on the Pacheco Pass, I searched online and found some of Browne’s writings about ghostly encounters on that gnarly road south of San Jose. Suddenly the unexplainable near miss with a truck heading towards me in the wrong lane seemed to make sense when I imagined that it was being navigated by a phantom driver.

As years went on, Sylvia Browne became known far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a prolific writer and a frequent guest on shows ranging from Montel Williams (where she was on the show weekly for more than 17 years) to Larry King Live to Loveline. She hosted her own talk radio show on HayHouse Radio (“Radio For Your Soul”) and was a guest and contributor to the show New Spirit Radio on BlogTalkRadio. Additionally, she offered podcasts and commercial-free audio archives as premiums for paid subscribers to her website. A sampling of podcasts are also available on iTunes.

While I found her to be entertaining (and terrifying), Browne also had detractors who claimed that Browne was a charlatan who duped people into believing she had psychic powers. In any event, she leaves a lasting legacy and will remain in the memories of the many viewers and listeners who she touched over the years.

The post Farewell to Psychic, Radio and Television Personality Sylvia Browne appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsman Joel Kaplan has some advice for public radio station WRKF of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is fine for your talk shows to have call-in rules, but tell your listeners what they are, and enforce them the same way for everybody.

“It is inappropriate for the station to formulate guidelines for its talk show on an ad hoc basis because it might not like the comments some of its listeners make or the frequency of those comments,” Kaplan writes. “What’s clear is that none of these guidelines are stated on its website.”

The commentary comes following a complaint by one Charles Bethey, who Kaplan says told him his calls to WRKF’s The Jim Engster show are being screened because of his liberal politics. An excerpt from Kaplan’s post:

Mr. Bethley said he believes he is being discriminated against because he is a liberal African American.

“This is Louisiana; this is the Deep South, and when I tell you, these conservative talk show elements are a part of this station, I don’t say that cheek in tongue or to be provocative. I say that because I’ve experienced it,” Mr. Bethley said. “I know when people are playing games. I’m on hold for 20 minutes. I’ve had that problem before. I just ignore it.

“Unfortunately I don’t think this is an isolated event; it’s happened to me twice. (Mr. Gallagher) told me, and you can confirm this, ‘You can only call in twice per week.’ I said, ‘OK, where did this come from?’ He said, ‘The management.’ I said, ‘Well who is management? Did it come from the station manager?’ ‘It just came from management. And he said, ‘Do you want to ask a question or do you want to talk to management? I said I wanted to ask a question and he got upset.

‘Now, something’s got to be done about this behavior. When I called in about questioning people, the station manager said, ‘That’s our policy.’ I said, ‘That’s un-American. You’re not a commercial radio station; you’re a public radio station.’ As long as I’m not making threatening or profane remarks, you have no right to censor what I ask or prescreen my questions. So that’s what you’re dealing with down here.”

Kaplan says he spoke to the station’s general manager, David Gordon, who told him that Engster has “total control” [Kaplan’s words] regarding “how the show is run.”

The CPB Ombudsman’s last word: “If The Jim Engster Show wants to limit calls to no more than twice per week or prescreen its commenters then I suggest it promulgate such guidelines, post them prominently on its website and announce them on air, and make sure that it treats all its callers the same way.”

A footnote to the story: this “total control” business at public and community radio stations always gets me scratching my head. What’s the point of having management at these places if they completely cede their authority to programmers? In any event, I contacted Gordon and Engster for a comment on Kaplan’s post, but received no reply.

The post CPB to talk radio show: disclose your call-in participation rules appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Andrew Ross is scratching his head at the latest changes at endlessly changing KGO AM 810 in that city.

“If you’ve enjoyed listening to my Chronicle colleague C.W. Nevius on KGO Radio for the past 15 months, be sure to tune in Friday,” Ross bemusedly noted earlier this week. “It’s his last day.”

Apparently Nevius isn’t the only exiting host. Ross got a KGO executive to briefly comment on the newest staff adjustments.”We looked at a list of features and decided we didn’t need all of them, but will focus instead on putting on a good news program,” he said. But the article adds that there is “considerable anxiety in the newsroom about the future.”

Jennifer Waits and I have been tag team writing about the station since it sloughed off a small battalion of beloved hosts in late 2011, sparking demonstrations and Facebook revolts. The upheaval came after the signal was acquired by Cumulus.

What good has all this shuffling done? According to the article, KGO has dropped to number 16 in the SF Bay radio market and takes an almost daily beating on Yelp.

Here’s just one Yelp commentary:

“Just read how low the approval rating has come to for KGO.  Not surprised.  Except for Ronn Owens, the new hosts are dreadful.  Monty is the worst.  Used to be my favorite station, and always on .  No more.  Wake up, out of town owners, and restore this station to its former glorey.”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at Cumulus corporate meetings to hear what they’re thinking and saying. What’s the logic here?

The post Should KGO 810’s coat-of-arms be a turnstile? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Ed Koch, 1924-2013

By now everybody knows that Edward Koch, Congressman then mayor of New York City, has died at the age of 88. Koch was an outspoken and controversial man—an advocate of the death penalty in a liberal town, a supporter of invading Iraq, and widely criticized for a lackluster response to the AIDs crisis as it unfolded in New York. But it should also be remembered that he was a talk radio host at a signal that began as a socialist station: WEVD.

“His image on television, his high-pitched voice on the radio, his round shoulders and gangly arms and baggy pants, and especially his streetwise gusts of candor — saying what people said over the dinner table in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn — gave New Yorkers the illusion that he was a rumpled, familiar acquaintance,” noted the New York Times in its obituary of Koch.

Socialists launched WEVD in 1927, naming it after their famous leader, Eugene Victor Debs. The Jewish Daily Forward took over its operations four years later and ran the frequency as an ethnic community radio station. Greek, Polish, and Yiddish shows filled the schedule. Then in 1989 WEVD transitioned to a talk format that included the now former NYC mayor. Over the next decade WEVD clung to a reputation as a liberal station, a characterization that station producer Scott Pellegrino challenged as the signal verged on being bought by Disney in 2001:

Let’s examine the liberal status of the four “legit” shows that are still on the air till the end of the month. Morning man Bill Mazer’s main passion is Israel, a subject he delves into about as objectively as Sony critic David Manning delves into Adam Sandler flicks. Ed Koch, who’s on 4 to 5, is pro-death penalty, anti-affirmative action and his past endorsements include D’Amato and Giuliani. The next two hosts were recently described by bubble-brained Newsday columnist Ellis Henican as being “firmly on the left.” Two months before the last election, drive-time host Sam Greenfield (one of my former produce-ees) demanded not to be shown any negative Al Gore stories. Six days before the election, in a sleazy attempt to scare New York Jews, Sam went on the air and accused Ralph Nader of being an anti-Semite without offering a single shred of evidence. When asked numerous times to back up his claim, he offered nothing.

“Esthetically, WOR and WABC are definitely more entertaining car accidents than WEVD,” Pellegrino’s recollection concluded. “Excepting small doses of Ed Koch’s inadvertent psycho shtick, everything on WEVD is boring as spit.”

Still, I remember that quite a few people were upset when Disney reformatted WEVD as a sports signal. They formed a “Save WEVD” group and challenged the license transfer, to no avail. Guess somebody liked Ed, at least on the radio.

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Arbitron Portable People Meter ratings for December are in, and progressive talk radio lovers in Portland, Oregon are getting a bit of wry satisfaction from the results. KPOJ, recently switched by its owner Clear Channel from blue state talk to sports, now has an Average Quarter Hour (AQH) share almost as far down the well as it goes.

Back in the talk radio days POJ clocked in at around 0.9. That was in early 2011. It hovered around 0.8 and 1.0 in mid-to-late 2012.

Former KPOJ host Carl Wolfson (carlwolfson.com).

But now? Wait for it: 0.2 in December. That means KPOJ comes in second to last in the market in average quarter hour ratings. AQH is the number of folks listening to a particular radio station for a minimum of five minutes in any discrete 15 minute period. You get the share by dividing that station’s AQH by the whole market’s cumulative AQH, and multiplying that number by 100.

A conservative station with the call letters KUFO now has a higher share than KPOJ. The only signal with a lower rating is KKOV-AM, which specializes in Barbara Streisand, Bette Midler, and Frank Sinatra tunes.

Why did this happen? The sad-but-inevitable version of talk KPOJ’s demise can be found at Willamette Week. The “real cause” of KPOJ’s death, the article explains: “The changing face of Portland radio, a communications company at the mercy of casino capitalists, and a sympathetic audience that—despite progressive talk’s potential appeal—simply tuned in elsewhere” (here’s more on that theory).

The story quotes Clear Channel marketing executive Robert Dove: “At the end of the day, the station just wasn’t performing. It had a loyal, small-core following that just wasn’t enough.”

Just a “business decision,” it was. The phrase always assumes the inherent rationality of such transactions. So is 0.2 “enough”? It could be that Clear Channel expected this and doesn’t care. After all, there are two other sports stations in the area. And the new operation looks so automated that you’d never guess the radio giant once let stand up comedian Carl Wolfson host three hour morning shows across the work week.

Wolfson is going to be on Portland community station KBOO on Wednesday. Maybe he’ll react to the numbers.

Meanwhile they’re grinning bitter grins over at the Save KPOJ Facebook page.

“They should have stuck with their ‘loyal, small-core following’ for progressive talk,” one post declares. Alas, radio listeners don’t get to tell Clear Channel what to do.

• Hat tip: Blue Oregon.
• Further reading: The Five Stages of Commercial Radio Format Change Grief

The post How low can you go? Meet Clear Channel’s KPOJ sports appeared first on Radio Survivor.

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The often brilliant xkcd takes on talk radio (I’m the one suggesting it’s conservative talk radio):

The post This comic must be about conservative talk radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

“What are we supposed to do now?” the Rushbo asks. “In order to get the Hispanic or Latino vote, does that mean open the borders and embrace the illegals?”

I want you to think about this.  Is that what this means?  Is that what the Republican establishment means?  We’ve gotta reach out to Hispanics, is that what they mean?  If we’re not getting the female vote, do we become pro-choice?  Do we start passing out birth control pills?  Is that what we have to do?

Meanwhile Glenn Beck seems to be on the verge of a total freakout:

I’ve been telling you for a while and I’ve been telling my own staff, if the president wins, I don’t know how we survive. I don’t know how we survive the regulation that is coming from my country. I don’t know how we’re going to survive the pressure and the tactics because he has more flexibility now and they remember their enemies I don’t know how we’re going to survive because I won’t compromise. I won’t make a deal with the devil.

Sean Hannity, on the other hand, says just keep on keeping on:

I refuse to go where some people have gone. People I know have been crying. People that I know have been down. Used the word ‘depressed’ . . . ‘shocked’ . . . I just refuse to go there. And I’m not saying this is some manufactured way to raise your spirits. I’m just being honest as I always am. . . .

Clearly we are in the this-isn’t-happening-and-we-aren’t-here stage of the conservative discussion. Maybe I’ll tune in again next week.

The post Conservative talk radio on Obama: no soul searching today appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Inside the radio industry there has been quite a bit of hand-wringing about the AM dial. Though conservative talk stations and sports stations in big markets continue to generate ratings and revenue, there’s an increasing recognition that other AM stations aren’t doing as well. Many blame overcrowding on the dial which leads to more interference, especially at night. Others claim broadcasters themselves are to blame, for not maintaining facilities and uncreative programming.

Over at DIYmedia.net John Anderson takes a critical overview of the solutions being examined by the National Association of Broadcasters, which has formed a task force to tackle the future of AM. John writes,

The Task Force seems to be considering two primary ideas for “revitalizing” AM broadcasting. One is to phase it out completely and migrate all AM stations to new spots on the FM dial. The other involves a wholesale conversion of AM broadcasting from analog to digital, using AM-HD as the mechanism.

Neither of these proposals are optimal. Both would necessitate listeners buying new receivers to take advantage of any changes, and they would be expensive and disruptive to all AM broadcasters – many of whom are on shaky financial footing already.

The NAB, as the handmaiden of the largest broadcast conglomerates (and with the close cooperation of National Public Radio) seems to be leaning toward the digitalization route. Either will be a tough sell.

I tend to come down on the side of thinking that the big broadcasters made their own bed, similar to how Clear Channel and its ilk squeezed the life out of commercial music radio on FM over the last 16 years. Just like HD Radio has failed to rescue FM, I have serious doubts that digitizing AM will save it, either.

I also don’t agree with scrapping AM. Although it is an older technology, which poses technical and fidelity challenges that FM does not face, it also has distinct advantages. First, AM transmissions can cover a much bigger geographic area than FM, nearly half the North American continent with the right power level. Because they don’t travel line-of-sight, it’s easier to send and receive AM signals in hilly or mountainous areas than FM.

Second, AM receivers are simple to build and operate — a crystal set doesn’t even need batteries. While this may seem downright antiquated in the mobile internet age, it can be a real lifesaver during a natural disaster or other emergency that results in extended power outages.

Finally, the infrastructure is already there, and is in use. There are still millions of listeners tuning in AM radio each day, who would likely lose many of their favorite stations were the service eliminated. Furthermore, the AM broadcast band is a tiny swath of spectrum, not particularly useful for data services like the FM and UHF bands are.

Of course, any change would require a long FCC proceeding. But that doesn’t mean change is necessarily unlikely or impossible. What it means is that those of us who care about preserving the service need to be aware and ready to engage in the debate.

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photo: Josh McConnell (bit.ly/ToNhU8)

As talk radio listeners know, Glenn Beck has been on a tirade against American Airlines for two days now (here and here). Beck says an AA staffer was rude to him on first class:

“My flight attendant nearly — merely barked the word ‘breakfast’ when he came to me. When others were politely asked if they cared for anything to eat and given the choices, I was just barked at. When he delivered a soda, he slammed it down so hard, I hesitated to even open the can for fear that it would spray all over other passengers in the cabin.”

So vexed was Beck at this treatment, that he appealed to a higher power, but to no avail.

“I prayed a lot on the plane. I, as a man, wanted to say something but figured we’d end up landing in a city that I didn’t want to be in. I just wanted to go home. So I didn’t say anything. And then I prayed. I thought about Billy Graham. I thought the leader of my church a lot. I thought about the teachings of Jesus. And gee, none of them really could break through because I was filled with a lot of anger.”

Well, Glenn, if not even the Prince of Peace could soothe your annoyance, perhaps you’ll be cheered by the fact that the price of your favorite commodity (gold) hit its highest level in six months this week, thanks to the unstable economy. On the other hand, remember the immortal wisdom of Reverend Billy: “Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.”

The post Glenn Beck: not even Jesus could save me from American Airlines appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Every weekend Slate shares a Longform-curated selection of non-fiction pieces about a common topic. This weekend the topic was talk radio, and all of these articles should be of interest to Radio Survivor readers.

I’m still working through the list myself, including the history of the fundamentalist Christian settlement of Zion, Illinois and its pioneering radio station as well as a profile of conservative hate-monger Michael Savage. I read Alexander Zaitchik’s multi-part investigation into the making of Glenn Beck when it first appeared in Salon, but now is a great time to revisit.

In fact, although it isn’t specifically about talk radio, I would also suggest Eric Boehlert’s fantastic muckraking on Clear Channel from more than a decade ago. In his reporting for Salon Boehlert revealed the dirty pay-for-play tactics that the nation’s largest radio company captured to rake in additional profits just as commercial radio jumped the shark, and continued to track the company’s shady dealings for years.

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Emily Morse on Miss Advised

I’m always a sucker for television shows featuring radio DJs, so when I heard that radio host Emily Morse was going to be on a Bravo reality show, I had to tune in.

One of the three relationships experts starring in Miss Advised, Emily Morse is the host of the San Francisco-based podcast Sex With Emily.

Since I live in San Francisco, Miss Advised offers multiple layers of enjoyment. Not only can I scrutinize Emily Morse’s DJ story line, but I also get to scan each San Francisco scene in order to spot familiar locations (this week it included a local dog park that I’m still trying to identify, the Bubble Lounge champagne bar, the New Century strip club, and the Stitcher radio studio).

It was also exciting to hear some San Francisco gossip on this week’s episode. In one scene Morse revealed that she and her friend Ruby Rippey had dated the same man at the same time (back in 2005 they both dated California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco). For those of us long-time San Franciscans, this tidbit was fascinating news since many of us remember Newsom’s scandalous affair with Rippey when she was one of his staffers.

I’d never heard of DJ Emily Morse before, so I was also curious to learn more about her radio background. After moving to San Francisco, Morse worked in politics, produced a documentary, and started a podcast about sex. The Sex with Emily podcast began in August, 2005 and it quickly garnered listeners. By January, 2006 it was appearing over commercial radio station Free FM in San Francisco (KIFR 106.9 FM). By fall 2006, Morse was hosting a 3-hour show over Free FM on Saturday nights at 11pm. It’s unclear how long that show aired for, but Free FM’s format changed in May, 2007.

Today, Morse’s podcast is recorded in the Stitcher Radio studios in San Francisco and is co-hosted by Menace (who DJs under the name The White Menace at commercial radio station Live 105). The Sex with Emily podcast can be heard online and on satellite radio on XM Sirius’s Extreme Talk channel on Friday nights.

During the June 22 Sex with Emily podcast, Emily’s co-host Menace said that listenership “almost tripled” after the first episode of Miss Advised aired on Bravo. During the 60-minute podcast, Morse and Menace had a wide-ranging conversation covering a number of topics. They recapped a bit of the buzz surrounding the Bravo show’s premiere, had a short phone call with Morse’s brother, talked about anecdotes from their own lives (dating and otherwise), and gave some sex tips.

It will be interesting to see the impact of the Bravo show on Morse’s career. She’s already built a following from her podcast alone, which she parlayed into writing gigs and a book deal (She co-authored the illustrated paperback book: Hot Sex: Over 200 Things You Can Try Tonight! ). Her stint on the star-making Bravo should be quite a boost. Many of Bravo’s reality show stars have used the network as a launching pad for even bigger careers, especially since their on-air antics are augmented by blog posts (read Morse’s blog here) and Twitter updates. Miss Advised airs on Monday nights on Bravo TV.

The post Sex with Emily – From Podcaster to Reality TV Star appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Sean Hannity Replaces Family Radio on WKDN

Yesterday, Camden, New Jersey radio station WKDN made a radical change in programming, switching from Family Radio to Hannity@106.9 FM Radio following the the station’s sale to Merlin Media for $22.5 million. Listeners to WKDN in the Philadelphia-area could hear Family Radio’s religious programming transitioning to a loop of the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” before a non-stop string of Sean Hannity’s talk show began airing over the station. Apparently this is a short-term stunt, a common occurrence after a radio station sale, and the final programming line-up has yet to be revealed, although it’s presumed to be moving to an all-talk format.

Along with the content changes over 106.9 FM, the call letters were also changed yesterday from WKDN to WWIQ. Although Family Radio operated the station as a non-commercial operation, the FCC granted their request to convert WKDN back to a commercial radio station (it resides on the commercial FM band). Family Radio, the religious broadcasting network founded by Harold Camping, had owned WKDN since 1968. The sale of WKDN followed Family Radio’s sale of WFSI in Maryland in the months following Camping’s high profile failed Judgment Day/End of the World predictions in 2011.

The post Family Radio’s WKDN Morphs into All-Hannity Radio after Sale to Merlin appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Despite the controversy that has erupted, and a limp apology he issued days later, don’t expect that Limbaugh will change his ways. He’s made a career on broadcasting barely-veiled sexism and misogyny, and too many have profited to abandon his deeply ingrained views of women.

This should be obvious in the fact that as reactions to his comments began to flare on Thursday, he facetiously revised his “slut” comment, and then doubled-down, saying

“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

Since then the backlash against Rush was swift, and at least somewhat bi-partisan. President Obama even took the time to call Fluke personally to offer his support. Campaigns targeting Limbaugh’s advertisers almost immediately gained steam. By Sunday seven major national advertisers had pulled out of his program, including ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, Sleep Number beds and Citrix software.

It was probably the visions of that ad cash flowing out the door that prompted Limbaugh to post a rare apology to his website in which says he “did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.” He closes by saying,

“My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

However, between those conciliatory words Limbaugh mounts a longer, and more vigorous defense of his position.

Reaction to the apology, such as it is, has been tepid at best. The CEO of the Carbonite online backup company reaffirmed his company’s decision to stop advertising on Limbaugh’s program even after his apology. On his company’s blog David Friend wrote,

“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”

Even Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who disagrees with the contraception policy, took Limbaugh to task, saying on CBS’s Face the Nation that he disagreed with Limbaugh’s comments and questioned the sincerity of his apology.

I happen to think that Limbaugh is indeed sorry, since he’ll have a hard time spinning this into an attack on him by the liberal media, and because he stands to lose some money in the short term. I might even believe that he means it when he says he didn’t mean it as a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. Partly I can say that because he never really considered Ms. Fluke a person to begin with.

At his core, Rush Limbaugh is an oversized shock jock or morning zoo DJ, whose primary objective and talent is creating controversy and spectacle to get his base demographic to tune in. In that way he’s no different than Howard Stern or Mancow. However, in my view I think he’s more problematic than a run-of-the-mill shock-jock because he inserts himself into debates that have real public policy impact. While I won’t claim he doesn’t believe his politics, they are subservient to raking in the listeners and advertiser dollars.

With three hours of airtime to kill every day Limbaugh has to work pretty hard to keep listeners tuned in, and when he finds an issue or person he can flog, he’s going to go for it. The risk of not beating it to death and losing attention is much greater than the risk of overdoing it. As well, the old adage, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” certainly applies most of the time, since Limbaugh can typically rely on a large portion of his audience to stick with him and for most advertisers to be more swayed by ratings success than flack from critics.

It’s the simple truth that in his corner of the media world, which overwhelmingly caters to young and middle-aged white men, misogyny sells. He appeals directly and unapologetically to men who either see their privilege slipping away, or feel like they were deprived of that privilege they believed they had coming as a birthright. Rush knows that, and that’s why he thought comparing Sarah Fluke to a prostitute would be funny and ring with knowing recognition with much of his audience. The tired but alluring paradox of fetishizing women’s sexuality was on full display in Limbaugh’s comments that if we’re going to provide contraception to women, then at least we ought to be able to enjoy it as pornographic voyeurs. He is both disgusted and titillated, and so his response is disdain and to insult the person he finds so alluring.

Furthermore, the stock and trade of shock jocks is personal attack, because it’s easy and effective. Typically the targets are celebrities or politicians, people who the culture more readily accepts as targets, and who enjoy fewer legal protections as a result of being public persons. However, after a while it’s obvious that hosts like Limbaugh fail to distinguish between average people who stumble into the spotlight and the celebrities and pols who actively seek it. In terms of raw vitriol, Limbaugh has certainly made worse attacks upon prominent women like Nancy Pelosi and Hilary Clinton. He only made a simple error in judgement when he targeted someone who the culture at large does not see as so deserving.

As if the term “feminazi” didn’t make it abundantly clear the low regard Limbaugh holds for women who refuse to embrace a subservient position relative to men, he takes enough regular pot-shots at women to sharpen that focus. Just two days before targeting Sandra Fluke Limbaugh took a shot at NASCAR driver Danica Patrick for her position in support of contraception funding, dismissing her for being a woman, when he said, “What do you expect from a woman driver? I don’t know why everybody was so shocked.”

In the wake of Limbaugh’s limp apology BuzzFeed reviewed the host’s last six previous public apologies. What stands out is the fact that half of them were for making sexist and hateful remarks about women. Two were for making insulting comments about the physical appearance of presidential daughters Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton. Comments of that sort are unnecessary in any reasonable political debate, because neither of these women were political actors at the time Limbuagh made his comments. His only purpose was to be a bully and obtain petty amusement at the expense of two people who at the time were less able to defend themselves than he.

Despite the advertiser exodus Limbaugh’s syndicate Premiere Radio Networks, part of the Clear Channel family, has released a statement standing by him. Spokeswoman Rachel Nelson emailed a statement that said, “The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue. We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”

However, the right to express an opinion is not what’s at issue, and never has been. Rather, the issue is yet another example of Limbaugh expressing his obviously demeaning view of women, and whether or not the culture at large wishes to reward that view. As of Sunday it appears at least seven major advertisers no longer wish to be associated with Limbaugh’s views, nor to directly support them. Many other people, including politicians and other commentators, also are publicly denouncing his retrograde views.

Even conservative columnist George Will took prominent Repulicans to task for not being more harsh and pointed in their criticism of Limbaugh. On ABC’s This Week he said,

“I mean, and Rick Santorum says well, what he says was absurd, but an entertainer is allowed to be absurd. No. It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right in its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses in their own side. And it was depressing, because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

If the country’s most powerful Republicans are afraid to chastise old Rushbo, then we should hardly be surprised that Premiere and Clear Channel will simply keep their heads down and wait for things to blow over. And they will, blow over.

Clear Channel is a company that has made much of its fortune on opportunistic pandering to people who are angry about the gains made by women and minorities in the last forty years. Whether or not those views are shared by the folks in charge, it’s no coincidence that the man responsible for masterminding the rise of Limbaugh was Randy Michaels, who was himself ousted from Tribune Company for turning its back offices into a frat party rife with sexist and harassing behavior. After nearly a quarter century bosses at Premiere and Clear Channel know that they’ll experience very little collateral damage from Limbaugh’s on-air mistakes. The advertisers who pull out of Rush’s show are unlikely to also pull their advertising from Premiere’s other programs.

At the same time, there’s going to have be an even bigger advertiser drain along with discord at the local stations before Rush is going to be facing any serious threat to his future. It’s going to take a whole lot more flack and advertiser revolt to outweigh the pull of Limbaugh’s core listenership, which likely isn’t particularly outraged by this controversy.

Rush Limbaugh, Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel have gotten very rich on his unique mix of semi-subtle racism, economic conservatism and misogyny wrapped in an entertaining and stimulating package. At the same time, he’s much more out of the mainstream than a network television personality. Enough so that he can lie low for a bit and have a reasonable expectation that the controversy will blow over. Then check back in a year and see how many of the seven advertisers have quietly started buying time again.

I don’t express this prediction happily, but I would be lying if I said otherwise. The house of Limbaugh is built on consolidation, the race to the bottom in the commercial radio industry, and a ready supply of pissed off listeners, overwhelmingly white and male, who actively seek someone to blame for the fact that they did not inherit the world their fathers did (or they believe their fathers did) fifty years ago. I do think this is a demographic in decline. But it isn’t going down without a fight. And the very fact that the Republican elite is afraid to confront Limbaugh and his perceived base shows how desperate that fight is.

The post Rush Limbaugh apologizes for calling Georgetown student a “slut,” but that doesn’t mean his misogynistic approach will change appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Michael Berry

The bouncer working outside the bar in question, Tuderia Bennett, reports that he saw Berry leave the bar and back up approximately 70 feet into a Volkswagen Passat, that just happened to be owned by Bennett. Surveillance video tape reportedly confirms the story.

Now, a hit-and-run outside a bar, especially one that results in no injuries, isn’t normally newsworthy. But it’s hard to deny it’s a different thing when the accused driver is a right-wing radio host who makes a living bashing away at the typical conservative radio targets like immigrants and gay marriage.

The hit-and-run incident occurred on January 31, but no charges were filed against Berry, even though the vehicle involved was confirmed as being registered to him and the existence of witnesses and video evidence. But since the story surfaced in the press last week, it seems that the Houston police chief is upset with how the case was handled and prosecutors are taking a second look. Apparently there’s the impression that police let it slide because Berry is a public figure, as well as a former Houston city councilman.

So far Berry has refused to talk to the press about the incident. On Tuesday he used his show to take aim at the television station that first broke the story:

“Was it a cover up?” Berry questioned. “No, it was a smear campaign. Channel 2, I’ve got my sights on you… You can smear my name without me but I’m not going down without a fight.”

He went on to say,

“Saying ‘gay bar’ and ‘conservative talk show host is too awesome for a news station to pass up because conservatives hate gays — or so we are told,” he said. “The only thing worse than a celebrity who gets it too easy is one who gets it too hard.”

For his part, Tuderia Bennett, the bouncer who’s car was hit, sums up his take on the moral of the story thusly, telling KPRC-TV:

“If you’re going to stand up and say anti-gay things and be conservative and be Mr. Good Guy, and then when something happens that points you out and puts you in a place with the exact business that you aim to shut down, it kind of makes it seem like I need this to go away and I need it to go away quickly,”

The post Schadenfreude watch: Right-wing radio host accused of hit-and-run outside Houston gay bar appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Rummaging through the talk radio guy comments about President Obama’s State-of-the-Union speech, I was set back on my heels by an actual nice thing Rush Limbaugh said about First Lady Michelle Obama. Of course, the meditation is front-loaded with left-handed compliments, and he calls her “Moochelle,” but the praise is still there.

The Rush post noticed that Indian Governor Mitch Daniels response speech praised the Obamas for “setting a great family values example.”

“And he’s right,” Limbaugh added, “they do that well.  Mom and dad and the two kids.  It’s a good-looking family.”

But then the commentary, titled “How the First Lady Could Help the Poor,” says that FLOTUS ought to dump the school nutrition standards that are being unveiled this week:

That’s not the kind of teamwork, you see, that the people of this country want.  They don’t want their government telling them what they cannot eat.  They don’t want the government telling them what they must eat.  Even little leftist robot kids don’t.

Instead:

You know, the best thing Michelle Obama could do—and I’m not joking here—the best thing Michelle Obama could do for people in poverty is to simply highlight the solid nuclear family that she has with her husband, Barack, and the two kids.

Oh well, that compliment had to go somewhere like that, or it wouldn’t have been Rush Limbaugh. Sorry Rush, but since huge numbers of kids in poverty depend on schools for meals, it makes sense to feed them things that won’t cause diabetes and high blood pressure. And before we complain about our tax dollars going to new Federal standards, maybe we should complain about them going to lunches that make public school kids obese.

On the other hand, Limbaugh’s praise for the Obamas could be read as an oblique reference to the family values of another presidential candidate.

The post Shocker: Rush Limbaugh says something nice about First Lady appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Earlier this week we explored how left wing listener supported radio station KPFA in Berkeley is debating Republican libertarian candidate Ron Paul. Just to be bi-partisan, now let’s see how conservative talk radio guy Michael Savage is handling the Texas Congressional representative. Keep in mind that several months ago, Savage offered Newt Gingrich a million dollars to get out of the primary race, “for the sake of the nation.”

Savage: All right, let’s take the callers. Barbara in New York on WOR, go ahead please.

Barbara: Michael, it won’t make any difference if Obama wins or not, because all the Republican candidates are the same. And you know the only candidate, the “deranged” Ron Paul, is the only one who has spoken out against, not only NDAA, but SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act . . . he spoke out against the Patriot Act years ago. He’s the only one warning about the fascism and oppression coming to America. And he’s been right.

Savage: Hold on. He is right, but he’s not electable.

Barbara: You supported John McCain four years ago, and who was the author of the . . .

Savage: Woah woah woah hold on a minute. Stop. You wanted me to support Obama?

Barbara: No. I want you to support the candidate that supports the constitution.

Savage: Wait. Don’t get hysterical. Please. It’s one thing to say the man has some good ideas and some crazy ideas. It’s another thing to be a realist and ask yourself ‘could he beat Obama.’ You don’t really believe that he could beat Obama, do you?

Barbara: That’s where you are wrong. You think nutcase Newt can beat Obama?

Savage: No. When did I say that? Ma’am. Ma’am. Stop. You sound like you are hysterical. You sound just like Ron Paul. Why are all the Ron Paul addicts so hysterical (I’d like to know)?

Barbara: Because they care about this country and they’re tired . . .

Savage: You mean only you care about the country? I don’t care about the country?

Barbara: Let me just say this: the Republicans are no different from the Democrats. Not one of them has spoken out against NDAA or SOPA or the Patriot Act; they’re all for going all over and bombing all over . . .

Savage: Well, you’re wrong. When you say ‘none of them have spoken out,’ you mean none of the Republican Senators?

Barbara: None of the Republican candidates have spoken out against NDAA, except for Ron Paul.

Savage: Ok. On this point you are correct. But this still does not make the crackpot electable.

Barbara: He’s not a crackpot, Michael. He’s been saying things that you agree with.

Savage: Really. He’s being saying things that I agree with? You mean I agree that Israel should be annihilated and disappeared off the planet like he does? . . . You want me to play the sound bite? . . . [a lengthy debate about Israel ensued; see update below]

Barbara: Michael, I’ve been voting since 1972. I voted for George McGovern because he was anti-war, so it’s not like I’m naive and—

Savage: So you’re confirming what I suspect. Most people who support Ron Paul are dyed-in-the-wool liberals.

Barbara: I’m not a liberal! . . . I’m an American!

[UPDATE – readers are complaining that I left out the part of the debate that focused on Israel. I just thought it was too long and involved, but due to popular demand, here goes]:

Savage: I will be happy to play the sound bit of Ron Paul basically calling for Israel’s non-existence.

Barbara: No he’s not. And he’s the only one, let me remind you, in 1980 or ’81, when Israel bombed the nuclear power plant in Iran [actually, it was Iraq], the only one who supported it was Ron Paul! Because Ron Paul believes that Israel should take care of herself, she should have the right to defend herself, without any kind of overseer by the United States.

Savage: That’s all well and good, but where is Israel supposed to get its arms from, since all of its weaponry is American. Other than the domestically manufactured material, where is Israel supposed to get its munitions from? The bunker busting bombs that it has come from the United States of America. So that’s a moot point to say that Israel should defend itself. Without weapons it can’t defend itself.

Barbara: It’s got plenty of weapons, Michael, and you know it. It’s got more weapons probably than we do by now. And they do a damn pretty good job of defending themselves. Remember the raid on Entebbe? They do very well.

Savage: Entebbe was a long time ago. That’s when they had real leadership in Israel, before the people with Saks Fifth Avenue charge accounts took over the country. That’s before the Russians came to Israel. That’s when Israel was still Israel. Israel is a shell of its former self.

Barbara: It’s up to Israel to get its own leadership, like its up to the United States to get its leadership that’s authorized by the constitution.

The post Michael Savage: Ron Paul supporters are hysterical, dyed-in-wool liberals appeared first on Radio Survivor.

103.7 Oldies Changes Call Sign to KOSF

As part of an overall re-branding and re-formatting effort across several Clear Channel-owned stations in San Francisco, call signs for KKSF, KNEW, and KKGN were changed yesterday.

The station formerly known as KKSF, now branded as oldies station 103.7 FM, became KOSF. That left the KKSF call letters available for use by the former KNEW at 910 AM (licensed in Oakland) under the brand NewsTalk 910AM. KKGN (formerly progressive talk station Green 960) at 960 AM now takes the call sign KNEW and is airing a talk format (hosts include Glenn Beck, Bill Press, and Stephanie Miller) under the brand 960 AM KNEW. It was initially rumored that 960 would become a Fox Radio News affiliate, but this plan seems to have been modified following the big changes at KGO.

It’s hard to tell what this means for each of these stations, but it’s curious that the heritage of the KKSF call letters (most associated with their old smooth jazz format, which lives on at KKSF.com) isn’t really connected with the news talk format of 910AM. Perhaps that means that more changes are to come.

The post Call Sign Changes in San Francisco: KKSF to KOSF, KNEW to KKSF, and KKGN to KNEW appeared first on Radio Survivor.

She passed on Christmas Eve, it seems. One of her last Christmas podcasts can be heard via Lynnsamuels.com. “I just hate everyone,” Samuels declares. “Merry Christmas.”

In truth, Samuels didn’t hate everyone. She didn’t even hate anyone. Perusing through her online oeuvre, her approach comes back to me. Samuels was a populist liberal—a raunchy feminist New Dealer with little patience for the identity politics and far left romanticism of the 1970s. Instead, she found her politics in the absurdity of daily life.

“North Carolina man is in critical condition!” Samuels disclosed on WABC in 1983, bemusedly reading from a newspaper article, “and his wife has been charged . . . ”

“You think this is funny, Lynn?” her co-host soberly asked as she broke down in laughter.

” . . . with setting his genitals on fire!” Samuels continued.

“What she do, pour gasoline on him?” he speculated.

“No. Come on. This is a woman doing it! She used nail polish!” she corrected.

In 1990, during an on air firefight with conservative talker Barry Farber over the US invasion of Panama, Samuels called President George H.W. Bush a dictator and drug runner. In more recent years, she found common ground with the right in her hatred of President Barack Obama. Samuels castigated Obama for what she saw as his elitism, espoused Birther opinions about his place of origin, and also sympathized with Juan Williams’ famous commentary on Muslims at airports.

“All you liberals that listen to me, all you people that complain that I’m not liberal enough,” Samuels began, “if you’re in an airport, and there are people . . . I don’t even have to see them in Muslim garb; people that are obviously from the mid-east, particularly if they’re getting on the same flight as you, doesn’t that make you nervous? It makes me nervous!”

And yet even in these contentious and controversial moments, Samuels’ affection for people always came through.

“And nobody likes Muslims as much as I do,” she added, “well, maybe other Muslims.”

The post Lynn Samuels: liberal tweaker of liberals, 1942-2011 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KCSB Sign (Photo: J. Waits)

As part of KCSB‘s 50th anniversary celebration, the college radio station at University of California, Santa Barbara is digging into their archives and re-broadcasting some vintage material. As it turns out, one of their most notarious alums is conservative talk show host Sean Hannity. Yesterday, KCSB aired the program from 1989 that led to Sean Hannity being fired from the station. This particular show has been held up by Hannity as the event that helped kick start his career. According to the KCSB website:

“Sean Hannity has often credited KCSB with launching his media career when the station management removed him from the air in 1989 for making ‘multiple discriminatory statements based on sexual orientation’ on his weekly KCSB radio show in ‘violation of the University of California Nondiscriminatory policy.’ Hannity has always denied that he was homophobic.”

Tune in to the KCSB archive of Revisiting Sean Hannity to hear not only Hannity’s show from 1989, but also interviews and commentary about the incident.

The post KCSB Revisits Controversial Sean Hannity Talk Show Circa 1989 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KGO Loses Talk Shows

A big programming shake-up took place at San Francisco radio station KGO this week. The commercial AM radio station launched an all news format yesterday, much to the chagrin of fans of its talk shows.

Word initially came out last Thursday that new station owner Cumulus would be eliminating KGO’s talk shows. According to a statement on the KGO website:

“You may have heard about the changes we’re making to our on-air lineup on KGO. After careful consideration we’ve determined our audience is looking for more news, which is why we are increasing our news presence throughout the day. The Ronn Owens program will continue to be the place where the Bay Area goes to talk about current events and breaking news, and we;ll still have great talk shows on the weekends as well as on our sister station KSFO. Be assured that KGO remains your source for Bay Area news and information. Thanks for listening to the new KGO 810.”

Although I’m not a KGO listener, I first realized that something was up when my Facebook feed filled up with comments from KGO fans who were disheartened about the loss of their favorite shows. A protest page on Facebook, Former Listeners of KGO Newstalk 810, was formed and is now up to more than 1,500 fans. According to the page’s description, “On December 1, 2011, KGO’s parent company, Cumulus Media, fired most of it’s [sic] on air-talent and other valuable staff without warning. This sends a message that large corporations do not care about progressive and free media in the Bay Area. Let’s band together to send a message to Cumulus and other media monopolies that this is not OK with us.”

Fans are upset about Thursday’s firing of long-time hosts Gene Burns, Gil Gross, Ray Taliaferro and John Rothmann (in addition to other KGO hosts and staffers). Upon hearing the news one friend of mine wrote, “OH MY GOD! After a lifetime of listening to people I care about, the station is finally going down…What the hell is going on at KGO Newstalk 810 AM, San Francisco?!!? This is horrible news! I want to hurt someone!” Another said, “This is a sad day in local radio.”

Rich Lieberman, who writes about San Francisco radio and television on his blog 415 Media, first broke the news of the firings on Thursday. In chronicling the changes at KGO he’s reported that not only are fans disappointed, but that some advertisers have pulled out of the new KGO. Today Lieberman writes,

“KGO Radio is quite a different place than it used to be. There is a siege mentality in the newsroom. Many staffers are fraught with confusion and obvious frustration. And many are hearing the anger brought forth by the sudden, unexpected ambush begun by management that has shaken the station in almost all departments, including news, programming, and most recently, the sales department. Several staffers I have contacted are worried about their own jobs. No one, obviously, will go on the record for fear of reprisal.”

We’ll have to wait and see what the end result of these programming changes will be at KGO. Many have expressed dismay that local talk programming is disappearing from the San Francisco airwaves, especially since this is on the heels of changes at another San Francisco station Green 960 (KKGN). Its progressive talk format is being moved to an HD channel and the AM station will become a Fox Radio News affiliate.

The post KGO Cuts Talk Shows, Angers Many San Francisco Listeners appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Family Radio HQ on May 12, 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

October 21, 2011 came and went and Family Radio founder Harold Camping’s dire predictions about the end of the world occurring on that date never came to be.

Although he’s been recuperating from a stroke and is rumored to be retiring from Family Radio, the 90-year-old Christian radio host was noticeably silent on his latest failed prediction. In a message apparently first posted on October 28 on the Family Radio website, Camping offers a vague apology for some of the harsh statements that he made about non-believers, leading up to May 21. Towards the end of his 5 minute plus message, he states, “Incidentally, I have been told that I had said back in May that people who did not believe that May 21 should be the Rapture date probably had not become saved. I should not have said that and I apologize for that.”

Besides that comment, he doesn’t offer much in the way of an apology to Family Radio followers. He acknowledges that,  “…when it comes to trying to recognize the truth of prophesy, we’re finding that it is very very difficult. Why didn’t Christ return on October 21? It seems embarrassing for Family Radio. But God was in charge of everything. We came to that conclusion after quite careful study of the Bible. He allowed everything to happen the way it did without correction.” As October 21 drew closer, Camping was already backing away from his formerly definitive stance about the certainty of the end date. In a message to followers in late September, he inserted the word “probably” in reference to October 21st marking the end of the world.

Additionally, a Family Radio Bible study recording dated October 16, 2011, states that Camping believed that the end would come quietly and without suffering and torture. This statement marks a departure from Camping’s descriptions of the end prior to May 21, 2011. Bible Study host Tom Evans says on the recording that he’s been visiting Harold Camping and through discussions with him he’s learned more about Camping’s views on the end of the world. Evans says,

“During our visits he has emphasized to me…that he is convicted [sic] that the end will come very quietly and that he believes that the end will come like a whisper and that the unsaved of the world will fall asleep and never re-awake. There won’t be any suffering or torture. There will be no cataclysmic earthquakes or literal stars falling to the earth. Rather the end will come without any warning and very quietly. The believers one moment will be here on earth and in a twinkling of an eye they will forever be in a new heavens, in a new earth, the new Jerusalem.  They will not remember anything from this world.”

Evans acknowledges that Camping may not be correct and asks the assembled, “Is Mr. Camping correct?” He goes on to say, “I want to believe this…I don’t want anyone to suffer.”

Harold Camping Leading Bible Study on May 12, 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

Camping’s recorded statement from this week at times sounds scripted, as if he is trying to cover specific talking points. Yet, much of it is evasive and rambling. In places (in particular the section where he offers his apology), he is a bit more animated and energized, reminiscent of his demeanor when hosting his long-running “Open Forum” talk show.

Here is the complete transcription of Camping’s new message:

“We are living in a day when one problem follows another. And when it comes to trying to recognize the truth of prophesy, we’re finding that it is very very difficult. Why didn’t Christ return on October 21? It seems embarrassing for Family Radio. But God was in charge of everything. We came to that conclusion after quite careful study of the Bible. He allowed everything to happen the way it did without correction. He could have stopped everything if he had wanted to. I am very encouraged by letters that I have received and are receiving at this time concerning this matter. Amongst other things I have been checking my own notes more carefully than ever and I do find that there is other language in the Bible that we still have to look at very carefully and will impinge upon this question very definitely and we should be very patient about this matter at least in a minimum way we are learning to walk more and more humble before God. We’re ready to cry out and weep before god, ‘Oh Lord, you have the truth, we don’t have it. You have the truth.’ And…this is another place, where we have to cry out for this.

There’s one thing that we must remember, God is in charge of this whole business and we are not. What God wants to tell us is his business. When he wants to tell us is his business. In the meanwhile, God is allowing us to continue to cry to him for mercy. Oh, my, how we need his mercy. And continue to wait on him. God has not left us. God is still God. But we have to be very careful that we don’t dictate to God what he should do. In our search in the Bible we must continue to look to the Bible. Look to the Bible. Because there is where truth comes from. And God in his own time table and in his own purposes will reveal truth to us when it’s his time to do it.

In any case, we do not have to have a feeling of calamity or a feeling that God has abandoned us. We are simply learning. And sometimes it’s painful to learn. We are learning how God brings his messages to mankind and my, my, we have claimed to be a child of God and therefore we, as we search the Bible, we’re bound to feel the darts of the Lord as sometimes he gives us the truth and sometimes he gives us something that causes us to wait further upon him.

Whatever we do, we must not feel for a moment that we have been abandoned by God, that he has [sic] no longer helping us or interested in us. Oh, my, what an encouragement it is to be able to go to the Lord again and again. ‘Oh Lord, I don’t know anything, Lord you teach me.’ And that’s the attitude that has to be part of each one of us. And God will not abandon us. He will provide. But, we have to be just very careful that we don’t dictate to him when that has to happen.

Incidentally, I have been told that I had said back in May that people who did not believe that May 21 should be the Rapture date probably had not become saved. I should not have said that and I apologize for that. One thing we know for certain, that God is merciful. Merciful beyond anything that we would ever expect. And so we can pray constantly and should be praying constantly. ‘Oh Lord, we look to thee for thy mercy and we’re so thankful that we know that thou art so merciful.’ How wonderful to know that God is still on the throne, that he is king of kings and lord of lords. And that he hears every one of our prayers. And let’s not hesitate. Let’s be, if anything, let’s be. Be pray more than ever for God’s mercy and keep praying and God will provide. But, God is in charge and we must always keep that in mind.”

 

The post Harold Camping Issues Vague Apology, Says World will End without Warning appeared first on Radio Survivor.

On Saturday, Occupy Wall Street affiliated protests took place in around 1,500 cities around the world, including New York, San Francisco, Berlin, London, Mumbai, Tokyo, and Seoul. No surprise that following this level of activity, some of the movement’s organizers would want to connect with the broader public. Although this Tele-Forum may sound like a formal conference call event, this is one of those moments when the boundaries between teleconferencing and talk radio seem to blur.

“For at least half of the call, listeners can ask questions and make comments talking directly with the speakers,” the e-mail we received says. “Listeners with computers can also write questions the speakers can see during the call. We will even set up a Round Table with several callers at a time to discuss certain aspects of OWS.”

The We group has sponsored the tele-forum. The outfit describes itself as providing vehicles for “connection, interaction and opportunity for unprecedented cooperation between people, organizations and movements.” We’s most recent Tele-Forums focused on water and the morality of nuclear weapons.

The forum will be run by the Maestro conferencing company, which works with non-profits and donates five percent of its proceeds to them. The announcement urges participants to call in by 3:50PM at the latest “to make sure you’re on when it starts.” People who want to participate need to pre-register for the event.

The post Occupy Wall Street organizers will hold live interactive teleconference on Wednesday appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Family Radio Poster on BART Train in San Francisco June 9, 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

Much of my obsession with Harold Camping’s Family Radio empire has been a direct result of his live call-in radio show “Open Forum.” On the air for 50 years, the show was an amazing glimpse into the beliefs of the founder of the large Christian religious broadcasting network.

Through that show, Camping spread the word to listeners about the importance of May 21, 2011 as “Judgment Day” and vehemently professed that great earthquakes and the Rapture would happen on that date, followed by the end of the world on October 21. At the peak of the Judgment Day frenzy, the show was airing 7 nights a week. Although his predictions have changed a little bit (Camping says that his “spiritual eyes” just weren’t fully opened prior to May 21), followers are still tuning in to hear the latest word from Family Radio’s founder.

On June 9th Harold Camping suffered a stroke after returning home following the taping of “Open Forum.” Since that time he has been hospitalized and subsequently moved to a skilled nursing facility. Obviously his program could not continue during his absence and recovery, so ever since June 10th, the religious radio network has been playing old episodes of “Open Forum” on weekday nights. On Friday they completed their run of old episodes, airing a show from May 27, 2011. A recorded announcement over their airwaves last week hinted that “Open Forum” would be temporarily replaced with a variety of programs focused on the scriptures as well as with music.

As promised, Family Radio has begun to air replacement programming in the “Open Forum” slot on weekdays from 5:30 to 7:00pm while Harold Camping recovers from his stroke. Yesterday Family radio aired the show “Searching the Scriptures with Tom Evans” from 5:30 to 6:00pm and it was announced that the program would continue at the time every weekday. Following that show, Family Radio played a number of musical pieces (from the Riverton Singers to Frederico (Hayler) and London Symphony Orchestra), “The Scripture of the Week,” and the short program “Beyond Intelligent Design.” From 6:30 to 7:00pm an episode of “Family Bible Reading Fellowship” was broadcast.

Weekday evenings will certainly be less colorful without Harold Camping’s live call-in show “Open Forum.” His decades-old program is an example of why live radio can be so compelling because one never knew what a caller would ask and how Camping would respond. The show became increasingly more lively and at times contentious as May 21, 2011 grew closer and Camping fielded calls about his prediction of the impending “Judgment Day.” Calls ranged from a distressed grandmother-to-be worried about not being able to meet her unborn grandchild to skeptics asking if Harold Camping was “on crack.”

As the media swarmed to Family Radio following the non-events of May 21, the show took on new meaning when Camping filled the audience with reporters and held a press conference over the air on May 23 (unfortunately that episode is not included in Family Radio’s published show archives). Ever since that day, Open Forum has continued to provide an opportunity for both “true believers” and doubters to quiz Camping about his evolving interpretations of the Bible. It’s definitely been a wild ride and I for one will miss the banter and the oddly compelling cadence of Camping’s voice as he would announce, “Welcome to Open Forum” and would conclude the most intense calls with “Thank you for calling and sharing…”

The post Family Radio Airs Replacement Programs in Open Forum Slot appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Publications at Family Radio (Photo: J. Waits)

Last week there were reports that Family Radio‘s 50-year-old “Open Forum” program was being cancelled in light of Family Radio founder Harold Camping’s recent stroke on June 9th. In recent months, the religious network’s call-in talk show has been a vehicle for discussions about the predicted May 21, 2011 “Judgment Day” and Rapture.

When I contacted Family Radio last week I was told that the show was not being cancelled and that, instead, previously recorded episodes of the call-in talk show “Open Forum” would be aired on Family Radio.

A statement on Family Radio’s website dated June 21 says, “Mr. Camping has been moved to a Skilled Nursing Facility, where he is undergoing rehabilitation to regain his strength. Mr. and Mrs. Camping greatly appreciate all the cards, letters and flowers they have received, as well as your continuing thoughts and prayers. God has been very merciful.”

When listening to Family Radio this week, a pre-recorded message aired prior to “Open Forum.” The announcement alluded to rumors about the program’s future and stated that during Harold Camping’s rehabilitation, no new episodes would air. It said that the program will resume when he is able to once again host the show and answer listener questions live on the air.

This week Family Radio has been airing episodes of “Open Forum” that were recorded in the weeks following May 21. As you might recall, Camping made a premature goodbye to his “Open Forum” listeners on May 19th, as he expected that it would be his final show since “Judgment Day” and the Rapture were scheduled for May 21. When Judgment Day didn’t pan out as planned, Camping was back on the air for a special “Open Forum” on May 23rd in which he entertained questions from the press and explained that Judgment Day had in fact happened on May 21, but that it had been a spiritual event. He reassured everyone that the end of the world would still occur on October 21, 2011. Between May 24 and June 9, live episodes of Open Forum resumed over Family Radio and following Camping’s June 9th stroke, repeats of the program have aired.

According to a recorded announcement heard on Family Radio yesterday:

“Take a little bit of truth. Mix it with rumors, the media and the Internet and zap, you have a lot of wrong information. A woman called distressed because we were said to be changing our format. Another heard that we were taking features off. Not so, friends.

For example, the hour and a half slot for Open Forum, it’s still ready to go in our program automation. While Mr. Camping is in rehabilitation, we’ll need to insert programming: some teaching, some music, some Bible reading. When Mr. Camping is capable to take calls again, Open Forum will return. Yes, we continue to strive to provide programming that teaches, comforts and challenges. All with the hope of making you consider what you believe and why you believe it. So, don’t listen to too many of the rumors and do remember to pray for us often. Thank you.”

When Family Radio completes its run of post-May 21, 2011 “Open Forum” episodes (today they will air a show recorded on June 2nd), it’s uncertain what programming they will be airing in its place, but it’s clear from their on-air announcement that Family Radio does not perceive the show to have been cancelled.

The post Family Radio’s “Open Forum” On Hiatus While Harold Camping Recovers from Stroke appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Catch up on stories you might have missed from the past week in radio.

Dirty Money

Talk radio’s biggest names are paid millions of dollars to “use a script, outline or set of talking points,” according to a new report. The Heritage Foundation pays roughly $2m for Rush Limbaugh and $1.3 for Sean Hannity. Glenn Beck has an endorsement deal with FreedomWorks and Mark Levin is sponsored by Americans For Prosperity. One leader of a conservative grassroots group decided buying endorsements from talk radio hosts was both too expensive and ethically suspect. “I wish more of the grassroots knew the reality,” the unnamed source told Politico, that “these guys were getting paid seven figures a year to say this stuff.”

Photo by dbking, from WikiMedia Commons

According to Politico, some talk radio sponsorships include “embedded ads.” No doubt weaving specific initiatives, fundraising pleas, even guest spots for officials from the highest bidding groups into program content has certainly paid dividends. Last year Limbaugh and Hannity brought in over 40,000 new Heritage memberships starting at the $25 level and 50,000 people signed up for FreedomWorks email in the first three months of their Beck contract.

Michael Hood of BlatherWatch thinks loyal dittoheads “deserved to be suckered” but he’s mostly worried about these messages leaving the echo chamber and polluting the mainstream. “There’s nothing illegal about this, unfortunately,” he writes. “Old broadcast ethics have been flushed ignominiously down the golden executive toilets of these values-thumping whores.”

…The company with a mandated monopoly on so-called HD broadcasting is now offering cash prizes to stations that begin using HD2 and HD3 multicast channels in advertising clients’ on-air campaigns. RBR reports that iBiquity is hoping to push an increase in HD radio marketing with their new incentive program. They will reportedly hand out a few thousand bucks in September.

…Radio Bilingue announced June 15th that they must suspend LA Public Media, citing CPB Digital funding cuts. Launched to provide innovative new public media for Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans, the program was not sustainable without ongoing support from CPB. However, that appropriation was recently slashed by Congress. …The most popular media company among members of Congress and their spouses is Walt Disney Co, which counts 30 members among its investors, according to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics. Comcast is next in line with 22 Congressional stakeholders. No outlet aimed at underrepresented Americans made the list of 19 different news organizations or media conglomerates favored by elected representatives.

Sounds Illegal

Photo from Broward Sheriff's Office

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agents raided the home of a Pompano Beach man, confiscating a transmitter, mixer, laptop and portable air conditioner. The Sun-Sentinel of Ft. Lauderdale reported Friday that Mercius Dorvilus was arrested and charged with a third degree felony for operating an unlicensed Haitian radio station on 92.7 FM. …Meanwhile a radio host in Atlanta concluded a tirade on his talk show Tuesday with some haunting instructions for his listeners. Get a gun and learn how to use it, he insisted, because “we need more dead thugs.” Neal Boortz, also known as Mighty Whitey, spews nationally-syndicated racism to an estimated 19m listeners per week. God Bless America.

…A pair of New Jersey shock jocks who manipulated a nude photo of themselves taken by a freelance photographer and then posted it without crediting him, find themselves in front of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. According to The Hollywood Reporter, photographer Peter Murphy’s lawsuit against the WKXW jocks could change copyright law.

…On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Commercial Felony Streaming Act on a voice vote, just one month after it was introduced. That is fast action for the US Senate, on any subject. As CommLawBlog noted Friday, the bill would impose felonies on some unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content. Streaming 10 or more performances within a period of 180 days in pursuit of profit could result in up to 5 years in prison. A range of creative unions support the measure which is intended to reclassify streaming as no different than downloading.

Venture Hype

Pandora went public to plenty of press nationwide. Meanwhile the local Bay Area press hyped the music discovery service’s impact on the economic development in Oakland. TechDirt’s Mike Masnick asked why no one else seemed to be talking about misleading reports regarding Pandora’s profitability.

…While Spotify declined to comment on their latest $100m boost, the popular European service is expected to launch in the US by the end of the summer. The Future of Music Coalition broke down Spotify’s significance against the cloud music backdrop:

Spotify offers a fully interactive experience where users can have complete control over the entire Spotify catalog: Listeners can play, pause, rewind, and create/share playlists from the millions of songs Spotify offers. And, these features are available to any user, regardless of the music s/he currently “owns.” The European version of Spotify is “tiered,” with free listening (there are some limitiations and audio ads), as well as commercial-free, unlimited and mobile access for a monthly fee.

But even if this service gets huge in America, will it amount to a meaningful revenue stream for musicians?

Numero promotional image

…The announcement of iTunes Match excited many music fans earlier this month, but the independent soul label Numero Group has announced it will opt out of the service. Label co-owner Ken Shipley blogged about feeling insulted by Apple. Contacted by Ars Technica, co-owner Rob Sevier said iTunes Match is “brilliant” from the consumer point of view, “but as a user of copyrights, it’s flawed.” He is concerned the service will effectively legitimize piracy.

…New York Times technology columnist David Pogue blogged Thursday that he finds the term “in the cloud” pretentious and annoying, but his greater concern is about data limits:

All of these mega-trends consume enormous amounts of bandwidth. All of that uploading and downloading, all of that syncing, all of that cloud computing assumes you have a fast, capacious pipe to the Internet. But your cellphone company doesn’t want you to have a fast, capacious pipe. There’s not a single cellphone carrier anymore that offers an unlimited data plan at full speed. T-Mobile gives you unlimited data, but if you exceed a certain threshold, your connection is automatically slowed down. And a few lucky AT&T iPhone owners still have unlimited plans, grandfathered in from the olden days — but I’ll bet you that’ll go away, too.

O.K., that’s cellphones. You can understand the cellphone carriers’ point of view. All of these iPhones and Android phones use enormous amounts of wireless cellular capacity, and it was slowing down the pipes for everyone. Caps are necessary, they can argue, or else the whole network will grind to a halt.

But that’s not the worst mega-trend. The worst is caps on home data plans. That’s right: Time Warner, Comcast and other broadband providers are putting limits on how much data you get every month, even at home.

And that, my friends, is one crazy scary development.

Wonky Advocacy

The members of Kentucky-based pop group My Morning Jacket have added their names to the growing list of artists who vocally support public media and network neutrality. They sent a strong letter to the Kentucky delegation in Congress, which included this great line: “It is our belief that funding public broadcasting and maintaining open Internet access are two essential components in nourishing the vital music scene in the state of Kentucky.”

My Morning Jacket promotional image

…Two of my favorite radio blogs posted geeky analyses of an increasingly common engineering tactic. Arcade Radio Trivia is against feeding HD to FM translators. Broadcast Law Blog warns that building and operating an FM translator to retransmit an HD2 signal may not be as easy as it seems.

…And the biggest news for policy advocates from the past week was the release of the FCC’s report on The Information Needs of Communities. Policy analyst and public media champion Jessica Clark called the report strong on diagnosis but weak on prescription. According to Current, the report directly cites advocacy by the Association of Independents in Radio. Clark also blogged about what independent producers can learn from the report for MQ2.

Educational Band

The New York Times followed up its WRVU coverage with a legitimate question for students. Where do you find music? …College Radio Day is in the works for October, although it is still unclear what it will accomplish other than establishing a brand identity like Record Store Day. …A fire at Trinity College knocked WRTC off the air and offline, though reports were cursory.

…The Community-mindedness and free-form aesthetic of WRVU Nashville maybe didn’t add up to a viable broadcast service, Current reported on their blog Wednesday. While this particular post featured the most pro-college radio quotes I’ve seen on Current all year, the premise of the ‘balanced’ coverage still rings false. The value of student media goes far beyond everyday listenership or Arbitron ratings. As Josh Stearns of Free Press waxed nostalgically at this year’s Media Reform Conference, so many people working for democracy and justice today have a background in college radio. Classical music fans should think twice before celebrating student license takeovers.

Radio Summer panelists, photo by Dave Id

…Prometheus kicked off LPFM outreach efforts with the first Radio Summer event, featuring Vanessa Maria Graber, Todd Urick, Tracy Rosenberg and Susan Galleymore. Now you can watch the entire 90-minute long video shot at the San Francisco Public Library or listen to a 30-minute audio version edited for broadcast on KDVS.

Changing Workforce

According to the Pittsburgh News-Tribune, 20 staffers at WDUQ Pittsburgh have received termination notices, effective June 30th. 100 hours of jazz is being cut to 6. It is unclear if the revamped station will be hiring.(*) …A cost-cutting study at BBC Radio asked interesting questions about possible staff reductions, but will likely be shunned. …Despite all sorts of changes, the Crimson Tide Sports Network still does a booming business carrying Alabama football games each season on more than 60 affiliate stations. But other formats are closing in on the radio side of the operation.

…And lastly, this week marks the end of a long relationship between Nic Harcourt and KCRW Santa Monica. After KCRW announced the widely-respected DJ would be leaving the station after 12 years to take a job with MTV, Harcourt took to the LA Times on Friday to insist he was “disappointed to be misrepresented” by his former station. He will soon launch a new radio show on KCSN, based at Cal State Northridge.

*UPDATED: According to a press release sent June 23, 2011, Essential Public Media has hired 14 staffers for WDUQ in Pittsburgh.

The post The Past Week In Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Vintage Map of Family Radio's Network (Photo J. Waits)

When I visited Family Radio’s headquarters last Thursday, May 12, 2011, I was not only interested in President and General Manager Harold Camping’s thoughts about Judgment Day; but I also had a lot of questions about the inner-workings of the Christian radio network.

Obviously Family Radio has attracted worldwide attention and media interest for Camping’s well-publicized (Family Radio even had a billboard in Dubai) claim that Judgment Day is certain to arrive this Saturday, May 21, 2011. But, the history and day-to-day operations of Family Radio have attracted less attention.

As I toured Family Radio and chatted with Camping on Thursday, I kept thinking about pragmatic questions about not only the future of the radio network, but also about specific programming details for May 21st and beyond. Although Camping has argued that Judgment Day will begin at 6pm local time on May 21st, on Open Forum yesterday he wavered a bit, saying, “It is not guaranteed…the precise hour…we don’t have the same kind of proof [as we do for the date of May 21].  He said there is a “high likelihood” that Judgment Day will begin at 6pm on May 21 and reiterated that Judgment Day “is absolutely…going to be May 21…the Bible guarantees it.”

Despite his unwavering certainty about the May 21st date, when I interviewed Camping he did admit to me that Family Radio does have some post-May 21st programming prepared. However, he argued that it was really just for the benefit of Family Radio staff members who are not “true believers” in the coming Judgment Day.

Here’s a bit more of my interview with Harold Camping, in which he touches upon the origins of both Family Radio (which began in 1958) and the popular Open Forum call-in talk show that he has been hosting for 50 years. I’m not sure when the final live edition of Open Forum will air, but it’s possible that it will be on Thursday, May 19th, as Friday is a paid holiday for Family Radio staff.

LP from the Record Library at Family Radio (Photo: J. Waits)

Jennifer Waits: So you were saying you had no interest in radio before?

Harold Camping: Right. That was not my interest. I was interested in dairy cattle and I was interested in math and interested in physics and science, but not radio.

Jennifer: What got you thinking about starting up a radio network?

Mr. Camping: Someone came to my office…and he wanted to find some Christian businessmen to buy a radio station and share the gospel. And, oh, to share the gospel, that’s what got my interest. So, I agreed that provided we have a non-profit corporation so that nobody could ever realize any gains for themselves. And so, we formed a non-profit corporation called Family Stations, Incorporated. I became President and he became Vice-President. I had another young man working for me and we made him the third member to be legally a qualified corporation. And I put this man on my payroll…and he found a station here in San Francisco and we bought it and that was the beginning of Family Radio.

Parking Lot at Family Radio on May 12, 2011 (Photo: J. Waits)

Jennifer: And what do you now love about radio?

Mr. Camping: I’ve been enmeshed in it for 52 years. I’ve been able to supervise the construction of radio and supervise the construction of TV. We built a 350 kilowatt station in Taiwan and a 600 kilowatt station in Taiwan to carry our programming to China and to the Philippines and so on.

Jennifer: So, you’ve been doing Open Forum for 50 years. How did that show start?

Mr. Camping: That started because at that time we were not getting any help from any churches and although we had paid very little to whatever employees we had, we were running out of money. So we had the idea that if I would be behind the mic as President and answer questions about finances or about music policy, that might encourage people to begin to give. So, we opened the telephone lines and I did my first program and they didn’t ask any questions about finances or music, but they asked counseling questions and Bible questions. And I found that I enjoyed that very much and I was somewhat qualified because I had been doing quite a bit of study in the Bible and doing some private counseling. And so that began Open Forum.

***

This interview originally appeared on Spinning Indie. To learn more about my visit, including details about the music policies at Family Radio, please see my station visit post there.

The post Behind the Scenes at Family Radio as May 21st Judgment Day Approaches appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Judgment Day Billboard in Santa Clara County (Photo R. Waits)

A few weekends ago while on a road trip to Santa Barbara, I scanned the left side of the radio dial for interesting college radio stations. After I lost all trace of college radio, somewhere around Santa Maria, I happened upon the show “Open Forum” on Family Radio.

Pretty quickly I became riveted by the religious call-in talk show. I learned that Judgment Day was apparently slated to arrive on May 21, 2011 and that it would begin with swarms of earthquakes all over the world. The host said that we have been beyond the “church age” since 1988 and that in fact, “the churches today are ruled over by Satan” and that we are “right at the time of the end” with “salvation…only going on outside of the churches.” After doing some quick research on my mobile phone I started to realize that I’d seen some billboards about Judgment Day, but had no idea that 1) it was so soon and 2) it was largely being hyped by a massive radio network.

Of course I wanted to learn more, so I arranged a time to visit the Oakland-based Family Radio upon my return to the Bay Area.  Family Stations, Inc. was founded in 1958 with the purchase of KEAR-FM in San Francisco and since then has grown to a massive Christian radio network with 66 stations in the United States. Broadcasts are also sent all over the world (to places as far flung as Turkey, South America, Russia and South Africa) via shortwave radio and the Internet. Programming even reaches as far as Taiwan and undersea cable allows it to broadcast into China. Additionally, they own two television stations (in San Francisco and New York) and broadcast several shows (including Open Forum and Family Bible Study) on TV and the Internet.

Harold Camping in his office at Family Radio on May 12, 2011 (Photo J. Waits)

Family Radio President and General Manager Harold Camping has been hosting the live, call-in talk show “Open Forum” for 50 years. When it initially began in 1961 it was meant to simply be an open forum for listeners to call in and ask Camping questions about the station. Although they expected to hear questions about the music, programming, and finances; they were instead besieged with calls asking about the Bible. Since those early days the show has aired at least 5 nights a week. For the past few weeks (as Judgment Day draws near), Open Forum has been airing live 7 nights a week from 5:30 to 7:00pm Pacific time. In addition to Open Forum, Camping hosts “Family Bible Study,” which is recorded for both radio and TV.

When I visited Family Radio on Thursday, May 12, 89-year-old Camping was leading his final “Family Bible Study” during lunch time. As a diverse group of perhaps 50 people assembled in the studio audience and crews from both Univision and Nightline filmed the action, Camping walked everyone through a number of Bible passages before concluding with a brief question and answer session with the audience. He began the Bible study with a prayer and in it I couldn’t help but notice that he made reference to members of the Family Radio staff who were non-believers. This was my first hint that not everyone in the building was counting down the days until May 21 and it came as a great surprise to me.

As you might expect, Thursday’s final Bible study largely dealt with Judgment Day. Camping said that it would come on Saturday, May 21 at 6pm local time, meaning that wherever you live, it will happen at 6pm. He promised that, “We’re going to be able to see…those who are being raptured” and said that “when you are raptured” you get “eternal life.” He added, “it’s just a fantastic, wonderful gift that we paid nothing for.” But then his Bible study veered into fire and brimstone territory as he said, “When the believers are being raptured” it will be a “final condemnation of those left behind.”

Family Bible Study taping on May 12, 2011 (Photo J. Waits)

Apparently May 21 will signal the beginning of hell on earth for non-believers, as the world won’t actually end until October 21. Camping argued that the people left behind will feel something akin to a “sting of a scorpion” that will be a “final blow” as they realize that others have been raptured and they have not. Camping seemed almost giddy as he anticipated May 21, describing the moment, “When we’re caught up and the world sees us.” He added that when that happens, “God’s judgment is upon them and they are left behind.”

After Bible Study I was able to tour the entire Family Radio operation (see my post on Spinning Indie for more pictures and details about the network). It’s quite a set up with television studios, radio studios, production rooms, printing department, international department (they translate materials into 68 languages), Internet team and mail room. Most of the radio programming originates from the Oakland studio and is run on other stations (including full power AM and FM stations as well as translators) via automation.

As it gets closer to May 21, Family Radio has been working overtime to spread the word not only through their radio and TV broadcasts, but also by a variety of marketing tactics including RV caravan tours across the United States and Canada, billboards, religious tracts, You Tube videos, and free bumper stickers. I also saw numerous people at Family Radio wearing Judgment Day t-shirts and trucker caps, but it’s unclear to me if those are available from the network. When I visited the network’s Internet department I learned that the Family Radio website has been buzzing, with 3.25 million visits in April. Interestingly, I heard that the majority of web traffic has been coming from outside of the United States, with China as one of the biggest non-U.S. countries as far as visitors.

Internet Department at Family Radio on May 12, 2011 (Photo J. Waits)

The mood around the Family Radio offices was joyful as people gathered for lunch in a common room following Bible study. Families with small children milled about and a man who’d traveled from New York for the “final two weeks” took a break in the lobby before hitting the streets with Judgment Day literature. He told me that his family thought he was crazy.

As a practical matter, I was curious about the network’s programming plans after May 21. My tour guide Rosa said that she didn’t know and added that they are “just letting the lord stop it.”

There was a posted sign announcing that Friday, May 20 would be a paid holiday; but there was no mention of the work schedule for the following week. I also heard that programming was generally produced several weeks in advance, so if May 22 does come, there should be material to play. Harold Camping was vague about the future as far as programming goes, but he did admit to me that, “We have a lot of staff who don’t abide us at all and for their sake there’s some programming that’s in the can. But we’ll probably…we certainly will not use it, but for their sake, they think that they might use it.” Despite that, he said that everyone has been helpful and loyal, even if they don’t agree with the prediction about the coming Judgment Day. I asked him what the non-believing staff expected to happen at the network after May 21st and Camping said, “I’m not the CEO. God is the CEO. You have to ask him.” When I asked Camping what his plans were for May 21, he told me that he’d probably be watching TV and listening to the radio to hear about what was happening around the world.

Camping and his followers are resolute in their belief that May 21 is the beginning of the end. According to the tract, “Facts Concerning May 21, 2011,” this date is a certainty. The pamphlet states, “The great amount of Biblical signs and proofs absolutely guarantee Judgment Day is May 21, 2011.” Yesterday, Camping said on Open Forum that “people will be dying by the millions.”

Memo to Family Radio Staffers Regarding May 20 Holiday posted in Oakland Office (Photo J. Waits)

Of course, there are plenty of doubters. Competing billboards from an atheist group proclaim that Judgment Day is false and non-Rapture Day parties are planned. Skeptical callers to “Open Forum” have derided Camping for being a “false prophet” and on Open Forum yesterday, one caller even asked, “Are you on crack cocaine?” Amazingly, this question elicited laughter from Camping, who replied that he’d never done cocaine.

For those who are following Camping, Judgment Day will begin far away from Family Radio headquarters at about 11pm Pacific time on Friday, May 20, 2011. As it will already be 6pm on May 21st in New Zealand, this should mark the beginning of the Rapture. We’ll just have to see if there’s radio silence on May 22 or if Family Radio network continues with their broadcasts.

The post Family Radio Counts Down to Judgment Day on May 21 appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Relatively under the radar, the jewish lifestyle magazine Tablet reported a story on Premiere Radio Network’s Premiere On Call service which provides voice actors to call in to radio shows. Premiere is the syndicator for the nation’s top conservative talk radio programs like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The article’s author, Liel Liebowitz, quotes an anonymous voice actor employed by the service and gets a Premiere spokesperson to acknowledge the service on the record.

The story quickly built steam this week, with many liberal and left commentators openly wondering if Premiere’s biggest mouths were in fact fielding calls from plants prepped to set them up. Neither Limbaugh nor Hannity took the insinuation lying down. In fact Limbaugh took to the air Tuesday spending 20 minutes on the issue, in part criticizing Premiere Networks for offering the service in the first place. He claimed no knowledge of the service and said, “if somebody had told me we were going to do this, I would put the kibosh on this.” On his program Sean Hannity also denied ever using the service.

Now there has been conjecture for years that many callers to Hannity and Limbaugh were in the pocket, in part just to set up the host for the next rant or joke. Critical listeners on the hunt for a good conspiracy for years have been discussing callers that just seemed to well timed to be true. However, even if this were true, I’m sure Hannity and Limbaugh would still deny it.

Premiere has gone on the record claiming, “The service is not utilized by News/Talk programs or stations.” The target market for the service appears to be morning shows in need of extra schtick. Limbaugh suggested as much on his show, while taking an opportunity to get in a jab at the FCC, saying that making prank phone calls used to be the bread and butter of wacky morning DJs until the evil Commission stepped in to say airing a call without consent was impermissible.

In the big picture, however, I don’t think it really matters whether Hannity’s, Limbaugh’s or any other talk show’s callers are ginned up or not. Anyone who thinks that call-in talk radio is a fair and equal forum for public discourse is living in fantasy-land. Nationally syndicated programs, in particular, receive far more calls than they could ever put on the air and have always used screeners to decide which are most useful and entertaining to put on the air. Sure, plenty of liberals have complained that they aren’t able to get through to debate Limbaugh or Hannity on their programs. I don’t think the picture would be much different if these hosts were using plants instead of just selecting the most ideologically compatible callers.

Now, I’m not defending the Premiere On Call service, nor am I defending Hannity or Limbaugh. I actually doubt that either hosts gin up calls — they don’t need to. I do believe that plenty of third-rate morning shows do take advantage of actors because it’s easier to plan a wacky call than wait on luck to deliver you one. But in the case of the morning shows — which typically don’t have open lines as a feature of the show in the first place — I really don’t see a problem either.

I have to agree with Rush, much of entertainment radio is about the art of the prank, whether it was Bob and Ray staging “man on the street” interviews or Phil Hendrie’s multiple-personalties as guests. At it’s best radio really is the theater of the mind, and what is theater but a big put-on?

I get how lying is still lying, and that it sounds a whole lot worse when programs that pose like they have serious discussion of news and public affairs seem to be taking phony calls. But I guess you have to believe that Limbaugh, Hannity and their ilk are actually serious public affairs shows. Limbaugh himself loves to hide behind the excuse that he’s really just an entertainer, even if he’s in no rush to disclaim any influence he might appear to have over our political landscape.

Callers who can mount a convincing counter argument to these conservative hosts are never going to get on the air, whether or not the other callers are fake or real. So in the end it doesn’t really matter if listeners believe the callers are real or not, either. Only in the case that a fake caller were leveling accusations or making allegations of fact that impact the national debate do I think it would be of particular concern. But there is no reasonable evidence any such thing has occurred.

I also understand how plenty of folks fed up with Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s whole approach would love to find that gotcha moment to undermine their credibility and possibly foment FCC action. There are plenty of good reasons to have a problem with Limbaugh and Hannity, especially when they’re guilty much more egregious fabrications and racist remarks. But these guys are symptoms of the failed political economy of the radio dial brought on by massive consolidation. As long as Clear Channel owns hundreds of stations in need of cheap programming that draws in large numbers of the dwindling AM radio audience, then we will have Limbaugh and Hannity, or their copycat replacements. It’s a system that needs changing.

Go ahead and attack them and their employer. I just don’t think this particular tempest in a teapot will be an effective weapon.

The post Hannity and Limbaugh deny using parent company’s fake caller service appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Alex Jones - source: Rolling Stone

The Rolling Stone feature called Alex Jones “the most paranoid man in America” and “a multiplatform prophet of paranoia who sees diabolical plots in every turn of the news cycle.”

“For a man of otherwise high analytical ability, his logic and reading-comprehension skills are often victims of his Ahab-like obsession with the New World Order,” the piece concludes.

Apparently the talk radio conspiracy-meister and publisher of Infowars thinks this analysis is “largely” spot on.

“Rolling Stone‘s profile of Alex Jones is a largely positive and accurate exploration of Jones’ personal history and the factors that continue to drive and motivate his work today,” begins an Infowars review of the article published on Tuesday.

But there were some problems. “In attempting to denigrate Jones’  political stance, the piece oversimplifies several issues in an effort to dismiss his concerns as ‘paranoid’ exaggerations,” the response article notes.

The Rolling Stone piece doubted Jones’ insistence that an old Henry Kissinger memo represents proof of “a New World Order plan to forcibly depopulate the Third World.”

In “actual fact,” the Infowars response explains:

as we have exhaustively proven, the population reduction agenda is deeply rooted in the eugenics movement which began amongst the aristocracy in 19th century Britain and later manifested itself under the banner of Hitler’s Third Reich. As is documented in Alex Jones’ seminal film Endgame, Rockefeller’s father, John D. Rockefeller, exported eugenics to Germany from its origins in Britain by bankrolling the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute which later would form a central pillar in the Third Reich’s ideology of the Nazi super race.

But other than that little error in judgment, great work.

“The Rolling Stone Magazine profile is a generally good insight into Alex’s personal character and how he sees his own role  in standing up against tyranny,” the review concludes.

The post Infowars calls Rolling Stone feature on Alex Jones “largely positive and accurate” appeared first on Radio Survivor.

One of the nation’s most prominent self-appointed Presidential scholars gave his audience a history lesson today, minus a fairly important detail. Radio rantmeister Rush Limbaugh was musing on the latest economic statistics, which are disappointing. The unemployment rate has dropped to the still high rate of nine percent, indicating that the tepid recovery will continue to be, well, tepid. Economists blamed bad weather for the mediocre news.

Limbaugh, of course, blamed something else: President Obama.

In 1936 Alf Landon won 8 electoral votes to FDR's 523

“And also keep in mind no president, no incumbent has ever been reelected with an unemployment rate above 8%,” the Rushbo noted. “So that’s where we’re headed here.”

Except, of course, for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was reelected twice with unemployment numbers above eight percent—in 1936 when the jobless rate was at 16.9 percent, and in 1940 when it was at 14.6 percent.

Eventually somebody tapped Limbaugh on the shoulder to point out that he was pulling stats out of his rump.

“Now, okay… ” the Rushbo added later, after a pause. “Yes, there is an exception: FDR was reelected twice with a jobless number higher an 8%, but that’s because FDR never squandered the goodwill that he had. Everybody still believed he was doing his best with the New Deal and to fix everything, and they had a lot of hope and change invested in FDR.  That’s missing with Obama now.  I don’t know if ever gonna recapture that.”

Actually, the Roosevelt story should serve as an object lessons to Republicans. One reason for FDR’s huge re-election victory in 1936 was that Alf Landon, the Republican challenger, was a truly mediocre candidate. And FDR beat Wendell Wilkie in 1940 despite the fact that by then he had squandered much of his good will, thanks to blunders like his attempt to pack the Federal courts. But as the war in Europe heated up, Wilkie just couldn’t convince voters he’d represent an improvement in unstable times.

One other point Limbaugh glided past: when Ronald Reagan retook the White House in 1986, the jobless rate wasn’t at eight percent, but it was at an uncomfortable seven. We’ll seeeee . . .

The post Rush Limbaugh erases then restores FDR to economic history appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Is Howard ready to stick it to Sirius?

Tuesday morning on his radio program Howard Stern reportedly discussed his ongoing contract negotiations with Sirius satellite radio, announcing that, “I am not taking a f—ing paycut.” His tirade was in response to comments made by Sirius CFO David Frear at a UBS investor conference where he hinted that a new contract with Stern might be for less money than his current $100 million a year. Frear also observed that the Stern contract happened in a climate where there were two competing satellite radio companies, whereas now there is only one. He said that as these contracts come up for renewal, “we’ll have the opportunity to get more favorable economic terms there.”

Last week a completely unsubstantiated rumor surfaced on Twitter claiming that Stern might get lured away by Apple, of all companies, in order to do an iTunes-exclusive show for even more money–$600 million. Despite the Columbia Journalism Review chiding journalists for reporting the completely anonymous tweet, the rumor took on a life of its own, with commentators left and right speculating about Stern’s next move, even if most doubt Apple would pony up that kind of cash for an exclusive deal with Stern. Nevertheless, even the Sirius CFO mentioned the possibility of Stern starting his own internet streaming channel.

The real question at hand is whether or not Stern and his power to draw listeners to Sirius is worth $100 million a year. I don’t doubt that Frear was testing the waters at the UBS conference to find out what investors might think of a Stern-less Sirius.

If Stern decides to walk away from Sirius I’m highly doubtful that he’ll find another company willing to pay him nearly as much to do his program, whether its online, on television or back on broadcast radio. He certainly could choose to go independent and online, but again, I’m doubtful he could gross anything close to $100 million anytime soon. Sirius’ gross income is only about eleven times Howard’s annual take, and the company’s got a couple of hundred other channels.

If Sirius decides that Stern isn’t worth $100 million annually, and Stern decides he won’t settle for less, it will be interesting to see if his departure costs the company. That $100 mil amounts to the price of 7.7 million monthly just over 641,000 annual subscriptions, about 39% 3.2% of the service’s current subscriber base. Are there really 7.7 million 641,000 Stern fans ready to dump Sirius if he goes? I really don’t know, and I’m sure that’s the question Sirius executives are trying hard to answer right now.

What we didn’t know last week when I last pondered the situation was if Howard was willing to accept less than his current salary. If one is to believe his tirade on Tuesday, the answer is, no, he won’t accept less. But Howard also trades in controversy and a willingness to bite the hand that feeds. So his on air comments might also be his way to stay in the news and stick it to Sirius.

Whatever happens may be a real test of both Stern’s star power and the value of Sirius’ entire slate of programming. It could also be a test of whatever medium Stern chooses after Sirius. The most boring thing that can happen is that he’ll sign that renewal.

The post Is Howard Stern still worth $100 million a year? He thinks so. appeared first on Radio Survivor.

For example, on December 3, Limbaugh noted that hundreds of unemployed people stood in line for assistance at a community center in Atlanta, Georgia to apply for financial help with their heat and power bills. They’re having a bad cold snap in that city. Eventually officials let applicants come into the building, because the temperature outside that early morning was freezing.

“Standing in line for assistance,” Limbaugh repeated as he read the newspaper article on the story. “I just wonder if they would stand in line for jobs?”

Limbaugh didn’t bother to read the article one paragraph further.

“I’ve had three jobs this year, and I’ve been laid off from all three,” one applicant was quoted as saying. “I’m grateful just to get any type of help they’ll give me.”

Then the Rushbo offered this gem:

Here’s the media tweek of the day. We always announce these and it always works. This story raises very unpolitically correct questions. If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote? Should they be voting? If people who are receiving government assistance, that is, taxpayer assistance, if they weren’t allowed to vote, could you imagine the difference in the political makeup of this country? Can you imagine that?

This is just a think piece. I’m just putting this out there for you to ponder.

So let’s ponder the question. This would mean that a large percentage of the population on Wall Street would be disenfranchised, given the huge quantity of “taxpayer assistance” that a number of prominent financial firms recently received. It would mean that the parents of every county in the U.S. that receives federal aid for schools would lose their right to vote—not to mention the parents in states receiving federal aid for universities and colleges (and not to mention all the employees of these institutions).

It would mean that just about every veteran who takes advantage of VA benefits would lose their voting privileges. It would mean the same for Americans who are receiving extended unemployment benefits.

And, of course, something close to the entire agricultural industry would lose their right to the ballot, given the pervasiveness of agricultural subsidies—$20 billion per year to farmers in “farm income stabilization.” That would also go for the proprietors of the thousands of small and medium sized telephone companies that receive support from the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, and all the recipients of their services.

I could go on and on. Yes, Limbaugh’s proposal would eliminate the franchise for a huge portion of the population of the United States besides the poor whom he and his admirers obviously hate with a passion. And that would make quite a difference in politics. Sure thing. In fact, hardly anyone in this country would get to vote.

But rather than eliminating their right to the ballot, perhaps we should just take away Limbaugh’s and those of his fans, a not insignificant but smaller percentage of the populace whose evident moronic viciousness would not be missed in many quarters.

This is just a think piece, of course. I’m just saying. I’m just putting this out there for you to ponder. Have a nice day.

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As Capitol Hill debates whether to extend the Bush era tax cut for millionaires, Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) pushed back on prominent talk radio hosts in favor of the provision, especially Rush Limbaugh.

“They tell us that extending the tax cuts for the rich will somehow create jobs,” declared Grayson on the floor of the House of Representatives. “We’ve had these tax cuts for the last nine years, and I haven’t noticed a whole lot of jobs being created in the last nine years.”

So why do Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity persist in this “mania,” this “obsession of theirs, that we need to have more tax cuts for the rich, when the economy is flat on its back, and unemployment is almost ten percent?”

“I think I have the answer,” Grayson declared. “They want a tax cut for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves.”

Grayson estimates that extending the Bush era tax cuts for people who make over $250,000 a year would save the nation’s most prominent talk show hosts the following:

Rush Limbaugh – $2,689,135.

Glenn Beck – $1,512,352

Sean Hannity – $1,006,352

Bill O’Reilly – $914,352

Sarah Palin – $638,352

Newt Gingrich – $247,352

Grayson’s figures are based on income estimates published by Forbes and Newsweek magazine. Today the Senate balked at advancing two Democratic plans to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle-income people, but letting the higher break rates expire.

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WABC is clearly after a show that emphasizes Mancow’s libertarian-leaning conservative politics more than the shock-jock type material that initially made him famous. That said, I stand by my hypothesis that it’s nearing sunset for the era of the shock jock. Unless, perhaps the “shock” part has more to do with over-the-top ideology than with strippers and bodily functions. Instead there are lots of Ron Paul interviews.

In fact, it looks like conservative talk radio is becoming the home to the second (and third, and fourth) acts for former shock jocks. The most famous and successful of the bunch is Glenn Beck who began his radio career as a wacky morning zoo DJ.

Apparently it’s not an enormous gulf between reactionary “shock” humor and supposed serious reactionary politics. That’s certainly what Beck biographer Alexander Zaitchik would argue. I’m not sure what that says about either shock jocks or the intellectual depth of conservative talk radio.

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Following on the heels of my unimpressive AM HD radio listening test last week, industry stalwart Radio World magazine published a report that comes to terms with the fact that “AM HD radio has stalled.” In fact, I’d say that characterizing AM HD as “stalled” is very optimistic. Instead, reading the same article I come away with the impression that AM HD just barely launched into orbit, and has since fallen.

In terms of statistics, the article notes that there are fewer than a sixth (16%) as many digital AM stations than FM, totaling only about 6% of all AM stations in the US. Furthermore, even amongst the nation’s most powerful big market AM stations that are broadcasting in digital, “most of those transmit their digital signals only during the day.” Tellingly, RW also observes that, “[m]any of the stations on-air with AM HD are owned by members of the HD Digital Radio Alliance.”

The article points to several non-technical factors that might be influencing AM HD’s lack of success. One is the recent FCC decision permitting FM translator repeater stations to be used to rebroadcast AM signals. Another purported cause is the economy (which we can pretty much blame for nearly everything without further explanation). Finally, apparently station groups are waiting for their FM HD signals to start paying off before making further investments on the AM side.

Significantly, it appears that interference issues, including interference with a station’s own primary analog signal, are behind many stations turning off their digital signal. Furthermore, the issue of receivers switching between digital and analog signals when the radio can’t keep locked to the HD data stream is important. On FM the relatively similar fidelity of the analog and digital HD1 channels means that the “blending” between them isn’t particularly noticeable. But on AM the digital and analog programs sound very different, making the blending from one to the other very noticeable and often quite annoying.

Something I didn’t know before is that iBiquity, the owner of the IBOC HD technology, is offering a new “configuration” for AM stations that air mostly talk programming which reduces the digital signal bandwidth in order to reduce interference, heard most prominently on older high performance AM receivers. As a listener, however, I see the bandwidth reduction as a double-edged sword. While it may minimize interference, it also reduces fidelity, which can obviate some of the minimal gains associated with HD technology in the first place.

In a companion piece, Radio World also talked to a number of additional radio engineers not quoted in the first article. While a few, like Clear Channel’s Brett Gilber based in Tulsa, OK, consider the technology a success, others are less sanguine. Harold Beer, who engineers Michigan State University’s WKAR-AM said, “After years of encouraging listeners to get better quality wideband AM radios, we ended up degrading their listening experience with a 5 kHz bandwidth, –35 dB SNR analog signal once we turned on the IBOC digital.”

In the end, whether you read Radio World’s relatively balanced coverage or just listen to AM HD yourself, it’s hard to conclude that this digital medium is anything close to a success. The question is: will the radio industry see fit to throw more cash down the AM HD Radio money pit?

The post Radio industry journal acknowledges problems with AM HD appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Please stop all the censoring!

As most radio enthusiasts have probably already heard, veteran talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger appeared on the Larry King Live program Tuesday night and announced that she would leave her show at the end of the contract. Schlessinger made the decision in response to growing flack over her repeated use of the so-called “n-word” with a black caller on the Aug. 10 edition of her program. The liberal media watchdog group Media Matters organized a swift and effective campaign calling attention to Dr. Laura’s remarks and joined with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Women’s Media Center, and UNITY Journalists of Color to “hold [the program’s] advertisers accountable and find out exactly where they stand.”

In announcing her departure from the airwaves Dr. Laura put forth a curious interpretation of the Bill of Rights when she told King, “I don’t have the right to say what I need to say. My first amendment rights have been usurped.” Lest anyone be confused, the current state of US law and policy makes it perfectly legal for Dr. Laura to use the “n-word” and most other words in the English language on the radio. The only exceptions to this are in cases of indecency, which only pertains to discussing matters of sexual and excretory functions; racial, gender and other types of epithets are not policed by the FCC in any fashion.

Rather, what happened to Dr. Laura is that she felt the harsh sting of the marketplace at work. Rather than attempting to bring any sort of governmental action the coalition led by Media Matters took aim squarely at Dr. Laura’s advertisers and called them on the carpet for supporting her program and the speech it contains. As it turns out, it looks like big companies like General Motor’s OnStar and Motel 6 decided they’d rather not be associated with a program that tosses around the “n-word” and pulled their advertising.

That is not censorship, and it has nothing to do with the First Amendment, which reads, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech[.]” It does not read, “GM shall not pull its advertising dollars from a program featuring speech it does not wish to be associated with.” In fact, there’s nothing stopping Dr. Laura from continuing to be on air except Dr. Laura, and maybe her production company and affiliates.

That’s the funny thing about the Constitutional right to free speech. One has the right to say just about anything she likes, in nearly any forum, and the government has very few Constitutionally valid reasons to either stop the speech or punish the speaker. But that right to free speech does not mean the speaker cannot be held accountable by others for what she says and the venue where it’s said.

Dr. Laura has benefited significantly from commercial radio consolidation, which made it both feasible and profitable for her show to be carried on hundreds of stations. It’s that size of reach that has made her show attractive to big advertisers like Motel 6. But big companies like these are also protective about their public image. Obviously Dr. Laura miscalculated the public’s tolerance for such brazen use of the “n-word,” especially in confronting an African-American caller. Motel 6 decided it can ill-afford to make the same miscalculation.

Now, advertisers’ tolerance for challenging or offensive speech cuts both ways, making it difficult to get sponsors for programs that are more left-leaning, too. But I always find it curious when free market loving conservatives like Dr. Laura decry being held accountable by the consumers who patronize the companies that fund their paychecks. I’m doubly amazed–but not surprised–that someone with her record of callous remarks should be so thin skinned to begin with.

There’s an observation of the commercial media system from the journalist A.J. Liebling that is often tossed around by media scholars: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” We might paraphrase that as: “freedom to broadcast is guaranteed only to those who own radio stations.” Furthermore, even if there is a right to speak freely, there is no commensurate right to profit. Dr. Laura could certainly take some of her sizable fortune and buy up a few stations to spout her nonsense without regard to what Media Matters, Motel 6, GM or any advertiser thinks.

But somehow I don’t think she’s really willing to put her money where her mouth is.

The post Dr. Laura lived by the market, died by the market appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Christian AM radio station KFAX (1100 am) broadcast the show “Issues After Dark” from in front of a Christian bookstore at Franklin and 17th Street in downtown Oakland in the hours following the verdict. According to a report on KGO-TV (which can be viewed online), as the night wore on, the hosts of the radio show appealed to violent protesters and looters, even encouraging some of them to reconsider their actions. A few of the looters actually brought some of the stolen items to DJs, who planned to return them to the store from which they were taken.  KFAX will hold another live remote broadcast on the day that Mehserle is sentenced. DJ Dion Evans stated in the piece,

“‘I know we influenced people last night because there were people who came out there angry with agendas and because they came to 17th and Franklin where we were, they never made it anywhere else,’ said Evans.

People still broke windows and looted stores, like the Foot Locker on Broadway, but the radio hosts said they were happy it wasn’t worse and point out they even confronted the looters…

‘The funny thing about the difference that we made was that it didn’t require that much effort. It just required people to get off the sidelines,’ said radio host Charles Cole.”

To me, this is a great example of how local, terrestrial radio still plays a vital role for communities. When tensions run high, radio really can help connect people together and allow voices to be heard. It’s an incredible testament that these DJs actually helped to stop looters in their tracks and an important reminder that Thursday night’s protests in Oakland were full of peaceful and productive participants, despite media reports to the contrary.

The post Christian Radio Station Quells Violence after Mehserle Verdict appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Listening to the Radio in Minnie's House at Disneyland

A study released this week from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals some interesting tidbits about how people in the United States are increasingly turning to the Internet as a major source for news.

However, the report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” (PDF) also highlights the fact that people continue to seek information from multiple sources, including radio. According to the report, in a typical day, 54% of Americans “listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.”  The study also found that 59% of study participants reported getting news from both online and offline sources.

The report goes on to describe the demographic differences between various segments of news seekers. Here’s what they say about those who listen to radio news:

“Looking at those who are most likely to listen to radio news either at home or in the car on a typical day, several demographic groups stand out: those between ages 30-64, college graduates, and those who use the internet and cell phones.

Interestingly, those who are online are more likely to get radio news: 57% of internet users get radio news regularly, compared with 44% of non-users. Similarly, 53% of the cell-only population (those who have dropped their landline and rely exclusively on their cell phone) get radio news on a typical day, compared with 39% of those who rely exclusively on landlines.

Radio news is also a major draw for Republicans and conservatives, compared with Democrats, moderates and liberals.”

To see how those listening to radio news differ from those getting their news from TV, newspapers and other sources, take a look at the complete report. It also shares some really interesting findings about participatory news consumers, who tend to utilize multiple news sources and are more likely to interact with the stories that they consume (by blogging, commenting online, posting to Facebook, using Twitter, etc.).

The post New Pew Internet and American Life Study's Take on Radio News Consumers appeared first on Radio Survivor.

There was once a time when a rare breed of radio DJ could scare up controversy and big ratings–not to mention FCC indecency fines–using just his voice, a few on-air cronies and whole lot of bravado, innuendo and hot air. Remember Howard Stern? Arguably the original “shock jock” he was one of the few American radio DJs able to make a nationwide name for himself, including late night talk show appearances and even producing an autobiographical feature film. He made big news in 2004 when he abandoned broadcast for Sirius satellite radio. But once Stern made the transition at the beginning of 2006 he pretty much faded from the mainstream limelight. CBS Radio made attempts to fill the void–such as tapping former Van Halen signer David Lee Roth, who lasted about four months. But no new jock has been found who can replicate Stern’s nationwide morning show dominance.

Chicago-based Mancow Muller was one potential candidate for the King of All Media’s throne. Just as Stern prepared to exit the broadcast airwaves Mancow was experiencing a boost in the number of station’s carrying his “Morning Madhouse” program, and was even beating Stern in the ratings in his home market. Yet only a half-year into Stern’s absence from terrestrial radio Mancow was booted from his home flagship station, Chicago’s Q101. Though the Madhouse continued to air in syndication, Mancow’s candidacy to replace Stern seemed to fade.

Things looked better for Mancow when he was hired on for the morning drive slot on Chicago’s AM talk powerhouse WLS in October of 2008. In the last decade Mancow had tried to de-emphasize his shock jock origins–with minimal success–while playing up his conservative/libertarian political views and Christian faith. That made him not a horrible match for WLS’s mostly conservative talk line-up, although still much more obsessed with potty humor and dick jokes than even ol’ Rushbo.

But the new Mancow show wouldn’t last. Despite the ‘cow scoring good ratings for listeners age 12 and up, the station as a whole was slipping in the more prized 25-54 demographic. So this past week WLS sent Mancow out to pasture. In a memo to station staff, WLS GM Michael Damsky wrote,

While Mancow and Pat consistently put on a highly entertaining and often attention-grabbing two hours, the content and delivery simply did not fit the expectations of the WLS listener.

During this same week Howie decided to get himself some free publicity by quite publicly considering dumping satellite radio to join up as a judge on American Idol. Although there are now reports circulating that Stern was never actually offered anything by the American Idol producers, that doesn’t change the basic fact that Stern is no longer of interest as a morning radio shock jock. He can only get press by threatening to crash media parties where a lot of folks don’t want him invited.

This all leads me to conclude that it’s nearing sunset for the morning radio shock jock.

Now, I’m not arguing that the shock jock morning show is about to disappear altogether. As long as there are rock radio stations looking to pander to young white male listeners aged 18 – 35 there will be some demand for third-rate Stern and Mancow imitators well versed in poop and penis jokes, reactionary politics and thinly-veiled misogyny. But these shows have become mostly local or regional. Increasingly shock jocks are not leading the ratings the way Stern and his brethren once did. Instead they’re contentedly leading their young male demographic, which is also a declining audience.

One can come up with any number of theories for the descent of the shock jock. As someone who listened to Stern regularly back in the 1980s I would argue that the whole genre became overly distilled down to certain titillating elements that were once just a part of the King Of All Media’s shtick. In my opinion Stern was innovator, bringing a novel degree of occasionally smart irreverence, uncomfortable candor and self-deprecation to a genre of radio that had otherwise been dominated by silly characters in between short music sets. Part of Stern’s shtick included strippers and potty talk, and as he got more successful he realized that brand of shock was a sure-fire ratings getter, and it sadly became a bigger part of his program. His imitators mostly left out any intelligence, honesty or true candor, distilling the formula down to toilets and boobs, with a side of jingoism.

Still, what was shocking in 1989 isn’t so shocking in 2010. Just like there’s still an audience for classic rock cover bands, there’s still an audience for shock jocks. But now that it’s mostly aimed at adolescent boys the morning shock jock show is not a growth industry.

If it’s true that Stern fabricated the offer to join American Idol, then I think that will be the strongest proof that the reign of the King of All Media is over, leading to the dissolution of the shock jock empire. It will show that Stern and the shock jock are now just sideshow clowns who are only interesting when they threaten to stomp their big floppy feet into the center ring. Stern may go laughing all the way to the bank with Sirius’ money, but it might be his last laugh.

The post Howard Stern Considers Leaving Sirius for Idol, Mancow Out to Pasture in Chicago (again). Is This Sunset for the Shock Jock? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

He may not have been able to successfully inherit the leadership of the Republican party this year, but at least good ol’ Rushbo gets a consolation prize: a whole musical performed in his honor.

Last night Chicago’s famed Second City comedy company premiered their newest production, Rush Limbaugh! The Musical! The play follows Rush through his rise to prominence as aided and abetted by comrades like Anne Coulter and opponents like Rep. Barney Frank. Second City says,

The score for the show will feature a pastiche of Broadway musicals such as Spring Awakening, Wicked, and Rent. You can call it “Dispirit of the Radio.”

I have to admit that I am both intrigued by the concept, and a little disappointed. Limbaugh is such an over-the-top personality on-air that he verges on self-parody. Not only does he seem sometimes to know this, but he even seems to revel in it. So aiming a parody musical at him is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

Reading today’s reviews of opening night, it looks like the critics agree. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones writes,

this uncertain show can’t compete with the outsize personality of the object of its satire….

In last year’s “Rod Blagojevich Superstar!,” the disgraced former governor of Illinois went down like a nine pin… . But Limbaugh is a tougher customer than the truly weird Blago, not least because (like a lot of successfully outrageous radio personalities) you never quite know with Limbaugh where the revelations end and the act begins.

More to the point, Hedy Weiss at the Chicago Sun-Times simply concludes,

Sadly, the whole exercise… turns out to be largely predictable, unfunny and surprisingly dated.

Even so, I’m not entirely dissuaded from checking out the show. In this day and age, when’s the next time I’ll have the opportunity to see a musical (even a parody) about a radio star?

The post Rush Limbaugh! The Musical! appeared first on Radio Survivor.

KZYX- Home of "Trading Time"

One of terrestrial radio’s many benefits is that is has the capacity to be a resource for the local listening community. Since in recent years there has been less and less local content on commercial stations, there’s a great opportunity for college and community radio stations to put even more emphasis on the needs of the listening audience in one’s backyard.

My all-time favorite local radio show is on the community radio station KZYX in Philo, California. “Trading Time” is call-in swap show (airing every Saturday morning from 11am to noon) that allows people in Mendocino County to advertise goods for sale, rides needed, or items that they are looking for. It’s like a community bulletin board on the radio (or a live version of Craigslist).

The folksy hosts of “Trading Time” introduce callers, repeat details about the various items for sale, and read off emails and snail mail-delivered listings that have come in from other neighbors. Although on the surface listening to a bunch of people calling in with items to sell or trade might sound mundane, there’s something about the show that is riveting. It provides a real slice of life for the local community and you get to hear a cross-section of folks sharing news of what their current list of cast-offs might be.

Scenery near Philo

Someone might call in offering an old truck. Another caller could be seeking a ride to San Francisco. And yet another might be looking for a couch. In addition to calling in live during the show, members of the community can also submit their listings of items they’d like to buy, sell, trade or barter to the station by snail mail or by using an online submission form.

If you don’t live near Philo, similar shows air all over the country, including the following:

KSCJ 1360 AM in Sioux City, Iowa:  KSCJ Swap Shop is on the air Saturdays and Sundays

WJXR 92.1 FM in Jacksonville, Florida : Swap Shop airs Monday through Saturday mornings

Mid Kansas Radio in McPherson, Kansas: Swap Shop airs daily. You can also check out some of the daily listings on their website. Today they’ve got free puppies and someone is looking for a lava lamp.

WGNS Talk Radio in Murfreesboro, Tennessee : Swap ‘n Shop has been on the air since 1947! Some of the latest listings include hay, pit bull puppies, and a “wheel barrel” for sale and someone who is looking for help fixing their “fridge.”

KGAS in Carthage, Texas: KGAS Radio Swap Shop is on the air weekday mornings. Callers can list up to 4 items in 30 seconds. No firearms allowed and only clean and sanitized mattresses.

The post Radio Survivor's Top Radio Shows – Jennifer's #2: "Trading Time" appeared first on Radio Survivor.

As a proud thirty-eight year-old member of Generation X, I have become just a little disturbed by a trend I’ve noticed in the last few years. One might call this trend the “indie-rockification” of public radio. As my fellow grunge-survivors and I, raised on the so-called “first wave” of alternative rock and derided by boomers as slackers, creep closer to middle age we have become a more valuable target demographic for public stations. And, with commercial radio hemorrhaging jobs as we graduated college, those Gen Xers who went into careers in radio pretty much only had public radio as a viable option. So not only are more Gen Xers listening to public radio, increasingly they’re in charge.

One of the best products of this trend is the program Sound Opinions, produced by Chicago Public Radio and syndicated by American Public Media. Billing itself as the world’s only Rock N Roll talk show, Sound Opinions is hosted by Gen X popular music critic Jim DeRogatis, who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune’s rock and roll writer Greg Kot (born in 1957, so just scant older than the typical 1961 cut-off to be considered Gen X… but who’s counting?).

The hour-long program is custom made for the true music geek of the sort who a decade ago used to haunt record stores and college radio stations, but who is now forced to spend more time at the corner coffee shop consuming music blogs on a laptop. Instead of dwelling in rock-star gossip, each program features music news that actually gets into the real issues affecting popular music, such as the RIAA’s anti-piracy lawsuits and the proposed merger of concert giants Live Nation and Ticketmaster (they tend to oppose both).

Some weeks they will have in an artist for an in-studio performance or interview. Their guests tend to have a lot of what one might call “indie cred,” whether they’re up-and-coming indie artists like The Dodos, or alt rock stalwarts The Flaming Lips. I have to admit that listening to Sound Opinions has turned me on to some great and unusual musicians like Saul Williams Tim Fite after getting to hear them play live in such an intimate and immediate setting.

What makes the program compelling and keeps me tuning in every week are the personalities of the hosts, where the Jersey-born and more excitable DeRogatis plays Ebert to Kot’s more unflappable Siskel. In fact, the two tend to agree more than they disagree, but it’s always fun when they needle each other for something like giving a “buy it” rating to Jonas Brothers CD. Whether they’re reviewing albums or discussing the state of the music industry, it always sounds like they’re telling the truth as they see it, not made pretty for public radio. Where AAA public radio stalwarts like World Cafe can come off as precious and self-satisfied, DeRogatis and Kot are never afraid to express real excitement or disappointment with an artist or album, regardless of what the indie rock consensus is.

Interestingly enough, Sound Opinions didn’t start on public radio, but rather begin with a successful seven year run on Chicago’s WXRT, one of the last surviving commercial rock stations that still has a vestigial claim to the “progressive rock radio” title. In 2005 Kot and DeRogatis were lured over to public staiton WBEZ with the promise of better facilities, a bigger budget, podcasting and a shot at syndication.

If you had told me when I was eighteen (in 1989) that when I reached my thirties I would be hearing new indie bands–or even grizzled underground rock veterans–every week on public radio, I’d have thought you were tripping hard. But now that it’s reality, I’m glad to get my weekly dose of Sound Opinions.

The post RadioSurvivor’s Top Radio Shows – Paul’s #4: Sound Opinions appeared first on Radio Survivor.