How LIMBOsevic got on to turn a local radio station TOTALLY WINGNUT, when he went nat'l/syndicated

[UTUSN]

There was this ONE, local talk radio station in the '90s. The line-up was touchy-feely, Dr Joy BROWNE, Dr Dean EDELL, Dr David VISCOTT. Local news hour at Noon. Then something happened: LIMBOsevic went national/syndicated. The local wingnuts were nervous, only played him on time-delay and still kept their Noon local news hour. But within a year they got their Wingnut testosterone together and went totally wingnut, daring to air his whole 3 hours LIVE. I monitored/spied on him from the beginning and knew what a threat he was/is.

I've bombarded the ex-owner with Lib e-mails for 20 yrs, once he told me, "I refuse to be your (wingnut) whipping boy!"

Anyway, I've asked him whether he made the decision to go all-wingnut and feature LIMBOsevic totally and finally he answered:


**********QUOTE******

When I started at (radio station), we were airing a roster of hosts provided by the ABC Talkradio network,but, over time, they went away. The practice was to take hosts who were on the air already on a local station and just reformat the program and make it national at the same time.


When Owen Spann in San Francisco, for reasons I never learned, lost his national slot, ABC decided not to find another host. The national network idea was not getting on the air in the largest markets and so it wasn't making the money they wanted.


Before Spann left the air, we received a pitch from the former ABC exdc who started the Talkradio network, Ed McLaughlin, about a guy he was trying to take national, Rush Limbaugh. We took Rush because he was offered at a time we needed, and it worked out just fine. Rush helped remake AM and national radio. ABC was just a little ahead of the market.

*********UNQUOTE*****

[CanSocDem]

1. The Limbo clone in my area...

...started as a call-in format. It seemed to give his employer the illusion that they were winning the time-slot that, in turn inflated the clones' sense of importance. As these things have a habit of doing, the majority of callers were against something/anything/authority of any stripe and since we were living in a social democracy, that meant anti-government.

All those disaffected anonymous callers eventually mobilized to have him elected to parliament where he spent one unremarkable term and then returned to his radio show. I overheard his show being played at the liquor store the other day and had to ask the proprietor how he had managed to tune in Rush Limbaugh and why was he listening to him. The answer was pure "Limbosevic". "...it's infotainment..."!!!

.

[UTUSN]

2. Yip, "infotainment" but he single-handedly revived Wingnutism

It was a known, absurdly marginalized philosophy until he came along.

First, I was jarred by his theme music, the point of it being that Being-Wingnut was HIP/catchy/jarring, not Old-Fogey.

Then I noticed how he would screen out all FRINGE wingnuts, all BIRCHERs, all OneWorld conspirators. His single-minded theme was to make wingnutism SEEM MAINSTREAM, not NUTS.

ON EDIT: The third thing was his SCORCHED EARTH policy, NO compromise with "Libs". Ever.

[UTUSN]

3. farewell kick for one of my substantive nonerratic threads nt