Three stations to flip to liberal talk this week

[LTR]

And what timing, with the Inauguration this week.

http://ltradio.blogspot.com/

This week, liberal talk and Air America come to three stations:

Washington, DC: WWRC (1260 AM)
Detroit, MI: WXDX (1310 AM)
Cincinnati, OH: WCKY (1530 AM)

The three stations are owned by Clear Channel.

It should be noted that the Cincinnati station gives the format perhaps it's strongest signal, with a station that can be picked up throughout most of the eastern part of the country and the midwest after sunset.

Also, the Detroit and Cincinnati stations will add some of their own talent, with Jerry Springer airing on both stations mornings 9-noon. The Detroit station will get a local show, possibly hosted by Nancy Skinner, formerly of WLS in Chicago.

In Brattleboro, VT, WKVT 1490AM flipped to the format last week. And there will be a shakeup of LA radio stations on February 3, with the sports simulcast of 690 in Tijuana and 1150 in LA migrating to the one signal of 570 in LA, 570's adult standards format moving to 690 and 1150 heavily rumored by reputable industry sources to be flipping to liberal talk. Stay tuned. Incidentally, these affected stations are all owned by Clear Channel, which is obviously excited about liberal talk.

Read more here:

http://ltradio.blogspot.com/

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Clear Channel suddenly wants to be part of Liberal Talk radio.....

now that it makes money.

:eyes:

[Osamasux]

4. If they make money fine. As long as they air it.

Most stations air the Rush-crap because it makes money. Fox and Sinclair may be in it for their cause, but most are in business to make money. Who cares, as long as the message gets out.

[LTR]

7. It's all about the money

But what in radio isn't?

I have no bone to pick with Clear Channel over this. They saw a niche, and they're going for it. And it's clear many people like the stations.

My beefs with Clear Channel are over many other issues, such as bland programming, monopolistic practices, strongarm tactics and price gouging in their concert business.

Clear Channel's music stations are the epitome of blandness. The sound is over-compressed, with low-quality compressed music files being shuffled around a hard drive via a program called Prophet. Notice that the sound quality of FM radio sounds worse than it did a decade or two ago? Compare you local commercial station to a low-budget station on the left side of the dial. No comparison.

The jocks? Quite a few of them on your local station have probably never even been to your town. They pre-record their air shifts, send it over via ISDN lines, and shuffle inbetween your favorite songs. To their credit, they have cleaned up this situation a little.

To put the Clear Channel-dominated concert business in perspective, a decade ago, I paid $25 to see a double bill of Metallica and Guns n' Roses. Great show (though Metallica clearly blew GNR off the stage with their great set). I saw a whole day's lineup of bands for the same price at Lollapalooza. A decade before that, you could see bands like Van Halen putting on some of the greatest shows ever for half that.

Nowadays, if you just want to see the mediocre pop flavor of the month (the Matchbox 20s and John Mayers of the world), you'll pay at least double that. And the atmosphere is as sterile as the emergency room at the hospital. Wanna see somebody good? Better take out a second mortgage on the house or delay that Land Rover payment to see the Eagles or Bruce Springsteen. Who controls nearly all the booking in this country? Clear Channel Entertainment. Don't wanna go through CCE? Well, the Clear Channel-owned radio stations won't play your stuff. When's the last time you've heard String Cheese Incident (who do their own booking) on KBCO in Denver? See?

This situation is beyond appalling.

All in all, the only thing CC really seems to do right is talk radio. I have to say, I like their take on their progressive talk format, where they combine the best that the format has to offer. I will credit them for that.

[Stew225]

11. Agreed. Nice analysis. eom

[Eric J in MN]

8. I'n ambivalent because they're giving Clear Channel power.

At the same time, I trust that the people at Air America know what they're doing with regard to expansion.

[tives12]

12. ...and control it.

I'm sure that CC loves the fact that they can now have some liberal shows. They will probably try to censor those shows as much as possible as well. I don't expect AAR to let them.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Their buddy doesn't have to sweat "reelection" anymore so they can

now play Dixie Chix music and have other people on the air who don't like the chimp.

[bullimiami]

3. crap channel has AA and Ed Shultz on a number of stations already

one thing I dont like is that they pick and choose the programming.

here in miami the schedule is

5am-6am Wall Street Journal this Morning with Michael Wallace & Cheryl Simone Miller
6am-9am Morning Sedition with Mark Riley & Marc Maron
9am-Noon The Randi Rhodes Show - AM Edition (replay of previous show)
Noon-3pm The Al Franken Show
3pm-6pm The Ed Schultz Show (live feed)
6pm-7pm The Randi Rhodes Show - PM Edition (live only for one hour)
7pm-10pm The Majority Report with Janeane Garafalo & Sam Seder
10pm-1am The Mike Malloy Show


and now they dont use the AA news feeds but CNN radio news.

[LTR]

9. I think this is a good approach

Let's face it, Air America has flaws. Some of the shows are relatively weak (such as "Unfiltered"). Why not air AAR's best shows, and combine them with some other solid offerings, such as Schultz and Stephanie Miller, which are great shows? Why not air local shows?

Air America is not the be-all, end-all of liberal talk. There is a lot of strong product out there, and CC would be killing themselves if they went all-AAR. The best approach is to combine all the best the format has to offer. That's why the CC-owned stations are doing much, much better than the straight-AAR stations. They know what works.

As for the Miami station, this is a strange schedule, likely due to Randi Rhodes' show being broadcast live up the road in West Palm Beach. Hence, they staggered the lineup a little.

And AAR's news programming is substandard. Sure, there's content there, but they really need better newsreaders. There will be a shakeup eventually at CC talk stations, with many of them picking up the in-house FOX News, though the liberal talk stations will not be airing the FOX breaks. Look for more of the CC-owned liberal talkers going with AP, CNN and even AAR's news. Perhaps CC will do their own in-house newsbreaks, ala the CC-owned FOX Radio News (they are licensing the FOX name and some of the talent, like they do with FOX Sports Radio). AAR really needs to beef up their news division, to keep CC from even thinking of airing FOX breaks on their liberal talk stations.

[Osamasux]

5. Franken said he was looking forward to taking on Rush in DC.

He was being interviewed on TV earlier in the week. I forget which show it was on. He pointed out that he has beaten Rush in every market where they've gone head to head.

[rox63]

6. Makes me wonder what they're up to...

Since we know that Clear Channel is run by Bushies, this makes me wonder what they are up to? The 2 Boston-area stations that have flipped to a liberal talk format are also owned by Clear Channel, which suprised the hell out of me when I heard about it. Are they simply doing this because it's a money-maker? Or are they trying to take control of liberal radio, so they can corrupt it or kill it?

[LTR]

10. CC likes control

They also like money.

And I'm sure CC appreciates the format rescuing some of their near-dead AM signals. Many of the stations that flipped were just filling up airtime, since the existing AM formats are pretty limited and don't attract new (younger) listeners. Liberal Talk's rise is definitely the radio news story of last year. It actually brought comatose AM stations back to life and made them prosperous and successful. Who wouldn't want some of that?

[SHRED]

13. Yep

Our station in San diego, KLSD (I kid you not!), was a dying station but now it is rocking the house with progressive talk!

http://www.klsd1360.com/main.html