The first success in the fight to keep progressive talk radio was the saving of 92.1 (“The Mic”) in Madison, WI. Fearless, organized effort on the part of listeners and advertisers saved a station that, though it was number two in its market, had been placed on the chopping block for alleged “business reasons.” (For more details, see the diary by MikeB or the documentary film.) Elsewhere in the country, listeners have not had the same immediate success. If you look at the dKosopedia [[Progressive radio stations]] page (which is updated periodically by myself and others), you’ll see the words “threatened” and “flipped” far too often. But you’ll also see websites and listservs of organizations that are fighting to take back the airwaves.
In Boston, tireless (and sleepless) Daily Kos member rougegorge founded a group in the wee hours just before the lights went out in Boston. Within hours, the Yahoo! listserv had 50 members. A website appeared in short order. Since then, we’ve been meeting, negotiating, writing letters, and otherwise working our way back onto the air. Our efforts are paying off. Sheldon and Anita Drobny, the founders of the network that became Air America Radio, are considering acquiring a Boston-area station as part of their Nova M Network, which is celebrating its first birthday in Phoenix as we speak. We will be holding an event from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, April 26 to welcome them to Boston and overwhelm them with our enthusiasm. The venue will be Jimmy Tingle’s Off-Broadway Theater. Progressive comedian Jimmy Tingle’s brief routines and advertisements, delivered in a thick and chewy Boston accent, were among the highlights of the old station. For more information, or to RSVP (and space IS limited!) see http://www.bostonprogressivetalk.net.
We’re also working to address the big-picture problem of media consolidation. How did we get into the sorry mess where listeners in true-blue Democratic Boston starve for a single progressive station while ten stations fight over the audience for Rush Limbaugh? Well, the FCC, which is supposed to be guarding the public interest, has been asleep on the job. See David Brock’s The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Or visit StopBigMedia.com, a project of FreePress.net. See also NonStopRadio.com, home central for the organizations fighting to bring back progressive radio.
Well, that’s the broadcast for today. Hope you can join us in 11 days in Boston! I’ll be back tomorrow with my editorial, so please tune in!
Any of you been to Jimmy Tingle’s theater before?
Awesome progressive talk goes on 3 hours every day on the South Coast. Sadly, the station’s signal doesn’t really make it up to the Boston area.
Anyone who doesn’t know by now that I am a conservative must be freshly home from visiting another planet. But conservative talk radio seems to target a totally different audience than intelligent conservatives (that is not necessarily an oxymoron, people!).
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If you have ever listened to the commercials on, say Hannity, you will find that his sponsors are targeting a less-educated, financially and medically troubled and assuredly self-righteous audience. They, like Rushbaugh and Hannity (and Fathead Franken, et al!) are an insult to the intelligence of conservative and liberal alike.
is a big “et al”. I’m not a fan of Al’s — he tends to laugh at his own jokes, which aren’t so great anyway — but there are lots of hosts on the progressive talk station and they represent a pretty wide spectrum in terms of their approach. Have you ever heard Amy Goodman? Thom Hartmann? Rachel Maddow? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.? These are not people who insult the intelligence of their listeners.
…we used to listen to Clear Channel’s Framingham station, and we know what their fraud was, but two suggestions
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Get Sirius and listen to Internet streaming. I’m not sure what Nova M is going to do–unless things have changed in the last couple of weeks, they only have two broadcasters, Mike Malloy, whose rants are cute for a while but wear thin, and somebody else I’ve never heard. But several liberal radio stations have Internet streaming, and they can easily be clicked onto.
from other networks as well as from their own.
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Internet streaming is great, but only for people who are hooked up to their computers and have fast Internet connections. We need to reach people in their cars.