Until what you would ask? Until management began its long deep descent into the vaults of exterior economic forces in support of the status quo and to withdraw the easier advertising dollar.
It began innocently enough with a call to the Jerry Williams Program on Labor Day, September 4, 1972. A caller lined up on the board with others that night. Nothing more unusual than in a myriad of nights before but this call would set in motion forces that would change the direction of talk radio for the foreseeable future.
The caller purported to be a recently returning Vietnam Veteran from East Boston and he recounted in three-dimensional pictures detail scenes of that war on radio. Subsequently, a tape of that call was given to then presidential candidate George McGovern and he played it to a rally at the University of Minnesota on October 12,1972.
Immediately, the Westinghouse suits at WBZ directed Jerry Williams to “never play that tape” on WBZ Radio air again. The suits had gotten calls. Calls from the Nixon White House and others telling the suits they had better ‘ control’ that Jerry Williams person. And so they tried. Jerry Williams remained in the top tiers of the rating service books and WBZ was reaping that harvest with a full commercial load during his broadcasts but they knew they could never ‘control’ Williams. So, when his contract was up for renewal in the fall of 1976 Westinghouse’s WBZ chose not to renew Jerry Williams contract and he was off their air by October.
It is my contention that the majority of radio management people come out of radio time sales and hardly ever out of the programming department and that is a major flaw. They were successful is selling Budweiser and Bufferin “spots” on radio. So, in the minds of management they were perfect to run and manage a radio station. Bluntly, the Cowardly Lion had more courage before he got to the Yellow Brick Road than most radio general managers could muster in a lifetime. At least newspapers make an effort to separate advertising dollars from the editorial pages but radio stations don’t even try.
While there is no clear evidence that Jerry Williams ever made Nixon’s published “Enemies List” the effect was the same – why take a chance on a “muckraker”, a term Jerry wore as a badge of honor, when you can sell about the same amount of Bufferin and Budweiser with someone who will make only small waves and never create a tsunami.
The “media empire” is by its nature as conservative as the Chamber of Commerce and talk radio is nothing more than audio commerce. Again, it is run by radio time salesman. If they could run inoffensive static and sell it they would.
In conclusion, the rise of conservative talk radio is a mere reflection of the men and women behind the curtain. It supports the status quo; it comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted.
To be sure, Jerry Williams went on to have a successful career and other pretenders to the “Dean’s” throne are trying to claim his scepter but the effects of Westinghouse’s WBZ Radio cave to the entrenched power base lingers to this day.
A Rush Limbaugh, a Howie Carr or a Jay Severin succeed precisely because they know their place. Whether they believe what they spout or not they know that a “progressive voice” is a threat to the corporate bottom line and they dare not cross it.
As you will read in Burning Up The Air Jerry Williams created the talk radio medium, as we know it. Sadly, the progressive side of it died with him.
The demand for its return will only come if more of us do ‘go to that window, open it and do shout, ” I am as mad as Hell and I am not going to take it anymore”.
(Note: This poster was Jerry Williams first Executive Producer when he returned to Boston in 1981 at WRKO and is in no way connected to the authors of Burning Up The Air – Jerry Williams, talk Radio, and the Life In Between or their publisher, Commonwealth Editions.)
a lifetime talent. I was reminiscing with a friend who listens to Air America about sneaking the transistor radio in our beds to listen to WMEX as kids and lamenting how rare talent like Jerry’s is. The Malcolm X interviews were awesome (and to me as a kid both scary and eye-opening). He interviewed with Theo Bikel on the day JFK was assassinated. He had a great way of seeing through hype and BS. He did a lot of advocacy for Kerry vs Shannon who he saw as a party aparachik. He despised Mike Dukakis and John Silber and really stood up for Bill Weld in the beginning. Before his first term was over he was pointing out the Weld admin corruption. Same with Ray Flynn–Jerry loved populism, but would but didnt put up with pols who didnt live up to their promise. He could switch to humor and totally away from politics in heartbeat. The cross-over talk between him and Larry Glick was hilarious.
That there’s plenty of progressive talk radio, and on FM no less. And appropriately dear to the heart of any progressive, about 1/3 of it is paid for by various government funding (taxes): NPR
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p>Isn’t that just what you want?
what comes off as “progressive” on NPR is middle of the road stuff. The voices and images fit the notion of blandness and elitism that conservative like to paint liberals with. Now Pacifica Radio clearly liberal public radio—I dont think we get that around here.
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p> I think the point of PJ’s diary was re Jerry Williams as an unapolgetic liberal/progressive. He was conservative when he felt the issue called for conservativism. Progressive as a label doesnt really fit him–to the extent that there is a difference Williams was usually liberal.
to you, I suspect, since you are a liberal.
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p>I have plenty of liberal friends who have hissy fits over fox news but completely fail to see bias in CNN, CBS, NYTimes, etc etc etc
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p>For fun and some good points too:
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p>http://www.pajamasmedia.com/20…
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p>
The article is written by Pam Meister, who has a website called familysecuritymatters.org (“The National Security Resource for American Families” — uhh?); which website contains an “Enfactlopedia”. You can learn a whole lot about family security matters from that there enfactlopedia.
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p>Just thought you’d all like to know.
a lot of canned sardines left over from the last time I was scared.
I have to agree here. Fox News is like kryptonite to liberals and it’s funny to watch. Is it completely right wing? Absolutely. So, don’t watch it. But please stop acting like there are no liberal biases in our society. You lose all credibility when they do so.
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p>I’d also get used to them being around. In spite of Sean Penn’s recent comment that their “end is near”, they seem to be doing pretty well in the cable ratings. And no, I haven’t watched anything on Fox for well over a year. Why bother?
Did you just miss the run-up to the Iraq War and the extraordinary lack of sane, anti-Iraq-War voices that preceded it? That was true of CNN (starring Glenn Beck!), of CBS (starring distortions of Clinton’s anti-terrorism efforts!) and of the NYTimes (starring Judith Miller!)
moderate with liberal leanings.
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p>Now NPR gets it from both sides– so that is some evidence of moderation
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p>http://cityonahillpress.com/ar…
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p>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
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p>The left gets little attention in the US. This is the left http://www.wsws.org/
This is from NPR’s web site
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p>As far as the invidual stations are concerned, NPR states:
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While the reporting might not seem slanted conservative, the segments of opinion and analysis have given extra time to people from Con thinktanks.
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p>Here are the numbers to back that point up.
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p>Since reality has a liberal bias, conservative opinion gets to balance the reality-based reporting at NPR.
I didn’t move to the Boston area until 1977. I remember hearing Williams on the radio in the 1980s. Mostly I remember him ranting against the cleanup of Boston harbor. Maybe my radio didn’t receive the progressive portion of the broadcast.
from the progressive portrayed here to pure theatre for the sake of riling up audiences and generating listenership. He would often berate me and what I was doing when I was in charge of the Boston Harbor Cleanup when I was executive director of the MA Water Resources Authority (1987-1992). That’s all part of public life in MA, and I really didn’t begrudge it, even when he would make up absolute lies about what we were doing. I remember doing an interview with him in the studio and accusing him of telling lies, and his eyes just twinkled in pleasure.
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p>Funny story: My daughter, who at the time was 8 or 9 years old, would find herself listen to his ravings day after day returning from summer day camp on the radio tuned to this station by the driver of the van. She came home one day and said, “I hate WRKO!” We said, “Why?” She said, “Because they are all mean people and Republicans!” I laughed to think of Jerry being grouped in this way with Republicans after all he had been through during the Vietnam era.
Sorry, Paul. As an MWRA rate payer myself and as Jerry’s first Producer at WRKO Jerry Williams was on target. As he said time and time again when I was there and beyond the MWRA was not “cleaning up Boston Harbor, they were stopping the continued polluting of Boston Harbor.” And in that there is a major difference. One thing I cannot understand to this day is why only a handful of cities and towns were forced to pay for this “Clean-up” when Boston Harbor is in fact a national resource and an international harbor. Perhaps, you should have considered putting up toll gates at the entrance of Boston Harbor and charging the polluting ships that discharged their waste and more into the harbor. Paul, you should have made clean water the first priority in Homeland Security even though the word was not invented then except perhaps by the Third Reich…
Nonetheless, you erred in narrowing the focus of cleaning up the harbor to the few and the powerless. It was and is a national issue and you and the Dukakis administration failed to make it such.
So, Jerry criticism was justified although I know he admired you and I am sure he told you that many times – off the air if not on. Nonetheless, in the face of pressure from the Dukakis State House to the suits at WRKO Jerry Williams persisted on afflicting the comfortable at the MWRA and comforting the afflicted rate payers on this issue. The former Bufferin and Budweiser salesman now GM at RKO didn’t like Jerry to talk about it but he continued anyway.
Still, you have redeemed yourself in my eyes for the outstanding job you have done in rescuing the Beth Isreal/Deaconess Hospital. Perhaps, you have a better mission statement at the BI/D and perhaps you were given more control than you were given at the MWRA. Whatever the reason, I think if Jerry were alive today and talking about your accomplishments there and your daughter was listening she would be smiling at the wonderful things that Democrat on WRKO was saying about her father.
but I always felt it was a distinction without a difference: By stopping the pollution of the Harbor — from the sewage coming out of 43 communities — the Harbor was cleaned up. Once you stop discharging sludge, the natural action of the tides results clean water in the Harbor. The term Boston Harbor Cleanup was just a shorthand way of saying that. He, and I guess you, didn’t want to hear it that way and clearly felt it was somehow misleading. But no one ever talked about dredging the Harbor and removing pollutants in that way.
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p>On the money front, yes, the various state administrations (Sargent, Dukakis, and King) and multiple Leigislatures absolutely failed to use the money available from the federal government for the MDC to upgrade the sewage treatment plants in Quincy and Winthrop. The Conservation Law Foundation and the EPA rightfully sued the state for failure to comply with the Clean Water Act, and ultimately why the MWRA was created to do the job and raise the rates to pay for it. This left the ratepayers in those 43 cities and towns to bear most of the $3 billion project cost.
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p>All this meant that the funds allocated by the EPA to MA were instead spent on pollution control projects in other MA cities and towns. (The money did not revert to the federal government.) So, in many ways, this was an unfair burden on the people in those 43 communities.
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p>While this is ancient history now, there are lots of lessons. Maybe the state will be smarter about investing in infrastructure in the future.
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p>Many thanks for your kind comments about the hospital.
As I further remember it, had Mike Dukakis filed under the then Federal Clean Water Act the federal government would have paid I think over 80% of the cost of the “clean-up”. Unfortunately, Michael was too busy planning and then running for president to follow through on that and Massachusetts lost out as subsequent “Republicrat” presidents gutted the Clean Water Act by underfunding it.
I hope that if there is a clean sweep in November and either Barack Obams or Hillary Clinton are elected that the federal clean water act will be revitalized.
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p>As to Jerry,not a bad guy. Not perfect by any means … read the book but God do we need him now. On Monday I heard Jay Severin say on his daily talk show that Barack Obama was “assassinated” by Reverend Wright and I know that Severin chose that word precisely because of its inflammatory and charged nature coming up on the 40th anniverary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. You would NEVER hear such ominous language coming from Jerry Williams.
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p>In point of fact, one afternoon we were doing a simulcast with Alan Berg on KOA in Denver. A caller to Berg’s station said that someone should assassinate the president, then Ronald Reagan. Jerry and I hit the kill button instantly and those words never went on the air in Boston. However, Berg let them run on KOA in Denver. Later that afternoon I was on the phone with the Secret Service explaining the situation and that it never aired in Boston. The Secret Service still asked me what the caller “looked like”. Ah, der.. . this is radio. As you may know, a year or so later Alan Berg was assassinated in the garage of his apartment building by some extremist right wing group.
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p>All in all, talk show hosts and politicians will never get along and may be the shouldn’t. Jerry Williams broadcast were often heated but I think you will find that they were always civil which is more than you can ever say about Severin and his ilk.
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p>Again, keep up the great work at the BI/D. A sign of how well you are doing is when people who work there speak highly of you. That must give you great job satisfaction which must have been hard to find in government work.
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p>PJ – Paul J. Yovino
death threats. I think a liberal radio get killed in California this year?
the unlikely hero in providing federal financial asistance for the Boston Harbor project turned out to be President George Bush (the first one), who unexpectedly included funds for the project in one of his budgets. (Who knows, maybe to further highlight MA politicians!) The Democrat-controlled Congress then was embarrassed into including it in the appropriations that year and in subsequent years.
was too complex to pigeon-hole. I am at work now but will return.
…from little Rhode Island. Any Rhode Islander listens to WPRO, AM 630 to talk radio. You hear it in barber shops, delis, everywhere people gather. It is cutting. Rhode Island in probably no more corrupt than Massachusetts, but they talk openly about the shenanigans that go on in the state and city governments.
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p>Former Providence mayor and twice jailed Buddy Cianci has his own show. If he can’t call ’em, nobody can.
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p>We could use some of that here.
if it wasn’t for Jerry Williams.
Yes, Jerry created his own Frankenstein or is it Frankensteen… More to the story about Howie later. Et tu Brutus…