Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

WRKO NEAR BANRUPTCY?

By

Today many received an email from Jason Wolfe, the diminutive Vice President of Programming and Operations for Entercom’s Right Wing Talk station WRKO that WRKO was apparently in desperate financial straits.

WRKO has fired the African-American talk show host Reese Hopkins and replaced him with the very white Right wind syndicated Laura Ingraham.

As with most syndication programming it cost a local station little or nothing to run the programming.

But it is hilariously ironic that Boston’s most right wing, conservative talk station – a station that has been behind the Republican administration 110 % is now a victim of it and maybe on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

Yes, there is a GOD !

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

    • “ October 17, 2008

      <

      p>In this very difficult economic time, we have had to make some very hard decisions about our programming, and as such, I would like to let you know that we have replaced Reese Hopkins with The Laura Ingraham Show in the WRKO lineup effective immediately. You can hear Laura’s show from 10a to noon Monday through Friday. Laura is an outstanding broadcaster whose show is among the most successful in the nation and I know she’ll be a tremendous addition for us.

      <

      p>Reese Hopkins did a fabulous job while he was here. Unfortunately, we are living through an unprecedented financial crisis and as I indicated earlier, that has caused us to look at all aspects of our operation and make some tough choices. I wish Reese the very best in all of his future endeavors.

      <

      p>I’m extremely grateful to all of you for your support and dedication to WRKO and I will continue to do everything possible to provide you, our loyal audience, with the very best talk programming in Boston.

      <

      p>Thank you very much.

      <

      p>Jason Wolfe
      Vice President AM Programming & Operations WEEI 850 AM & WRKO 680 AM”

  2. How can you expect a huge listenership in a state with a solid Democratic congressional delegation and that gives over 60% of its votes to Democratic presidential candidates? Yes, there are conservatives here, but there are a lot of moderates/independents that dislike the insane shrillness of RW talk radio. Instead of buying Laura Ingraham, they should have bought Ed Schultz or Stephanie Miller. I drive a lot for my work, and thankfully have XM radio, because the AM band is just plain scary.

    • I think Schultz is OK, and I don’t like Miller that much. But yeah, it is bizarre how easy it is to pick up the most extreme right-wing fulmination on the radio, all day and all night, in one of the most liberal places in the country.

      <

      p>I don’t know who’s listening to Michael Savage at night … but I’d have to imagine the stations would make more money with someone liberal.

      • I love Miller. Listening to her is like listening to liberal comedy hour. I like her a lot better than Schultz, though Ed’s OK.

        <

        p>Been a long time since I listened to Air America peoples though, I mostly listen to WBUR or WUML these days.

        • Back when we had Air America, I just got so wound up after listening to her I had to stop after a while and take it her in small doses.  She was in your face, it was a right wing show but liberal (if that makes sense).  I’m good with WBUR but would like Miller’s show on air in the area.

          • I have low standards. đŸ˜‰

            <

            p>It’s never a bad thing to just sit there and laugh at it all sometimes. There have been times when Stephanie Miller was between me and insanity. I believe it was her show that pulled me up after the 2004 Kerry loss – the very day after. And no, I don’t think she’s the counterpart of a right wing show…she’s too truthful in her material. I mean, try actually catching her lie. It won’t happen. She might make exaggerated jokes, but she knows the difference.

            <

            p>Randy Rhoads was always the overly-ranty intense type I couldn’t listen to very long. Miller I could listen to all morning.

          • She is the in-your-face screamer, much like a RW talk show, but only with facts. Stephanie Miller and her team are silly. She never screams at anyone-she makes fun of them.

        • However, that does not prevent me from pointing out a “wrong” as I see it. This campaign has shown on both sides that there is a difference between correlation and causation. I believe that the so called “race card” is pulled too many times and has become the “boy crying wolf”. If someone gets fired and they are black it does not mean it was a racist event. If someone is picked last out of a crowd, there may be no discrimination… someone has to be picked last. If a company lays off people and a black person gets laid off, it may mean they were the last hired, simply bad luck. I think it is perfectly fine to ask the person who wrote the diary why they mentioned the talk show host was black since it seemed they were making a connection.

          <

          p>For true offenses of racism to be acknowledged and dealt with (legally or civilly), I think we need to stop trying to relate bad or unlucky things that happen to people (black) with that event being racially motivated. I don’t think it happens and I think even the strongest supporters of equality should critique the overuse of the improper attempts.

          <

          p>I know we disagree on many things but I also know we agree on many as well. I’m not perfect and may respond viscerally about subjects but getting things done really is my goal, working with whomever it takes.

          <

          p>Let’s cry wolf when there really is one, then destroy the wolf.

          • … goes way beyond merely ‘calling something wrong’.  “Because any chance liberals get to somehow blame people or companies for racism they do.  (1.50 / 2)
            Something good happening is ignored but anything negative will have a race causation.”
            What you have there is a broad generalization criticizing nothing specific.  It’s a meaningless rant… not a well thought out criticism of something you felt was ‘wrong’.  Engaging in that kind of thinking belies a lack of desire to engage the other side on any meaningful level.

      • I know how very deeply it offends you when I say stuff unsourced, but rules are rules, JohnD. I’m not going to pay any more attention to your accusations of hypocrisy and rule bending until you prove this one.

        <

        p>I’m expecting a lot of links here. A lot.

        • Again, KBusch… so many words and thoughts from bloggers on this site go “unchallenged” on thier sources, why pick on me?

          <

          p>I brought this up about a story in the Boston Globe accusing Harvard of conducting racist-centered activities as opposed to regular police activities where the subjects just happened to be black. I do not believe this was a case of racism.

          <

          p>Then there was the NH primary where the polls showed Obama leading the primary and then the results were him losing the primary. The charge from the left was NH voters were racists. Now can you please acknowledge that polls are often wrong and racism is NOT the reason. The polls showed Gore leading and he lost, they showed Kerry winning and he lost… was racism the cause of these bad poll numbers? Of course not.

          <

          p>Chris Mathews added to this NH issue with the following statement Methinks Paleface speak with forked tongue.”

          <

          p>Do a google on “voter suppression racism” and you’ll get 146,000 hits from liberal blogs to news stories that somehow any effort to assure voters are truly who they are and are legally registered is transformed into RACISM. I believe any effort to control voter fraud is a good effort and even of some people are overzealous of insuring voters are who they say they are still doesn’t turn it into racism. Call it partisan if you want but don’t take the leap to racism.

          <

          p>The same is true with any attack on ACORN. GOP party organizations from many states are challenging ACORN due to fraudulent registrations and votes and the criticism abounds that this is again RACISM. Search google and find thousands of links showing this. Is it racists to ask for integrity in the voting booth?

          <

          p>Lastly (for now) the whole notion that many people who have not sided with Obama are racists too. Again there are hundreds of thousands of articles/blogs about the tendency to call anti-Obama as anti-black. This story from CNN goes on to say not only that but pro-Obama BECAUSE he is black is not racism. Can you also tell me why white Americans who would say they could vote for Colin Powell (who is black) but not vote for Obama (who is black) are racists? When you can vote for one black man and not vote for another black man, doesn’t that take race out of the equation?

          <

          p>All I am saying is to realize there are times when things might look a certain way but it doesn’t mean it is. Even things such as the sub-prime lending debacle. Maybe they targeted low income inner city uneducated people for their predatory lending. If those people turned out to be black then I would say it was an unintended consequence of them being “low income inner city uneducated people” and NOT due to color but that didn’t stop the Black Caucus from accusing these lenders of Racism. Let’s stop jumping to conclusions. Conservatives complaining about welfare recipients are complaining about giving their money away to “slackers” regardless of color but we get branded as racists (BTW, more welfare recipients are white vs. black).

          <

          p>Some on this site have called me a racists and so be it. I will continue to ask the tough questions and occasionally bring up the 300 pound pink elephant in the living room. If you want to call me a racist because I don’t drink the Kool-aid on issues like this or if I occasionally throw out the questions about the high % of blacks playing basketball vs whites (because I really want to know and nobody has ever answered it)… then go ahead. I ask questions like why do whites do this, blacks do this, woman do that, europeans say this, liberals want this… and that doesn’t mean I hate all those groups! I just gots to know (why do people say that…).

          <

          p>

          • I am simply holding you to your own standards. Your game is to claim that only the most minimal standards apply to you as opposed to the higher standards you wish to foist on liberals talking to liberals.

            <

            p>A theme of your sloppy collection of miscellanea is that some people somewhere have made a charge of racism and since you are able to scoff at it, it must be a phony charge or racism. But my experience of you is that you scoff before you bother thinking, so you’ve proved nothing here other than that you can scoff at any accusation of racism anyone can bring up. Big deal.

            <

            p>A second point is that you do not — and cannot! — supply a list of well-known liberals who make incorrect and reflexive accusations of racism. You can’t because liberal thinkers are careful about this because we know the accusation is charged. That’s why we recoil at how the media treat this issue.

            <

            p>

            1. Your picnic post examined all of this at an extremely cursory level. Maybe this was a sign of institutional racism. Maybe not. Do you even know what the words “institutional racism” mean? Have you ever read anything about it? This is a standard concept used to talk about racism that has been in the world of ideas since at least the eighties. You’re free to disagree with it, of course, but scoffing at it is seasoning obtuseness with obnoxiousness.  To say that the students had a reflexive response, you have to think about this more carefully. Also it is not evidence of a claim about “liberals” in general. We don’t know whether these Afro-American students were liberal.
            2. You quote the Union Leader saying that unnamed liberals accuse anti-Obama voters of racism. This is just cluelessly stupid. An opinion that quotes no liberals from a rabidly conservative newspaper is like, I don’t know, quoting Jack12’s views of liberals as evidence. It’s not evidence.
            3. Chris Mathews is not a liberal. You’re playing tribal here — like he’s on our tribe and so it reflects badly on us, but he is explicitly not a liberal.
            4. The Google results prove nothing.
            5. As for the ACORN material, you’re offering me your opinions about the merits as some kind of evidence. Maybe there are so many liberal comments on voter suppression, because there has been voter suppression along identifiably racial lines. Since you never examine both sides of anything, you wouldn’t know.
            6. The CNN “story” was an opinion piece not a story. Further, the author does not claim, as you do in your typically rushed reading, that to be anti-Obama is to be anti-Black. I’ve never heard of Ruben Navarette, Jr. before. Is he a prominent liberal?
            7. You’re playing “true” conservative game. “True” conservatives would never use racial appeals against welfare. Very well. Then Reagan with his excellently coded language was not a true conservative.

            <

            p>I won’t even begin to address the self-pitying nonsense with which you close.

            • I don’t have the time, the talent or the resources to fight you on many issues… like this one.

              <

              p>There are some things I’ll give in to and others I’ll hold my line. Using the word standards on this blog is whimsical. All I asked is that you treat me no different than you treat others. When I use “poopy” words you trash me but allow others whom you agree with to go to town with them (see today’s post by PJ). A small example but a valid example.

              <

              p>I will correct my original stance and say the “liberal media”, minoruty groups and other organizations are guilty of this overused charge. I will also say that liberals bare some guilt for their silence when charges like these are made.

              <

              p>As for your charge of me scoffing before I think, maybe I do. Sometimes this happens to the best of us. Are you beyond mistakes? I could go back and forth with you on your counter points but I’m too busy. Suffice to say you made some good points (while being snarky). Do you even know what snarky means??? Have you ever read about it?

              <

              p>I’ll go your way on this. So… Harvard is a great example of Institutional Racism which permeates our country all the way to the POTUS. There are no liberals in the US saying Obama’s projected win in NH then losing to Hilary was due to racism of the voters (Bradley effect?). Chris Matthews is not a liberal and will be moving to FOX soon to work with Bill O’Rielly on a new show “The Spinning Hardball”, fair, balanced and not liberal. The search result statistics from Google are meaningless and you cannot draw any conclusions on the popularity of a subject based on the amount of hits (example Obama gets 203,000,000 and McCain gets 143,000,000 means nothing). ACORN is a fine upstanding organization with no partisan bias who have been wrongly accused since clearly Mickey Mouse is of legal age, the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys are legally voting this year in Las Vegas and people registered 5, 10 or 20 times by ACORN legally have multiple personality disorders and each needs a vote. The GOP doesn’t care about suppressing Democratic voters, only black ones. There are no liberals in the US saying if you do not vote for Obama you are a racist… I am obviously delusional. Ruben Navarette, Jr is a nobody, graduated from that Institutional Racist factory Harvard and should not be listened to (the puke only has 148,000 hits on Google). Ronald Reagan was not a Conservative and any Conservative who supports tax cuts, social reform, criticizes any social program, opposes taxing the rich or giving tax refund checks away to people who DON’T EVEN PAY TAXES… is a racist since these are all “code words/phrases” for not liking black people. How’d I do?

              <

              p>Btw, I am not going away. I know I am not as smart as you. I know I can’t research like you and I know you loathe even addressing me. Your attitude comes right thru your writing. But I cannot be made to feel inferior no matter what you write and how you say it with your “code words”. I will not go away from you asking for my account to be closed nor will I stop using my First Amendment right of speech because you are making me feel stupid (you meany). I am a salesman so when someone gives me the finger, I ask if they are only ordering one item? If they tell me to leave I ask to schedule the next appointment… and if they make me feel really inferior or just plain dumb, I chuckle at the bank when I count my Obama targeted income from their purchase. Many here are smarter than me but I pulled my 401K money out in 12/07 when it was in the mid 13,000 range. The current market conditions did wonders for my BEAR mutual funds when I jumped back in a few weeks ago. So attack away and I’m sorry if you take things so personally. I’m not a bad person. I’ve never broken the law, don’t drink or smoke, don’t beat my wife (or dogs), do a good job raising 5 kids, belong to 2 PTGs, 3 non-profits, the town energy committee and donate about 25 times more money to charities than what Joe Biden did last year.

              <

              p>My only sin that I can think of is I’m a conservative, I’m honest with my thoughts, I ask questions about subjects which people want to avoid, I have impulsive moments and I disagree with you on many issues (there’s my true imperfection.

              • Yes, I am snarky with you but then I’ve never said your ears were “full of feces” — unlike you. Nor am I claiming to be a superior being looking down on your lowly and imperfect existence. I’m only commenting on my interactions with you here.

                <

                p>And here, my central criticism is that you haven’t thought or read much about racism. Your tendency to scoff makes you reluctant to learn more.

                <

                p>Sometimes ignorance makes us arrogant: not knowing what we don’t know, we deem ourselves more expert than we are. You can see this in children a lot. They carry that bright optimism — so useful to the salesman (h/t Martin Seligman) — to their evaluation of what they know and don’t know. They’re absolutely certain that what they don’t know is insignificant. They are charming scoffers. We can be certain that most of them will eventually outgrow that behavior.

                • Yes, I am snarky with you but then I’ve never said your ears were “full of feces” — unlike you.

                  <

                  p>Thanks for being honest although it was tough for you to deny it. Consider my “full of…” remark being written prior to my maturation. Sort of like Bill Ayers bombing episode before he grew up. Be a true liberal and forgive me much like we forgive so many other rapists, murderers, wife beaters, scofflaws… who make mistakes. And what ever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?

                  <

                  p>

                  Nor am I claiming to be a superior being looking down on your lowly and imperfect existence.

                  <

                  p>Sorry but I’m not buying this argument. If I took an unbiased person and had them read the last 20 posts from you and compared them to your replies to me, they would probably asked me if I killed your dog or something. You are jubilant with your pontificating in terms/phrases to make me sound stupid and humiliate me. Are you being “sadistic” KBusch? Why do you talk down to me? You seem to revel at using words/terms which make me scratch my head.

                  <

                  p>

                  And here, my central criticism is that you haven’t thought or read much about racism. Your tendency to scoff makes you reluctant to learn more.

                  <

                  p>Wrong again. I am a sponge when it comes to learning. I live by the credo of learning something new everyday (today – Tenacious comes from the latin tenere – to hold). I have degrees in disparate fields and have worked in many differing areas (food services, stocks, engineering, software, hardware, biology, chemistry) in my life contributing to a wonderfully broad background (IMO).

                  <

                  p>As for racism, I grew up in Dorchester, went to high school during the busing/desegregation crisis in Boston. I ended up going to high school in the South End near the “combat zone”.  Some of my best friends growing up were black. I have no advanced degree in racism but I have seen both sides of it up close and personal. On the one hand this makes me very experienced in racism but on the other hand it may make a part of me a racist. I have read some books on racism (The Bell curve, The Racist mind…) but find it difficult to find an author who doesn’t have a dog in the race (no pun intended) and therefore presents a biased position casuing me to doubt their presentation of the facts. And ya I scoff at things, BFD. This is not limited to racism and is part of the cynic in me. Growing up in Dorchester exposed me to people who were very poor, far more poor than my family. The vast majority of these poor people were white. My comments about welfare abuse, misused social programs, and the give-aways creating a sub-class of people living off the government(and me) with no/little incentive to change was based on these people, both black and white but mostly white. No code words(welfare) here for blacks.

                  <

                  p>Scoffing, when I hear somebody filing a lawsuit, not for the money but for the “whatever cause they are spouting”, I scoff (THEY WANT THE MONEY)! When I hear anything which is “wrong” or “untrue” in my opinion I do scoff without doing any research. I don’t have time to read a book or search the internet whenever a subject arrises. And this part of me exists for things I detest, support or don’t care about… I scoff indiscriminately. Examples of things I will scoff at without doing any research to support by scoffing (ACORN wants to register voters regardless of their party, Palin is ready to be President, Politicians care about people not themselves…).

                  <

                  p>

                  Sometimes ignorance makes us arrogant: not knowing what we don’t know, we deem ourselves more expert than we are. You can see this in children a lot. They carry that bright optimism — so useful to the salesman (h/t Martin Seligman) — to their evaluation of what they know and don’t know. They’re absolutely certain that what they don’t know is insignificant. They are charming scoffers. We can be certain that most of them will eventually outgrow that behavior.

                  <

                  p>And maybe someday I will. But be honest KBusch… aren’t there things you feel strongly about which would cause a knee jerk reaction. Don’t you feel strongly about anything which you haven’t done a thesis on? And if this was challenged wouldn’t you defend your position? Maybe a bad example but when the Atkins diet became popular and people were told to eat MORE fat to lose weight, it was blasphemy to the masses, both ordinary people and trained professionals. They didn’t perform a study or read books to decry the this hypothesis. The idea that eating more fat would make you lose weight abrogated every tenet of healthy eating so it was rejected outright. I heard people say “It just can’t be true!”. My point is not whether they were right or wrong, it was that they rejected it (and SCOFFED) because they reacted viscerally. Maybe I do this more than I should but I guess I am an example of “… teaching an old dog new tricks…”.  Maybe I’m too “tenacious” about my preconceived beliefs.

                • Be a true liberal and forgive me much like we forgive so many other rapists, murderers, wife beaters, scofflaws. Huh?

                  <

                  p>Don’t you feel strongly about anything which you haven’t done a thesis on? Of course I do. I try to be modest about stuff that I know little about, though.

                  This is the second time recently where you have effectively agreed with at least some of the things I’ve said but framed it as a disagreement. The last time was on the topic of punishment where, after ranting a bit, you came to agree with my point without fully realizing or acknowledging it. Here too you end with suggesting that you are maybe too tenacious about your preconceived beliefs and possibly defend them with scoffing.

                • KBusch,

                  <

                  p>I admire your desire to open a school for trolls, but, as an (somewhat) outside observer, I have to tell you there’s no appreciable difference between JohnD’s posts from 6 months ago and today. He’s still the same self-pitying, liberal-phobic ranter he’s always been.

                  <

                  p>I think the truth is that thinking conservatives have abandoned the party and all that’s left is paranoid, rage-driven, xenophobic nuts.  

                  <

                  p>JohnD isn’t a conservative — he’s a talk radio Republican. You’re not going to change him.  Best to just start ignoring him.

                • You made me laugh. Thank you.

                  <

                  p>You are probably right — and I’ve given others the same advice.

                • Expected the link was more JD but wasn’t.

                  <

                  p>I recently read some material on RedState and I was surprised that it was more sober than the vast majority of wingnuts who visit BMG. It was even more sober than RMG.

                  <

                  p>I was envious.

                  <

                  p>Rosa Brooks may be onto something though.

                  <

                  p>My latest kick has been that, if BMG is going to have wingnuts, it should have the highest quality wingnuts — grade A wingnuts who can spell “lose” and “loose”, who don’t overdo the ellipses and caps, who can substantiate points, can understand liberals, and can argue politely. Finding such people from the Bay State’s tiny pool of conservatives should rank probably as hopeless.

                  <

                  p>Note to self: give it up.

                  My astrological chart supposedly says I should be a teacher. Perhaps that calling is misapplied at KBusch’s Finishing School for Trolls.

                • Coming from a more conservative state (Texas), I was shocked at how much more wing-nutty the conservatives are here.  Most conservatives in TX are much more small l-libertarian, as in “no one has the right to tell me what I can be or do, especially not the government.” Social conservatives have taken on a stronger role in recent years, but, as always, the Baptists preachers understand the need to have a little sin nearby to rail against.

                  <

                  p>My initial theory was that, since they never have to live with the results of their theories, wingnuts here are free to adopt ever more extreme positions.  At the same time, they’re free to blame liberals for all the problems they face since, after all, this is a one party state.  The theory breaks down when you realize that many of the Democrats here are very socially conservative (Silber and Finneran would both be considered Republicans where I’m from).

                  <

                  p>This led to theory two.  New England as a whole is more traditionally conservative than many parts of the US.  Not just in the low divorce rate and valuing education, but less flashy, more frugal, hardworking, tight knit, etc.  I can’t imagine anything as garish as the Houston Galleria surviving here, for example. And Boston has nothing like Dallas’ party and drug scene.  This makes life very comfortable for a moderate like myself, but leaves someone with a conservative bent with limited targets to bitch about.  Yet, somehow they do.

                  <

                  p>Anyway, those are my theories on why many (NOT all) conservatives here closely resemble rabid dogs.  I’m not sure they full explain it, but it’s a start.  

                  <

                  p>

                • This is the second time recently where you have effectively agreed with at least some of the things I’ve said but framed it as a disagreement.

                  Ya, so. I think the translation would be… you made good points and that I may have been wrong. But having said that it doesn’t mean I agree with 100% of what you had said/written. And having said that I can take the opportuity to maybe explain why I had that opinion I did, however wrong. I’ll give you credit for setting me straight or offering a coherent argument against me but it doesn’t mean I have to completely capitulate.

                  <

                  p>The last time was on the topic of punishment where, after ranting a bit, you came to agree with my point without fully realizing or acknowledging it.

                  <

                  p>And I acknowledged your facts and your tenor, but I still felt strongly about the death penalty when we were done. You opened my eyes to another way of looking at it, you made me think about it more deeply and learn some facts but I still felt in favor when we were done. That’s a good exchange in my book.

                  <

                  p> Here too you end with suggesting that you are maybe too tenacious about your preconceived beliefs and possibly defend them with scoffing.

                  <

                  p>So, again you made me look in the mirror. Having done so, I now realize (and have stated) that I scoff not at things I don’t understand but at things I have visceral feelings about. I was saying that people (you and I included) often have a visceral response to things which seem counter intuitive, often without a conscious basis. When I first tried to understand the power of nuclear fission I was probably “scoffing” at the idea that a nuclear explosion could possibly emanate from the splitting of 2 atoms… impossible, or that under the right pressurized conditions a human could be squeezed through a hole the size of a gold ball, or that so called “idiot savants” can perform the super human mental tasks they do… I “disbelieve” these things with no prior “conscious” research. My disbelief is “visceral” and that is how I rationalize my “scoffing” at other social or ideological disbeliefs as well. Sometimes when I research these issues I feel vindicated while other times you and others have proved me wrong. I have and will give you credit when this happens but for whatever reason (pride…), I will usually defend myself and try to leave the room at least partially clothed.

  4. Fortunately, he doesn’t punish self appointed talk-radio cops for diaries that are ad homenim, poorly considered, ill written, and lacking citation.

    • because it has become a predictable, no talent, mouth piece for one particular party. BORING is the death nell for talk radio and WRKO has become BORING and PREDICTABLE. The end result is financial insolvency.

      <

      p>Reese Hopkins is gone not because he is an African-American but because WRKO and its parent company, Entercom, could not meet the payroll and pay him. So, they went the syndication root. Most likely,”blondie’s” syndicator is paying WRKO to run he tripe. Good luck selling her bile to the locals.

      <

      p>Will the last person out of WRKO please turn out the lights !

  5. the most talented liberal – leaning talk hosts on Saturday night.   He had his own style –Jay Diamond— as is common in commercial talk he had a libertarian streak but it was with the added perspective of a person who had gotten past the seductive simplicity of Libertarianism and was willing to say it was mostly a fraud.    He was barraged by programmed rightwing callers like the guys with southern accents on cell phones claiming to be from Massachusetts, or the guys who said claimed to be Iraq veterans and offered convoluted rationale for why the war is good (although facts are to back up assertions are “classified”   etc.    Typical trolls who try to disrupt new moderate or lib shows. He had a hilarious Bush imitations that he spontaneously threw out to interrupt the patriotic rants.    I would love to see Jay Diamond back on WRKO again.   We dont really have agile and combative liberal radio talent in Boston anymore.  

  6. available.   Sam Seder (works for Air America in administration,  Marc Maron,  Jay  Diamond (by virtue of his 2 yr stint on WRKO),   Arne Arnesen of New Hampshire on WCCM may be available,   Inside Scoop with Marc Levine may be an interesting syndication from the HORN.   He has a  good show out of Virginia and was once and aid  to Barney Frank.   David Bender (I think went to school in Boston),  Rachel Maddow of AAR and MSNBC lives in Mass.   Maybe Michael Goldman would like to do a show again –he was good when he partnered with Peter Blute and the late Andy Moes.   Jeff Farias was just let go by KPHX in Phoenix.  he is real liberal/progressive with a conspiracy edge – good for night time radio.  He is originally from Lowell I believe.    Johnny Angels seems settled in California — he is originally from Mass and and is a very fiery although shoot from the hip type host.  

    <

    p>There are a lot of national hosts ==Stephanie Miller, Ed Shulz, Tom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes who in the right time slots would do well.      Hartmann you know would appeal to the intellectuals and wannabees.  

    <

    p>

    • The “drive home” has been agonizingly troubling for so many drivers in the Boston area. Not from the roads, the traffic or the road rage, but from the decision of whom to listen to… Jay or Howie.

      <

      p>I’m a Jay listener for the most part but I do occasionally listen to Howie who has a much better local connection with information on hacks like nobody else does and a rich history of run-ins with our trustworthy elected officials (like Sal?).

      <

      p>The good news is every dollar lost by WRKO will be picked up by WTKK. Liberal talk show hosts are DOA. I do listen to the double liberal team of Jim and Margery, but mainly because I can’t get anything else on my radio. They do well even though 90% of the listeners disagree with their views. Does anyone have a show I can turn to (conservative or balanced)?

          • Any comments? No.

            <

            p>Poopy language is funny when it’s a surprise, when it’s used sparingly.

            <

            p>It’s tiresome when it’s everywhere.

            <

            p>(You’re looking for a simple rule again, aren’t you.)

Archives