There are some unfair opinions here. I listened to Barbara off and on, I’m fairly liberal, and didn’t often agree with her, but she was (is) intelligent, and a good interviewer, she also did many shows that was not about politics, and they were often interesting. As for trying to destroy conservative radio, I doubt it, I think it is more a matter of destroying intelligent radio. There are still, in this area, many conservative hosts such as: Hannity, Levin, Savage, Beck, Tom Sullivan, Rush and few others. Uver the past year, those of us who are left leaning have lost Norm Goldman, Bill Press, Tom Hartman, and we are about to loose Randi Rhoades, before that we lost John Rothmann, Ray Talifaro, and the late great Gene Burns. Even with the few liberal host left, there are enough comments on blog (mostly Rich Lieberman) from conservative who is glad to see liberal hosts disappear. How sad that someone can’t tolerate a diversity of opinions, being it from the left or the right. Who wants to constantly listen to hosts they disagree with? Apparently quite a few.
You mentioned Hannity, Levin, Savage, Beck, Tom Sullivan, and Rush on the Right, and Norm Goldman, Bill Press, Tom Hartman, Randi Rhoades, John Rothmann, Ray Talifaro, and the late great Gene Burns on the Left.
What I saw was the intent to disconnect the listener from the genre by shutting down the local shows and replacing them with time-delayed syndicated national shows. Of the list you provided, on the KGO hosts (Rothmann, Talifaro, Burns) were local. On the Right, only Savage was local for a time.
Going back into the archives, I recall when KSFO was mostly local: Rodgers, Goeff Metcalf, Jim Eason, Michael Savage, Brian Wilson (remote but live), David Gold (remote but live).
Throughout the years, we saw other local shows shut down: Quinn and Rose, Fred Grandy, etc.
As a final thought, did you read the Lieberman blog post on the passing of Lee Rodgers? Did you compare that to the post on the passing of Gene Burns?
-PJ
I can understand your comments about Ms Simpson.
I liked Duane Garrett and his show was the only one I called. I even listened to Ward from time to time.
Mainly I am referring to the failed network that was highly touted by MSM employees as taking on conservative head-to-head.
I found that I was simply listening to a repeat of news content whether the news came from top-of-the-hour or NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post.
Conservative talk is like the newspapers of old when cities had multiple newspapers representing various points of view.
True that the MSM news did not go far enough personally denouncing Reagan, Bush, Cheney. et al to suit liberal talk but essentially there was very little new on liberal talk that I had not already got from the MSM employees.