Thanks; I do know Savage fought to get out of his TalkRadioNetwork contract. Ingraham did, too (now on Courtside Entertainment)
Local, the new “fairness” doctrine.
In Boston the only fulltime talker is WRKO (Entercom) with 2 local hosts, Jeff Kuhner and Howie Carr; a brokered business news block, and Rush, Levin, Savage etc. WBZ (CBS) has local talk with Dan Rea and Bradley Jay etc. There used to be another talker on FM, WTKK with many local hosts including Michael Graham (now on several small stations) and Jay Severin (now on The Blaze Radio) but they switched to R&B.
Commercial prog talk didn’t take off here but there is NPR,
and former WTKK hosts Eagan and Braude wound up on WGBH.
Also we had a talker on AM 1200 that had Jeff Katz, Jay Severin, Rush, Hannity, etc but that’s now brokered business news from Bloomberg Radio.
More than a few talk stations have switched formats incl. quite a few prog. ones. Quite a few went to sports talk
incl the prog talk stations in Seattle and Portland, OR.
The thinking is they can get a bigger, better “demo” for advertisers with sports. The prog talker in Buffalo NY?
Now ESPN.
So CC in LA goes “local” with KFI and syndie conserv hosts go to KEIB (new call letters) 1150, bumping prog talk off.
Didn’t know Imus made that remark!
Yes and it was not "Imus being Imus." I heard it. I've listened to Imus regularly at times over the years.
If it was Imus being Imus the staff would have responded with comments like "Put the scientists to sleep who made you, Iman" or at least erupted into laughter. There was silence as I recall. The news reader reported on Palin's visit to Graham and started a recording of her speaking. Imus instantly hit the scream button and erupted with those threats. The newsman immediately moved on to another item.
As a radio fan since the 1940s and a survivor of the decades of the "Fairness Doctrine" I say that "localization" is a means of expunging conservative opinion from the airwaves. Part of local talk is that it is easier to open it to all local folks' participation either regularly on air or through demands for equal time.