Posted on 03/15/2009 9:43:42 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Tune in to conservative talk radio in California, and the insults quickly fly. Capturing the angry mood of listeners the other day, a popular host in Los Angeles called Republican lawmakers who voted to raise state taxes "a bunch of weak slobs."
With their trademark ferocity, radio stars who helped engineer Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's rise in the 2003 recall have turned on him over the new tax increases. On stations up and down the state, they are chattering away in hopes of igniting a taxpayers' revolt to kill his budget measures on the May 19 ballot.
No rush to measure Limbaugh's ratingsBut for all the anti-tax swagger and the occasional stunts by personalities like KFI's John and Ken, the reality is that conservative talk radio in California is on the wane. The economy's downturn has depressed ad revenue at stations across the state, thinning the ranks of conservative broadcasters.
For that and other reasons, stations have dropped the shows of at least half a dozen radio personalities and scaled back others, in some cases replacing them with cheaper nationally syndicated programs.
Casualties include Mark Larson in San Diego, Larry Elder and John Ziegler in Los Angeles, Melanie Morgan in San Francisco, and Phil Cowen and Mark Williams in Sacramento.
Two of the biggest in the business, Roger Hedgecock in San Diego and Tom Sullivan in Sacramento, have switched to national shows, elevating President Obama above Schwarzenegger on their target lists.
Another influential Sacramento host, Eric Hogue, has lost the morning rush-hour show that served as a prime forum to gin up support for the recall of Gov. Gray Davis. Now he airs just an hour a day at lunchtime on KTKZ-AM (1380).
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I myself find conservative talk radio very informative as well as entertaining.
“in some cases replacing them with cheaper nationally syndicated programs.”...Like RUSH!
I know the Calif Talk Radio scene well and for years. Some of the names mentioned not on radio anymore left over a year ago. This is mixing old news into a story fabricated for now. For example John Ziegler left long long ago, was involved in a station power struggle. John & Ken hit home more on the Calif budget problems than Ziegler did and they are still on the air.
Larry Elder might have been involved in a power struggle too, at KABC. He was replaced by someone more conservative than him, Mark Levine.
If anything there is more variety in conservative talk radio shows in Calif, and in the LA/Orange County area, there are new conservative talk show hosts being tried almost monthly. Check out KGIL 1260 stream.
This article is an example of how hard talk radio has hit California's state policies, ppl are being informed, tax revolts are developing, and the truth is on the air waves just like it's supposed to be!
yes.
rush has a talent for combining today’s events with yesterday’s while staying focused on the u.s. constitution and american traditions.
often i wonder, why didn’t i think of that?
in addition to rush i listen to roger hedgecock, sean hannity, dennis prager etc.
i find michael savage’s inflated ego hard to take. he’s jealous of rush and sean.
And this from a newspaper that is losing subscribers at an alarming rate. LOL Any guesses why? Because talk radio has outed them for being Pravda on the Pacific.
Certainly no bias here...
I don’t believe Larry was syndicated. He was being bumped regularly for Dodger games. Levin probably doesn’t mind as much being bumped on one local station.
They may have wanted Larry to take a severe cut in pay. Who knows.
Amen.
“And then there’s that Rush guy.
No mention of Sean or Levin or Boortz”
The entire point of the article is that talk radio stations in Cali are ditching local talent and replacing them with the nationally syndicated shows you’re talking about. The nationally syndicated shows like Rush and Sean are actually cheaper for stations to air than producing their own content.
This is good for the personal careers of the national guys, but not good for Cali as their issues will not be discussed from a conservative angle on their radio stations anymore, beyond the national issues that happen in Cali that get talked about on the national shows.
.....and this is exactly how Obama is going to attempt to take out talk radio. Local control of radio waves, not The Fairness Doctrine.
California, the new Detroit
I’m always touched by the concern the liberal/lefties always show for the health of the freedom movement. They’re always publishing stories concerned that the GOP is going to lose elections, or that Fox News is losing viewers or that talk radio is declining. It just makes me feel warm and gooey.
Most talk shows -- the local guys -- aren't worth listening to.
That's why they stay local, and some don't even last in the same place very long.
And most people can spot quality -- good or bad -- pretty well.
It's not quite the same in print.
A lot of lousy newspapers have stayed in business for years.
Until lately, anyway.
This sounds like a Jayson Blair bs rant.
Re do gays like this hack cover politics:
http://gawker.com/5071469/americas-top-gays-on-campaign-trail
The gays—why do they cover politics? Because it is like a big campy gay soap opera, with divas and backstabbing and drama, of course! That is just one of the things we learned in Gawker Alum Jesse Oxfeld’s story about the gays who cover campaigns! “’I think that the theater of politics is of real interest to political reporters,’ says one of them. ‘And a lot of gay reporters are theater junkies as well.’” You don’t say, hah. Here’s the paragraph most important for those of you keeping score at home:
The chief political correspondent for The New York Times since 2002, Adam Nagourney, is gay, as is his predecessor in that job, Rick Berke, who started in the paper’s Washington bureau in 1986 and is now a top-level editor in New York. Likewise the Times’s lead Barack Obama reporter, Jeff Zeleny, its lead Hillary Clinton reporter, Patrick Healy, and the man who ambled behind George W. Bush in 2000, Frank Bruni, now the paper’s restaurant critic. (Jeremy Peters, a rising star in the Albany bureau, occasionally joined the campaign crew for those nights out at The Garden and Des Moines’s two other gay bars, the delightfully named Blazing Saddle and Frat House.) There’s Michael Finnegan, a campaign heavyweight at the Los Angeles Times, and Jonathan Darman, Newsweek’s 27-year-old wunderkind political scribe; there’s Candy Crowley’s producer at CNN, Mike Roselli, his fellow CNN producer Chris Welch, who was the network’s off-air in Iowa, and producers from CBS’s The Early Show, ABC’s Nightline, and, of course, Logo.
That sounds like kind of a lot, right? Well, the story begins with only four of them at one of Des Moines three gay bars on New Years Eve, a kind of sad picture, if you ask us.
The campaign trail is, of course, a sexed-up nonstop sex romp, for the rest of the press, but there aren’t enough gays to join in on the “long tradition of flings, affairs, and liaisons among reporters cooped up with only each other for so much time.” See? It’s not all fun and games being a gay.
But, still, The Gays are suited for campaign coverage, because they are forbidden by the politicians they cover from getting married, so, you know, no nagging wives telling them to come home and be food critics or something.
Our Boys On the Bus [OUT]
Talk Radio is mainly for Americans. How many Americans live in California?
A lot of "local" talk radio is local for a reason. There are exceptions, like Trivisonno on WTAM but usually the talent is limited. I myself find much of talk radio derivative and uninspiring.
Thus it would be expected that programs will come and go, and the economy also makes a difference as these shows live on advertising.
California is an outlier these days and not in a good way, but I wouldn't draw any serious conclusions from this alleged "waning." .
I think we need to give them the clap!!! What a buncha clap-trap!!!
Gotta git ta bed now so's I can git up in time to lissen to Melanie Morgan!!!
The jonny one-note format is worst with the weatherman who should have never left his TV weather job, sad to say. He sure means well, but conservatives are unaffected by good intentions, after all. Right???
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