Posted on 12/26/2013 8:27:51 AM PST by raccoonradio
Next week, when WWRL 1600 AM flips its format from progressive talk to Spanish-language music and talk, New York will have no left-leaning commercial talk station for the first time in decades — an ironic development just as an unabashedly liberal mayor and City Council are set to take office.
It’s not as if liberal voices will vanish — noncommercial stations like WBAI and WNYC are still alive and kicking — but they can’t replace the local flavor and crackling energy of commercial radio, where shows move more quickly to accommodate the ads.
The changeover at WWRL comes as a personal blow: I was the morning drivetime host at the station from June 2008 through October 2010. Sad to say, the steady elimination of progressive radio from the airwaves is part of a nationwide crisis facing commercial radio.
In Los Angeles, the last remaining all-liberal talk station, KTLK, will do an about-face and start airing only conservative talkers on Jan. 1. Ditto for KNEW in San Francisco. Last November, progressive stations in Portland, Ore., and Seattle switched to all-sports formats.
The biggest pressures squeezing liberal talk radio are commercial ones. Deregulation of the airwaves allowed conglomerates like Clear Channel to borrow billions from Wall Street and begin buying up stations by the hundreds. Saddled with debt, Clear Channel has ruthlessly standardized its 840 stations and squeezed each for maximum profit. That meant eliminating progressive talk from its stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland.
Angry progressives claim such moves could also have a political motivation: Clear Channel is owned in part by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once run by Mitt Romney . That’s possible, but it wouldn’t explain the problems besetting stations like WWRL, which is owned by Access 1, a family-owned media company.
A more likely culprit is the hard economics of persuading businesses to advertise on local radio. “National advertisers have pulled away from progressive stations, and not just in New York,” says Mark Riley, a New York radio veteran who just ended a great stint as WWRL’s morning man. “Stations aren’t worth what the people who bought them thought they were worth,” he says.
That has left a cutthroat competition for local advertising dollars, with low-cost options like Craigslist and Yelp and services like Groupon competing with radio, cable television, billboards and other so-called old media.
Another theory behind the collapse of commercial liberal talk radio is that it has gone mainstream. Some of the most popular personalities from the now-defunct liberal Air America radio network — Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz — now command much larger audiences on MSNBC every night, as does the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is syndicated on dozens of black talk radio stations. Air America’s biggest star, Al Franken, is now a U.S. senator.
Conservative radio hosts point to the struggles of their liberal rivals with great glee, but that is whistling past the graveyard. The reality is that conservative talkers are serving an aging, shrinking audience, while listeners who want a liberal take on the news can find it on hundreds of National Public Radio stations. The most reliable estimates of the most popular radio shows gives the top two slots to right-wingers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity — followed by “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “Marketplace,” three public radio staples with a total audience that exceeds Limbaugh and Hannity combined.
Millions of listeners who want left-wing talk can still find it. But that won’t replace stalwarts like WWRL, where I used to love spending three hours each day interviewing guests, arguing with callers and ranting about snarled traffic, late trains, warped politics and the state of the world. May the next crew at WWRL find fun and profit bringing the magic of radio to a Spanish-language audience. I, for one, will be listening.
Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.
Though WBAI has been taking hits lately incl funding drying up, broadcasting issues after Super Storm Sandy, etc.
>>Last November, progressive stations in Portland, Ore., and Seattle switched to all-sports formats.
(Because sports, and conserv talk MAKE MONEY)
>>Angry progressives claim such moves could also have a political motivation: Clear Channel is owned in part by Bain Capital, the private equity firm once run by Mitt Romney
(Thanks Mitt! Actually he ran Bain many years ago...)
(...he used Maddow, Schultz, and "popular" in same sentence?)
>>listeners who want a liberal take on the news can find it on hundreds of National Public Radio stations.
(THAT I agree with!)
There has never been one.
Nothing to talk about.
That article is a string of Liberal nutball conspiracy theories worthy of the darkest corners of the DUmmysphere.
Liberal Talk died because they weren’t selling ads. Because you can’t sell ad time to pitch to people who basically hate Capitalism.
You’ll just continue to take money out of my wallet to subsidize Liberal PUBLIC radio anyhow.
Let me guess; "noncommercial" is Libspeak for "public broadcasting".
Which is itself Libspeak for "taxpayer funded".
ooh, ooh, I know this one! Video.
Liberals have short attention spans.
Yep. Classic case of a product that sucks and nobody wants it, but **SOMEONE** thinks it is viable and being crushed by evil conservatives...:)
Incorrect. I work at a small town radio station on weekends. Our ad time is always completely sold out.
What's hard is persuading businesses to advertise on radio stations that spew hatred of free enterprise.
Commercial radio depends upon listeners who buy the advertisers products. Consider the audience for liberal radio.
Why would anyone want to advertise when the same people get public dollars to push Marxism. Two Americas, the self-sufficient, taxpayer and the Socialist leech.
Librals hate, and that is not appealing. All they talk about is pitting people against each other, this person has too much, that person is greedy, another person is holding someone down. I don’t even think liberals want to tune in to listen to that every day.
As I’ve said before: (commercial Lib talk radio): “So, all these huge corporations that exploit workers—Walmart, Big Oil, they’re all eeeeeeeeeevil! Well, we’ll be right back after this, uh... _Public service announcement_...”
We almost got NPR/PBS defunded but fell short, damn...
Bwaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!!!
Spewed coffee on laptop alert!
MUCH LARGER audiences????
Bwaaaaa ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!!!
“Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “Marketplace,” three public radio staples with a total audience that exceeds Limbaugh and Hannity combined.
Hahahaha, one can only laugh at their delusions.
A liberal radio star???
I didn’t know there was such a thing.
They began to speak?
Zackly.
There is no understanding Liberalism (aka Progressivism, aka Communism). They prefer to live in the dark. Self-deception is a form of self-preservation.
Why yes, maybe 38 people instead of only 9.
They already have the other media, why do they need radio?
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