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.
Did the writer ever get around to blaming George Bush?
(Sorry...I just couldn’t read the whole thing. These folks are just clueless.)
Libs can get their spin from MSNBC, CNN and Washington. Talk radio is ours.
“Why yes, maybe 38 people instead of only 9.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Oh, come on now, be fair, I am almost certain that MSNBC has broken into the low triple digit audience numbers at times, maybe 101 to 103 or something like that. I know that’s hard to believe and I can’t really prove it but it is possible.
Who wants to listen to 8 year old spoiled brat kids spout off.
That’s what liberals sound like. Thats what they think like.
That’s what they vote like too.Their world is a pipe dream.
A sewer pipe. Oh wait it’s a Colon. FLUSH it down!
Could it be”Lack Of Listenership”???????????????????
Did they have network and cable TV when Father Coughlin was around?
Of course, liberal radio always fails. The people in the Soviet Union got weary of the endless Socialist lies. The problem for American Leftists is that Capitalist advertisers tire of sponsoring someone who blasts them continuously.
Nobdy wants to listen to a philosophy based on plunder.
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.
Aha! You admit it! Government radio is leftist!
“...while listeners who want a liberal take on the news can...” can just turn on their TV.
Obviously, given a choice, people tune out propaganda.
The current Mayor is an unabashed liberal, the incoming Mayor is an unabashed Stalinist.
I can just hear the lamentations of the author wondering why Rush Limbaugh is on the air because nobody he knows listens to Rush Limbaugh. Especially during a weeklong NPR fund raiser.
They would have if not for the "evil" Clear Channel keeping many on the air. After Air America failed, CC gave some of them a place figuring they could get passable ratings in select markets and demographics. It's the sink or swim principle but most are sinking, even in heavy liberal markets.
In the 70s and 80s, the left fragmented -- Black, Latin, feminist, gay, environmentalist, etc. Things got pretty heated at the Pacifica stations, for example -- strikes, sitdowns, lockouts, etc. as different factions struggled for control.
But also, they no longer had that solid, square 50s culture to rebel against. Also, it sounds like NPR already caters to liberals, so even if there were an audience for liberal talk, it's already taken by public radio.
“Oh the humanity!!!” - the frantic cry of WLS reporter Herb Morrison as the dirigible Hindenburg exploded & crashed at Lakehurst, NJ in May 1937.
A few years ago somebody photoshopped the image of a manatee onto a still frame of the exploding German airship as it collapsed at a crazy angle, then labeled his creation “Oh, the Huge Manatee!!”
The expression went viral for a while.
I thought that was Les Nessman during the WKRP Turkey Drop.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.