It was market forces that led Cumulus to end their relationship with Hannity. No vast left wing conspiracy there. It said she was ending her national show. Does she not have a home station? Did she start with a local show? She might get a gig somewhere, it's just tough to make a buck in radio right now.
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Randi Rhodes to end show
- Thread starter raccoonradio
- Start date
I've admitted here before that I avoided NPR for the longest time because I wasn't interested in yet another ideologically driven format and/or the PBS version of radio. The notion of that format simply didn't interest or attract me. As easy as it would've been to just give them a try, I honestly never did until the past year.
What I discovered, embarrassingly so, is that I foolishly bought into the right-wing hype about NPR. Much to my surprise, they are incredibly informative, fair and straightforward in their reporting.
Anyone who refers to them as the liberal answer to the now-standard base-appealing wingut talkradio is seriously delusional.
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rotflmao!!
...you'd love it in Mississippi. The ultra-wingnut American Family Association owns more stations between 88.1 and 91.9 in that state than do the NPR affiliates...
You're so infected with a hyper-partisan mentality, that I have no doubt you think it's absolutely ridiculous that NPR isn't regarded as some radical left outlet. Apparently any station that doesn't air Hannity/Levin/Limbaugh is a "liberal" outfit. lol We know what you are an "avid listener" of, so....what a shocker. Thankfully, your *demo* is aging out.
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NPR and PBS--where they take donations from the likes of David Koch yet some of their fans want Koch thrown off the
WGBH board because he "lies" about global warming.
One time they tried to do a weekly seven minute segment profiling conservative figures--seven minutes per week--and listeners/donors put up a big stink about that. Then there were the clips Laura Ingraham played of Terri Gross fawning over Al Franken yet criticizing her guest Bill O'Reilly...
Townhall.com 2003
>>Last week, NPR's own official ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, admitted a liberal bias in NPR's talk programming. The daily program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross"...Gross recently became a hot topic on journalism Web sites for first having a friendly, giggly interview with "satirist" Al Franken, promoting his obnoxious screed against conservatives on Sept. 3, and then on Oct. 8, unloading an accusatory, hostile interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. She pressed the Fox host to respond to the obnoxious attacks of Franken and other critics. Dvorkin ruled: "Unfortunately, the (O'Reilly) interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias ... by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/16/earth-tax-dollars-npr/
NPR Admits it's packed with liberals
>>Bob Garfield: … you and I both know that if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and at all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd, not uniformly, but overwhelmingly.
WGBH board because he "lies" about global warming.
One time they tried to do a weekly seven minute segment profiling conservative figures--seven minutes per week--and listeners/donors put up a big stink about that. Then there were the clips Laura Ingraham played of Terri Gross fawning over Al Franken yet criticizing her guest Bill O'Reilly...
Townhall.com 2003
>>Last week, NPR's own official ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, admitted a liberal bias in NPR's talk programming. The daily program "Fresh Air with Terry Gross"...Gross recently became a hot topic on journalism Web sites for first having a friendly, giggly interview with "satirist" Al Franken, promoting his obnoxious screed against conservatives on Sept. 3, and then on Oct. 8, unloading an accusatory, hostile interview on Bill O'Reilly's show. She pressed the Fox host to respond to the obnoxious attacks of Franken and other critics. Dvorkin ruled: "Unfortunately, the (O'Reilly) interview only served to confirm the belief, held by some, in NPR's liberal media bias ... by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop."
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/16/earth-tax-dollars-npr/
NPR Admits it's packed with liberals
>>Bob Garfield: … you and I both know that if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and at all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd, not uniformly, but overwhelmingly.
Gross isn't an NPR employee. Fresh Air is produced by a member station WHYY for NPR. Same with Garfield. His show is produced by WNYC. Neither actually represent the company. What they do or say represents themselves. If you want to pick on Gross, you might also bring up her hostile interview with Kiss founder Gene Simmons. Don't know what that says about politics.
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No, I was simply laughing because your assumption that NPR is not biased is just ridiculous. Both Morning Edition and All Things Considered simply ignore stories that might reflect well on the policies and agendas of people with a conservative perspective on how things should work in America. Each story covered on those shows is usually a paragon of careful neutrality, but by ignoring stories that reflect badly on the liberal agenda, and ignoring stories that reflect well on the conservative agenda, they are supporting those who favor the liberal agenda.
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It doesn't matter who actually pays the talent to do the show. If public stations send it out through their transmitters, then the public stations are responsible for it. BS disclaimers are just that, BS.
Also, the hostility in Gross's interview with Gene Simmons came from Simmons, not from Gross. She gave him far more courtesy and respect than he deserved.
It does if you're a journalist and you attribute a quote to them. It's journalistically incorrect to say "NPR Admits..." when they did nothing of the kind.
Not the support staff.
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FredLeonard
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She was on the same station in West Palm as Rush and got better numbers than El Rushbo. Market forces my big toe!
So on one station she had ratings in excess of one other program, yet was down to about 30 affiliates? I realize you believe there is some conspiracy to keep talk shows that lean 'progressive' off of the airwaves, yet all you submit to support this is ancedotal observations and even those aren't supporting this assertion. O'Reilly and Dobbs also no longer have radio shows and I accept that market forces, not some conspiracy, is the result.
O'Reilly said the radio show was taking time away from his TV show. That was the reason given, not market forces.
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One success in one market doesn't change an overall lack of success across the board. There are very, very few failing nationally marketed products (and radio talk show hosts are as much a product as a bag of dog food or a box of laundry detergent) that don't enjoy above average success in a few isolated markets, even though they might do terribly in most markets. Overall, taking the entire nation as a whole, liberal news/talk shows don't attract large numbers of listeners or advertisers the way that conservative news/talk shows do.
Then there's another consideration. If she was on the same station as Rush Limbaugh, that means they were both on two different time slots. What sort of competition was on the air opposite Rush, and what was on the air opposite Rhodes? This simple truth can't be repeated too often. The single biggest factor in the success or failure of any radio station's programming efforts are what their competition is doing. That's as true for radio stations as it is for almost any other business. People only tune in one radio station at a time. Your show can be outstanding, but if your competition is even more outstanding, the competition wins. Your show can truly suck, but if all of your competition is even worse, you win.
I'm so tired of reading all the Monday-morning-quarterback PD's on here who continue to insist on this canard of "only right wing talk works".
FACT is, talk stations with a variety of opinions by INTERESTING PERSONALITIES never stopped working. Stations just followed the Rush fad and systematically veered their formats far to the right. Conservatives were ALWAYS there. Trust me, I dealt with them plenty going back to the 80's. All the new direction accomplished was to make the format much less friendly to anyone NOT on the far right.
And STOP this facile "playin' the hits" philosophy that I occasionally hear regurgitated. Wanna play the hits? You hit the hot topics. THAT is playing the hits----NOT having the same, one-sided talking points repeated all day long. That's just boring.
There is so much confusion as to why the format has evolved into what it is and why anything else "didn't" work. Most of the theories I read are attempts to reverse engineer history and/or satisfy an agenda.
A big element in all this was when born-again Christian, agenda driven Phil Boyce, who programmed WABC for 13 years, decided to purge the station of anything and everything non-right-wing. What was once a great talk station with a variety of personalities, irrespective to any ideology, became an ideological propaganda machine, NEVER reaching the ratings heights achieved before the purge. Sadly, but to be expected, many stations had an eye on WABC and followed suit, especially the ones that Boyce himself had direct control over in many major markets.
I am not writing this to advocate a progressive talk format, as I find that just as UNinspiring and UNentertaining, but I'm also tired of hearing how it "didn't work", when in reality, conservative programming put on the same left-for-dead frequencies would (and has) failed just as miserably.
All of this is rather moot actually, as I am more and more convinced that the braintrusts running talkradio have done irreparable damage to the format and it's reputation, so much so , that it'll never recover. Granted, all the audio competition wasn't helping, but radio companies certainly accelerated the demise of a once-great format.
FACT is, talk stations with a variety of opinions by INTERESTING PERSONALITIES never stopped working. Stations just followed the Rush fad and systematically veered their formats far to the right. Conservatives were ALWAYS there. Trust me, I dealt with them plenty going back to the 80's. All the new direction accomplished was to make the format much less friendly to anyone NOT on the far right.
And STOP this facile "playin' the hits" philosophy that I occasionally hear regurgitated. Wanna play the hits? You hit the hot topics. THAT is playing the hits----NOT having the same, one-sided talking points repeated all day long. That's just boring.
There is so much confusion as to why the format has evolved into what it is and why anything else "didn't" work. Most of the theories I read are attempts to reverse engineer history and/or satisfy an agenda.
A big element in all this was when born-again Christian, agenda driven Phil Boyce, who programmed WABC for 13 years, decided to purge the station of anything and everything non-right-wing. What was once a great talk station with a variety of personalities, irrespective to any ideology, became an ideological propaganda machine, NEVER reaching the ratings heights achieved before the purge. Sadly, but to be expected, many stations had an eye on WABC and followed suit, especially the ones that Boyce himself had direct control over in many major markets.
I am not writing this to advocate a progressive talk format, as I find that just as UNinspiring and UNentertaining, but I'm also tired of hearing how it "didn't work", when in reality, conservative programming put on the same left-for-dead frequencies would (and has) failed just as miserably.
All of this is rather moot actually, as I am more and more convinced that the braintrusts running talkradio have done irreparable damage to the format and it's reputation, so much so , that it'll never recover. Granted, all the audio competition wasn't helping, but radio companies certainly accelerated the demise of a once-great format.
Depends what you mean by "working." There clearly was a point in time when non-conservative talk died. I put it around the mid-90s. Michael Jackson at KABC was one of the canaries in the coal mine. The end of Larry King's syndicated radio show was another point. Advice talkers like Dr. Ruth, Sally Jessy Raphael, and more were also starting to fade. The two forces against them were conservative talk and hot talk. You had to be one or the other, or you were seen as old time radio. So in that way, there WAS a time when it stopped working, mainly because it was eclipsed by others.
I think right now, if you're going to try and do non-conservative talk, you have to come up with something different, something that moves the football down the field. Just reviving Larry King or other former hosts won't do that. As I've said before, I don't think radio companies caused this situation, but rather changing audience tastes. Radio companies merely follow the tastes of the audience. Right now, we're seeing huge audience interest in sports talk, and that's the direction a lot of stations are going.
This is similar to two others who beat Rush in local markets.
Ed Schultz consistently beat Rush when he had a local show in Fargo. And Ronn Owens beat Rush consistently from his platform at KGO in San Francisco.
Yet Schultz in syndication did poorly, and today he has a very small radio presence on third tier stations like WCPT in Chicago.
Ronn Ownes tried syndication to KABC in Los Angeles, and was met with very low numbers despite his San Francisco success.
This was the same thing with Randi. Good results on a local AM in West Palm Beach. Non-starter in most markets when syndicated despite relative success in a few isolated markets like Portland where the show ended when the station switched format because they could not sustain decent ratings with a progressive format.
You know better than to post this. She had less than 30 affiliates and was even failing on those. Mancow was a success in Chicago. He failed everywhere else so bad that he had to make up a new character, Conservative Mancow. And he failed at that. Randi Rhodes was a FAILURE with a capital FAIL at a national level.
That and he was tired of paying for clearances. O'Reilly failed because of two things. He was up against Rush, and he spent half of his time arguing with prank callers.
Right now, unless you're one of three or four people, everyone is a failure at the national level. That's why I agree this format is in trouble.
Are you saying the money came out of Bill's pocket?
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