When are Progressive Billionnaires going to use their wealth to buy media companies and keep them

[keep_left]

62. One possible solution would be for the labor unions to create a media startup--or fund one.

Many years ago (around the time of the founding of DU), the UAW was trying to start a radio network. I forget why that didn't work out. The other side does tend to have money to burn, and that is always a problem because the "left", such as it is in this country, is usually resource-constrained.

As one example of the folly that the right can afford (and we can't), there's CatholicFamilyRadio (yes, all one word). It was an ill-fated network funded by some really reactionary radtrad Catholic billionaires like Tom Monaghan (Domino's Pizza founder) and Peter Lynch who got together to bankroll a national rollout of their "brand" in the late '90s. They claimed they would topple people like Rush Limbaugh and get everyone listening to far-right Catholic radio. They cheaped out on the "talent", hiring a bunch of third-stringers like Dan Lungren and Al Kresta (a Catholic Limbaugh clone). The programming was so awful that they were out of business in a year and a half, burning through something like $150 million. Nothing like that sweet sugar daddy billionaire money.

This kept going with other sugar-daddy-funded radtrad experiments like Ave Maria Radio and (Ir)-Relevant Radio; the latter continues today (and was recently bailed out by EWTN).

Probably the easiest thing to do for the labor unions would be to start up some YouTube channels, etc. which are very cheap. While talk radio is still a political force, its audience continues to trend older year by year, and it is not nearly as feasible to groups that are not well-funded.