What killed the liberal radio star? - Corporate Censorship Of Course [View all]

[TomCADem]

The primary reason behind the rightward shift in our politics has been the rightward shift of our media as exemplified by the growth of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. The concept of a liberal media has always been a myth, but now the biggest lie is that the "mainstream media" is somehow neutral. False neutrality has replaced objectivity. A monopolistic media market relentlessly attacks or obscures Democratic and progressive viewpoints in order to pander to their right wing corporate advertisers.

Liberal talk radio is now largely dead because corporate advertisers have increasingly acted in concert to boycott it. Now, the only political talk radio available is from right wing blowhards. Bill Moyers once said "There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Sadly, we have already lost this struggle. The press is not free. It is for sale. And the only folks who can afford it are the Shelden Adelsons and Koch Brothers of the world.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/killed-liberal-radio-star-article-1.1557670

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.