Liberals are working to make their voices heard on talk radio (progress !)

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/01/05/left_in_the_air/

Left in the air?
Liberals are working to make their voices heard on talk radio
By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 1/5/2004

<snip>
Walsh, a Harvard MBA who worked as an AOL executive and a technology adviser to the Democratic National Committee, hopes to break the conservative chokehold on talk radio with a new network of liberal talkers -- led perhaps by comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo -- slated to debut in the spring (and)...plans to buy radio stations in five major American cities, including Boston, and program up to 18 hours of liberal talk a day on them. It's too soon to say whether his concept will work, but there is a growing hunger on the left to do battle on the airwaves.

"There is a very effective right-wing echo chamber," says Ralph Neas, president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, citing such hosts as Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. "It's a very effective way of getting their message out." "I know the Democrats have been stewing about this for a long time," says Ed Schultz, a Democratic talk-show host in Fargo, N.D. "The Democrats, as a party, have underestimated the power of talk radio. It's absolutely a three-hour bashing session against the liberals."<snip>


Liberals seem like an endangered species in talk radio. According to Talkers magazine, four of the five biggest audiences in radio belong to conservatives: Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage, and moralizing advice guru Laura Schlessinger. (Shock jock Howard Stern is the one nonconservative interloper.) Tom Athans, who runs Democracy Radio, an organization aimed at finding and syndicating liberal talkers, says 300 of the 340 political shows he surveyed featured conservative hosts; 40 were hosted by liberals. And only two of those liberals -- Schultz and Randi Rhodes in West Palm Beach, Fla. -- are getting what he calls "killer ratings."<snip>


Walsh, the CEO of Progress Media Inc., is trying to create his own market force with a highly publicized -- if largely undisclosed -- plan to create a liberal network. Officials at his Central Air radio network are talking to Franken and Garofalo and have made several executive hires, including "Daily Show" cocreator Lizz Winstead, former CNN producer Shelly Lewis, and ex-Chicago radio executive Dave Logan. One on-air personality officially locked in is Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, who will host a daily hourlong show on media issues. Published reports also indicate that comedian Barry Crimmins is coming aboard to deliver commentaries.

The plan calls for programming a 14-to-18-hour broadcast day on stations that Walsh says Progress is close to buying in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston. Walsh insists that "in every case, these are significant or full-service stations that service the entire market," but no purchases have been announced. Walsh wants to deliver a full slate of "live talk, entertainment, and comedy programming" that will emulate the ensemble-style structure of Don Imus's show, using a well-known host, a news provider, and a "more antic-style person. . . . We're not just putting up an Al Franken and Janeane standing there alone in front of the microphone."

But if Walsh is trying an ambitious and expensive network model, Athans is working on the more traditional syndication model, looking for talkers like Schultz. A self-described "middle-of-the-road Democrat who used to be a conservative," Schultz has toiled in the broadcasting business for a quarter-century and hosts a popular morning show on KFGO-AM in Fargo. Athans connected Schultz to a syndicator, and starting today he will begin an afternoon program that has thus far been picked up in about a dozen markets in the upper Midwest. An official at the syndication company, Jones Radio Networks, says Schultz is close to lining up a few major market stations on the East Coast.<snip>

Another popular theory is that the left is too humorless to succeed in an entertainment medium. "Most attempts at progressive talk radio have been focused on conversion for the audience," Kaplan says, "rather than focused on giving the audience a good time." Walsh is a proponent of the "sandwich theory," which holds that the occasional liberal talker stuck in the middle of a conservative format is doomed to failure.<snip>

First it was going to debut in January.

Then February.

Then March.

Now "the Spring."

By the time they actually get up and running, there will be a few weeks, and that will not be enough time.. This should have happened YEARS ago..