Another Liberal Talk Radio Failure; San Fran Lib Station Replaced With Conservative Talk

Even in a far-left city such as San Francisco no one listens to progressive talk radio. Green 960 will be replaced by a conservative talker KNEW, and KNEW’s old spot on the dial 910 AM will be relaunched as KKSF AM, another conservative talker. Both stations are owned by Clear Channel, which was obviously tired of bleeding money on the previous failed enterprise.

Predictably, progressives immediately developed the vapors. Comments via JWF:

“Obama should have fixed this mess by nationalizing radio. Then the good stations like KGO could re-hire all the people they let go. Green 960 could stay on the air.”

“Dec 1st and near 70f here in the eastbay…and conservative radio will never even accept global warming..so Neanderthal talk will thrive.”

“Conservatives have time to listen to these cranks because they are sitting around in dead-end jobs, if they work at all, blaming their failures on liberals instead of their own stupidity. Liberals are too busy. “

“Why don’t we liberals listen to talk radio? Because we don’t need the constant reinforcement that perpetually insecure, professionally paranoid conservatives do to valid our political ideas. Conservatives desperately need their “bubble.” But I recall seeing an article forecasting the end of conservative talk blather in the next 5-10 years, as its 55-dead demographic is both dying off and unattractive to sponsors. “

The first reaction is to blame the FCC over a private entity’s legal decision; secondly, to call for Obama to “nationalize” radio a la Mother Russia; and third, to claim that progressives are “too busy.” Really? Then why all the free time to “occupy” Wall Street?

Gren 960 makes its money from its advertisers, who are sold on ratings. For the picture book crowd: the number of listeners makes up your ratings. Clear Channel exists to make money, not to do progressives’ bidding. If operating Green 960 made money for Clear Channel, the company would keep it on the dial. All progressives had to do was listen and support the advertisers.

Also from the comments, this one from the original piece:

Anonymous said…

Blame the FCC, Looking for uncle sam to bail out the radio station market? How about some truth here. There’s at least 3 “progressive” radio stations in the BA: Govt supported leftist KQED, government supported radical left KALW, and KGO who hardly has anyone conservative on the air. Then there’s all the other stations where no one dares to say anything that’s not 100% PC. And ALL the TV stations and newspapers that are 110% progressive.

Having no understanding of the economy you omitted the fact that no one was listening to 960 just as no one listened to Air America. So they lost money and failed. No one listens to commercial left wing radio. They don’t need to with public radio cornering the market and the broadcast TV stations all PC.

There’s a reason why progressive talk radio is a failure: the whole of the MSM is left-leaning. Viewers, readers, are inundated with progressive ideology on the nightly news, in the dailies, in academia, in arts and entertainment. Progressive talk radio offers no differentiation, no respite. There’s only one popularly-perceived right-leaning network among the many network and cable news entities and progressives protest over one.

One.

A private entity. Progressives protest over this or any conservative talk radio while the public subsidizes progressive stations. As a conservative talker, I receive regular complaints from progressives who say my entire station should be booted off air over our politics. An actual email from a month ago:

—–Original Message—–

From: Deborah XXXX [mailto:XXXX]

Sent: Sat 11/7/2011 11:18 AM

To: Dana Loesch

Subject: HATE SPEECH

“What you said about the health law is HATE SPEECH! Obama hasn’t made socialism out of ANYTHING. I’m writing the FCC and informing them about your hate talk and will be encouraging them to pass the Fairness Doctrine. There’s no room for that on PUBLIC airwaves. We don’t need this teabagger trash on OUR airwaves.”

Not only do progressives want a moratorium applied to conservatives on air, they want the government to subside their own broadcasts and to minimize the ability for private companies to compete. They demand that the government stifle market demands and suppress conservative voices in favor of progressives ones and they use the word “fair” to describe the whole strategy, i.e. the “Fairness” Doctrine.

(Progressives have a knack for christening legislation with names antithetical to their actual purpose or result like the “Fairness” Doctrine, the “Stimulus” package, the Health Care “Freedom” Act.)

If progressives truly want fairness they should stop accepting government funds for their stations and stop pushing for censorship. Let the market decide who it wants on air. Of course, the entire reason they attempt to skew the playing field is because the market has decided and progressives don’t like the result.