Well, whaddaya know? Clear Channel, the largest radio station owner in America, a company owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital LLC, and the parent company of the largest syndication company in the U.S., Premier Networks, has now cleared our public airwaves of pretty much every single non-Rightwing voice. Cleansing complete, according to Politico. And, happily for all corporate interests, just in time for the 2014 elections!…
Rhodes, whose nationally syndicated show airs Monday through Friday from 3-6 p.m., had suggested to her listeners since October that her days on radio were “totally numbered.” Premiere said today it will no longer carry her show after the year ends.
“Premiere Networks will no longer produce and distribute The Randi Rhodes Show after Tuesday, December 31, 2013,” Premiere’s public relations director Rachel Nelson told POLITICO in an email.
…
While Wednesday’s confirmation from Premiere is the first official news about the end of Rhodes’ contract, the liberal talker had alluded to listeners in October that “my ability to talk to you is going away.”
“The only way you’ll be able to find me in a little while is if you have my personal phone number,” she said on her Oct. 18 show.
Rhodes’ regular guest host Nicole Sandler will fill in for Rhodes from Dec. 16-31, Sandler told POLITICO, making Rhodes’ likely last day on air this year Dec. 13.
Clear Channel owns some 850 AM and FM stations across the country. They are allowed to operate them via virtually free public licenses to broadcast over our public airwaves, as granted to them by the FCC in exchange, largely, for little more than their agreement to “operate in the public interest”. You’re welcome.
They also control what will be played over those stations via their syndication arm Premiere, in what appears to me at least, as I have argued over the years, to be a violation of United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., the 1948 Supreme Court antitrust ruling that ended monopolies by movie studios which controlled both theater ownership and the products which were displayed in them.
Though they are axing the Randi Rhodes program, I suspect they will continue syndicating and broadcasting their other shows across the nation’s public airwaves in 2014, as hosted in the public’s interest by folks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Tens of millions will continue to listen to each of them — for free, over our public airwaves — on their way to and from work each day. Finding non-Rightwing voices, for free, over our public airwaves will become even more difficult than it already is and completely impossible for the vast majority of Americans.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have guest-hosted The Randi Rhodes show in the past, and have been a frequent guest over the years, with both her and her regular guest-host, my friend Nicole Sandler.
UPDATE 11/15/2013: In a suprising about-face, Premiere Networks has now decided to keep Rhodes on air into 2014, after all! Full details now here…
I think this is terrible! Where are both sides of politics in radio!!! Randi was great at supplying facts unlike the conservative radio people. I will go out of my way to listen to anything other then Clear Channel and make sure that all my friends and relatives do the same!
Of all of the liberal radio personalities, I get the most facts from Randi. One more “notch in the belt” of the right wing takeover of our country. I have to give them credit for their long view plan including, but not limited to: rigging voting machines, buying media outlets – pretty much all of them, gerrymandering, voter suppression (via id and shorting number of machines in blue districts), Faux propaganda … the list goes on. The ONLY way we can even come close to battling is to VOTE in every election … and know who you are voting for.
Cry me a river.
Uch. If you had any idea how much of my day is spent loading up PSAs and crappy MAB commercials to cover up the commercials of actual advertisers bailing from the Rush Limbaugh show. The only paying customers left are the flotsom and jetsom of the ad barrel; every scam website, colon blow medication, phony tax restoration outfits and erectile dysfunction herbs.
Premier isn’t where a progressive talker wants to be anyway. They’re becoming the bane of radio’s existence.
Randi needs to do what Norman Goldman does – he’s been bumped off of terrestrial radio here in Washington State, but he has a large listening audience on satellite radio and he does podcasting for $5/mo with access to all of his “Beyond the Norm” segments on legal advice and civics. I listen to him every morning (the previous day’s show) and it’s well worth the fiver. I used to listen to Randi many years ago, before KPTK AM 1090 bumped her for Norm, turned out I liked him better, so I don’t know that I’d necessarily go back to her on a podcast format (there are only so many hours in a day), but if her market exists she should start promoting it like crazy right now. Maybe she already does, I wouldn’t know. Does she still do “Bounce your boobies” on Friday?
Well thank God someone at Clear channel had the balls to get rid of this nutcase. you libs are insane to think,this carpet munching hag utters one word of truth. Let her slide back into the gutter she came out of.
I’m from St. Louis, a heavily Democratic city, and I have never heard a progressive talk show on the radio in my life because they don’t exist here. It was only until I got SiriusXM that I realized why Ed or Thom are not played in a predominantly working class town with large immigrant and African-American town. KMOX local drive time hosts morning and afternoon are openly Republican on air which I never remember being that way in the past. I can also not only hear the national syndicated righties all day like Levin, Savage, Beck, Ingraham, Limbaugh, and Hannity 3 hours a piece on local air, but we have several homegrown Tea Party religious lunatics who have their own shows daily for 3 hours.
People like my Senator Claire McCaskill are morons for not demanding behind closed doors that at least one prog talker have a chance to broadcast in major Midwestern cities like St. Louis.
I don’t know if you haven’t noticed but: Republicans control the day to day, month to month, year to year national conservation on every single important topic. I wonder why?
I am depressed over Randi’s leaving. I hope there will be some other radio station (I listen to her on 1150am Los Angeles)where I will be able to find her. I have a hard time picturing her full time in Costa Rica when she has so much to share with the critically thinking American Public.
She is thorough and I have always been able to fact check everything she says. Terrible Loss!!!
This is bad. Really bad. The public airwaves became the corporate airwaves and the private owners no longer bother with even a fig leaf to hide what they used to have to hide: their bias -and their suppression of free speech. And ruining of popular talent’s careers (Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann). There’s always an excuse for saying the talent is somehow to blame for the inevitable demise. Where are put legislators? Where the FCC? Where the people? I organized some protest when Thom Hartmann was taken off Clear Channel (KTLK) in LA. There are always asuurances: oh, they’ll be even more widely available on the Internet. Hey-radio is the car media and people listen in their cars because it’s dangerous and illegal to distract ourselves any other way. At home, we’re with our families or still doing our paid jobs on our own time, thanks to the GOP jobs program: Indentured Servitude and Slavery. The right knows radio is The People’s Political Medium-and they bought it all up and run it without any fear of “the public airwaves” being an active principle. With this Supreme Court, why should they fear? We are utterly in the thrall of wall-to-wall radio propaganda. And as for religious freedom on-air -wow, ever hear Unitarian Radio? Shinto Radio? On these powerful, far-reaching stations? I’m working or I’d organize a protest outside LA’s Clear Channel office. But really, this is what our representatives are paid to do. And our FCC and Justice Dept. but they’re drowning, at present, in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. 2014 the right wants so bad to stem the progressive tide! Watch those electronic voting systems….
I hope Randi finds a way to stay “on the air” using the Internet.
I will miss Randi. She was the smartest kid in class. Everything she said was what you were thinking but couldn’t prove. Oh well, the messenger always gets killed.
Here is a moveon.org petition to save Randi Rhodes show: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/save-randi-rhodes-radio?source=c.tw&r_by=319940
They’re looking for 300 signatures…sign today!!
Matthew, from Seattle. Randi was one of the biggest reasons I STOPPED listening to am1090. I know some folks feel beholding to her, but most folks in Seattle could not stand her. She is untruthful and she is self-aggrandizing to the point of being delusional. She would often take one line from someone elses report and then create a phony dialog from the one-liner and then make up a story from the made-up dialog, as if any of it was factual. She continuously claimed she was educating us stupid yokels even though she was usually two days behind with most of her topics. A narcissist and a bloviater. This is one progressive who was NOT sorry that she was purged from Seattle and is not unhappy that she will no longer be allowed to mislead listeners.
The ratings often plumment to 0.002 share or so after the changeover to the 8th sports talk station and the owners don’t care – Big ED is not talking, THOM is off the air.
Madison WI listeners stood their ground, and were able to have the local station continue with the progressive lineup.
@Tom #7 – St. Louis has the Cardinals and Chicago has WCPT – on 3 FM stations and 1 AM station to provide the truth throughout Northern Illinois.
Yes, the market is pretty good at sorting the winners from the losers.
Well they lost Randi and they lost me as a listener. How Randi is off the air and that POS right wing nut bag Limbaugh is still up there plugging away the hate is a testament to their bias. Goodbye clear channel, I won’t be back. Ever.
The right wing noise machine, and the oligarchs must be challenged, must be called out every day for their blatant bias.
Cruel health insurance co.s, callous banks, insulated politicians owned by corporations are winning.
We are becoming indentured servants and in the second civil war. It cannot be stressed enough, that we are fighting for our very right to choose jobs, stay debt free and think freely in the U.S.
The mind control media zombies are winning and we must fight back every day, every second of the day.
Randi, good luck and keep fighting for middle class Americans.
BRAD BLOG’s latest resident troll Davey Crocket said @ 3:
Totally! That whole government of the people, by the people and for the people thing is bullshit. It’s of, by and for the corporations! Why can’t these “libs” understand that? Our public airwaves aren’t for the people, they’re for profit! Luckily, it’s only non-corporatists who aren’t allowed to use them! #YoureAnIdiot