The only progressive AM radio talk station, Green960-KKGN, in one of the nation’s most liberal cities, San Francisco, is being taken off the AM dial by radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications, Inc. — a media conglomerate now owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, LLC — at the beginning of the 2012 Presidential election year.
Adding insult to injury for progressives in the Bay Area, the 960 slot on the dial is being replaced by Clear Channel with the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News Radio’s John Gibson and other radical Rightwing talkers, according to a press release [PDF] issued by the media giant last week, touting, in somewhat Orwellian terms, their “goal of expanding talk radio in San Francisco.”
“We saw the opportunity to expand our footprint in this crucial arena as we head into an election year and a population increasingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism,” says Clear Channel’s San Francisco Director of Operations Don Parker in the release.
The expansion will amount to moving Green960’s current schedule of progressive talk shows off the AM band, and on to FM’s HD2 radio ghetto where it will become a largely automated “robo-station,” according to several radio insiders familiar with the station and Clear Channel’s plans for it. The station which was formerly Green960 will have the catchy new name “FM Progressive Talk 103.7-2” at its new home, if listeners can find it.
The new Rightwing format taking its place on 960 will be known as KNEW, which is currently at 910 on the AM dial featuring a number of Fox News Radio programs. The 910 position will then be filled with a new talk format being developed by Clear Channel called “San Francisco’s Talk 910 KKSF,” which will also include some Fox News Radio veterans.
One bright side for progressives in San Francisco, the popular Randi Rhodes, who is syndicated nationally by Premiere (Clear Channel’s syndication arm) will continue in her current live Noon to 3p PT slot on the new KNEW-960. She’ll also remain in the same live slot in the progressive line up on the HD2 band, though few are likely to hear her there, as very few Americans actually own an HD radio receiver.
Rhodes tells The BRAD BLOG there could be a potential upside to the format change which will leave her progressive voice, as well as Bill Press’ in the pre-dawn hours, sprinkled in among the far Rightwingers.
“I never want to see Progressive voices lose ground, but hopefully we can build on the new HD channel,” Rhodes told us via email on Friday. “It does look like the beginning of the end of ‘conservative format purity’ has started. That’s a change in the industry that I’ve been fighting for for a long time and I’m happy to be part of it.”…
Other hosts currently featured on Green960, including the popular talkers Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann, and Mike Malloy declined to comment publicly for this story. Their shows are still carried by other Clear Channel stations around the country, including in cities where Clear Channel owns both a Rightwing and a progressive talk station in what has led to a less than competitive market for the two formats in many major markets.
In many of those cities, the progressive station is usually carried on a weaker signal and broadcasters and their syndicators have pointed out that there is often little, if any, marketing done to promote the progressive stations. Such was the case on San Francisco’s Green960 prior to last week’s announcement, according to a number of insiders who spoke to The BRAD BLOG off record.
Unfortunately, many that we’ve consulted with for this article either work for Clear Channel or still rely on them to broadcast their programs so they chose not to speak on the record, though some did.
According to their website, Clear Channel has “more than 850” stations reaching “more than 110 million listeners every week.” Wikipedia says that “Clear Channel is the largest owner of full-power AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations and twelve radio channels on XM Satellite Radio, and is also the largest pure-play radio station owner and operator.”
After passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as signed by President Bill Clinton, media goliaths like Clear Channel were allowed to buy up multiple, often competing stations in the same market and allowed leases by the FCC for multiple frequencies on our publicly-owned airwaves in each city.
The law was sold by legislators and lobbyists on the premise that it would increase competition in the market place. The net effect has been the exact opposite as progressive stations have not been allowed to compete for audiences on an honest and level playing field against Rightwing talk stations owned by the very same companies in the very same market.
Former syndicated radio host Peter B. Collins, whose nationally syndicated show was once carried by Green960, now hosts a regular podcast version of the show at PeterBCollins.com. He’s also a Bay Area radio veteran and explained that, with consolodation following the Telecommunication Act, there now remain just four major players in the San Francisco market, “Cumulus, CBS, Entercom and Clear Channel and they control, between the four of them, about 80% of the radio ad dollars in the market place.”
He also notes that San Francisco’s KGO, another staple AM talk station in the Bay Area, has similarly announced a major overhaul late last week that the trade industry publication Talkers Magazine described on its website Friday as a “San Francisco Earthquake!”
“It’s the End of KGO as we know it,” Talkers’ website blared over the weekend, describing the layoffs of all but one of KGO’s talk show hosts as the station moves from talk to the more inexpensive all-news format. Collins was, until the shake-up, also a frequent guest host on KGO.
The changes will leave Rhodes as the only progressive talker on AM radio during daylight hours in one of the nation’s most liberal cities.
“The combination of these moves by two different companies (KGO is owned by Cumulus) really eliminates what little diversity there was in AM talk in San Francisco,” Collins told us over the weekend. “By taking off the progressives from 960 and eliminating the centrists, libertarian and liberal views heard on KGO, it means that AM talk in San Francisco is now 90% conservative. And that’s a dangerous development.”
He adds that while he believes the moves are more business than politically related, “I think it’s very unfortunate that it’s happening in an election year.”
In describing what Clear Channel’s removal of progressive talk from the AM airwaves in San Francisco may mean for the progressive format nationally, Talkers offered a curious explanation on their website.
“Obviously it is a setback for the struggling format, simply because of the loss of a major market,” they wrote. “Some observers will point to this situation as an example of the format’s inherent weakness by saying it can’t even make it in San Francisco – one of the most liberal regions in the nation. However others will note that it is harder for a radio format targeted to a political orientation to make it in an area heavily populated by like-minded people because it doesn’t serve a [sic] unfilled need. Radio, being a niche medium, often works best in an area where the targeted audience is in the minority and it thus serves to galvanize a critical mass necessary to support a format. That is likely the case in San Francisco.”
So progressive talk is reported to have not worked in progressive San Francisco because it didn’t serve an unfilled need? If that were the case, wouldn’t there be Progressive Talk Radio stations all over, say, Kansas and Utah?
Oddly enough, the reason that Right-leaning media frequently cite for the lack of progressive radio elsewhere, for example in heavily Republican markets like Kansas and Utah, is that there is no interest in having progressive talk in such “Conservative” markets. So Talkers seems to be having it both ways here.
Bay Area radio vet Collins says that, in truth, “Industry hasn’t really experimented with progressive talk in any aggressive way. And yet they have gotten behind Michael Savage and Glenn Beck and others like them who have a history of being angry or unstable. The people who put that on may not buy that message themselves, but they think people will listen to it.”
They also aggressively promote those programs in markets where they air, while failing to do the same with progressive shows, even those like Stephanie Miller’s whose morning show often outpaces Laura Ingraham’s, an extreme Rightwinger and regular Fox News Channel guest host, in the ratings in markets where they are broadcast live head-to-head. And yet, Miller’s show is carried by just 36 affiliate stations, while Ingraham’s is carried by more than 300.
Clear Channel, our public airwaves and public interest obligations
Emmy award-winning former Los Angeles TV news producer Sue Wilson (an occasional guest contributor on media issues at The BRAD BLOG over the years), whose documentary film Broadcast Blues focuses on, among other things, the dangers of Clear Channel’s dominance in the radio market following the passage of the Telecommunications Act, noted yet another change by the company over the weekend. In Sacramento, the state capitol in very progressive California, where there has been no progressive AM talk stations on the public airwaves for years, more Rightwing radio was quietly added to the airwaves.
She charges, on a Facebook page linked from her FCC watchdog website, OurPublicAirwaves.com, that last Wednesday, the company “pulled a fast one on its listeners in Sacramento” by replacing an FM rock station with simulcast programming from talk station KFBK, the station which launched, and still carries, Rightwing talker Rush Limbaugh.
Wilson writes that the move “means that hard right-wing talk will fill another 50,000 watts of OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES in the Sacramento region, ranging from Lake Tahoe to Santa Rosa. It means our region now gets four stations promoting pro-corporate ‘conservative’ hate speech, but zero stations promoting any opposing ideas.”
She says this means that “Limbaugh can tell millions that Occupy Wall Street protestors are ‘Pure, genuine parasites,’ and ‘smug, stupid idiots’ whose parents will need to ‘housebreak ’em all over again'” while Sean Hannity “defends UC Davis cops use of pepper spray [and] can tell millions that Occupy protesters are ‘Lunatics Of The Left Wing'”, while at the same time on KFBK’s sister station KSTE Rightwinger Michael Savage “calls occupiers ‘vermin'”.
“[There is n]obody there to counter this propaganda,” she charges. “‘Conservative’ talk radio supporters will tell us that this is all about free speech, and if we don’t like it, we should just change the channel.”
“They are right,” Wilson says, “it is about free speech. OUR free speech. Where is OUR opportunity to get an alternative message out to our community on OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES?”
She goes on to say that no matter the politics, stations are granted FCC licenses for use of the public airwaves in exchange only for serving in the public interest.
“How is a hard right corporate power grab serving YOUR public interest?,” she rhetorically asks. “Answer: It is not.”
Politics aside?
In 2008, Bain Capital LLC, a Boston-based private equity firm founded in 1984 by current Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, purchased the Clear Channel conglomerate in a leveraged buyout.
Clear Channel’s removal of progressive talk from San Francisco’s airwaves at the beginning of a Presidential election year when Romney is seen by many to be the GOP’s likely nominee is bound to raise eyebrows and renew progressive concerns about media consolidation under the 1996 Telecom Act.
Collins, however, doesn’t see a conspiracy behind the shakeup in San Francisco. “I just don’t think the decisions were about politics,” he says. “But, it’s very easy to see that there’s an industry bias against Liberals and a basic industry presumption that Liberals can’t be successful in talk radio.”
“The real failure of this was to promote progressive talk in the same manner as conservative talk is promoted,” he says.
Indeed, it’s not just the corporate radio industry that seems disinclined toward supporting and promoting progressive programming. In 2006, Collins released a memo from ABC Radio Networks instructing affiliates who carried programs syndicated by Air America (the progressive radio network which declared bankruptcy the same year) to black out all ads from some 90 major corporate sponsors, including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Visa, Exxon Mobil, Cingular, McDonald’s, and even the U.S. Postal service and the U.S. Navy. All of them, the memo reads, “do not wish to air on any Air America affiliates.”
After the memo [PDF] was posted online by the non-profit media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the New York Times noted that the “advertisers’ avoidance of Air America’s liberal programming seems pointed when contrasted with the commercial success of right-wing talk radio programs like those of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.”
No reason was given in the memo for the major corporate advertisers shunning of Air America programming, and none offered comment in response to the NYTimes, which pointed out that “H-P, Wal-Mart, Visa, Microsoft and McDonald’s [were] among sponsors of Fox talk shows, including Mr. Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s.”
As to where listeners can find Green960’s programming as of January 3rd next year — other than via Clear Channel’s I Heart Radio smart phone app — it won’t be easy. At least not on the way to and from work, where Rightwing talk radio will still be plentiful and featured on several stations in the Bay Area.
While Collins notes that the HD2 band was originally meant as commercial broadcast radio’s answer to satellite radio, “there’s not been a big embrace of HD.”
“It’s in a bunch of Volkswagens,” he says, “and other than that, nobody’s got ’em.”
UPDATE 12/16/11: Change in plans? We’re receiving information that Clear Channel may now be re-thinking their plan to cancel Green960! Details now here…
After working in marketing in the radio biz in a past life i remember all the little tricks they used to use to keep Left Wing radio out of the “book” so to speak, so nothing new i guess, but extremely screwed up… i live on the border of NoDak & MT and we have NO Lefty radio anywhere here either, i guess they want to make the entire country a reich wing nighmare and that way we on the left end of the spectrum will then ALL turn right, since we won’t ever get to hear ourselves on the radio. LOL, jokes on them, we are smart enough to think for ourselves, we don’t have to have garbage screamed at us to remember what side we’re supposed to be on… At least there’s SiriusXm, KPFK (& the like), smartphone radio and online radio!! Oh, & some DAMNED GREAT podcasts!! There IS a Santa!
Amy Goodman in an interview with Brian Lamb asked the question, “What would be different if we had state media?”
From the 14 points of fascsim
6. A controlled mass media
Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.
Mitt Berlusconi Romney
People unfamiliar with KGO might recognize the name Ray Taliaferro:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Taliaferro
In my world, Ray is the father of progressive radio.
Yep. ClearChannel did the same to San Diego.
Believe it or not, this HUGE city has NO talk show to counter the rabid-right 24/7 talk show hosts since 2008! I call it a snuffing of voices other than right-wing spin and deception. It is a snuffing out of competititve opinions and facts.
Pity the electorate. Pity the Nation.
KGO just (overnight) fired all their Liberal Commentaors. Clearly, San Francisco radio is all Right Wing Wacko.
This is nothing. All over the United States, conglomerates are shifting their right-wing talk shows from the AM dial to their co-owned FM stations. In most if not all of these cities so far, the FM is a full-power outlet from high-perpectives such as mountains and skyscrapers. FM signals are “line-of-sight” and reach farther than AM signals because the latter are compromised by today’s communications equipment and computers, even the 50,000-watters out there. When election season is in full swing next summer, right-wing talk is the ONLY talk that will be available on the FM dial.
Caution: Listening to right-wing talk radio may be hazardous to your sanity.
I do not care if their business model makes money or not; radio’s primary function is to serve the public interest. If they can do that and make lots of money also, fine! But if they cannot, they should sell the stations to a smarter operator who can.
List the advertisers on right wing radio. Call their local businesses and tell them that you’d like to buy their products or services but since they advertise on such low class and hateful radio you will boycott them. Then actually boycott the advertisers. Carry a list of them and give it out to people you meet that are sympathetic with Democracy. Just Do It.
Is there anything practical we can do? I am just sick that we’re basically losing Green 960.
Clear channel is the worst thing to happen to radio like ever. All my favorite stations don’t play the same stuff anymore, and the dj’s suck, or else they get carted off to some other city. Arrrrgh.
I listen to Green 960 daily. It presents an alternative to every other station on either am OR fm radio. The world does not need another venue for the puny-minded rantings of another Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity. They represent what is wrong and destructive in America right now. By following the dirty money generated by shows such as theirs, Clear Channel has proven beyond any doubt that it is pure evil.
Two thoughts regarding immediate action that should be taken. First, boycott all advertisers on the rightwing stations. This may require a group effort to document the advertisers and make them known to as many people as possible.
Second, when a license is up for renewal, formally challenge it. This may require the assistance of attorneys familiar with the process who know the best basis to file such objections. Good luck, we have our work cut out for us. Now lets get started.
I cannot express, adequately, the rage that I’m feeling now! I am so frigging mad that all I can think about is burning Clear Channel to the ground in self defense. Self defense? Yeah… I (we) are under attack from some very sick and scary people. Randy Rhodes finally spelled it out on her Mon. 12/5/11 show. The three hundred fifty million Americans, that used to be the purchasing power of the world economy, is now chicken feed compared to the One Billion person purchasing power in China and the rest of Asia. We are being thrown out of the Profit Pie… and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
I would like to ask: what will it take to stop the outright destruction of this country? Another rigged election? Demonstrations and Occupations? All doubtful at best. Robin(g) Hood had it right. If the rich riech can steal from us, then, in all seriousness, is turn about fair play?
One of the first actions that Clear Channel took in 2008 after being bought by Bain Capital was to eliminate the progressive radio station in Boston. No notice was given, it just switched (while I was listening) to Spanish-language music programming.
It took several years for another progressive station to fill the void.
This IS about politics. We will now have THREE right-wing hate talk radio stations, with no liberal/progressive alternative…in, perhaps, the most progressive city in the country. Stephanie Miller comes to town and sells out the Warfield over two nights? Think John Gibson can do that? Carried on a weak signal with no promotion, 960 had a very loyal audience. If the new programming is treated the same way, I have no doubt ratings will suffer. ‘Free market’, my ass.
OCCUPY CLEAR CHANNEL Monday December 12! Sacramento, LA and New Orleans have committed, how many more cities will join in? San Francisco, where are you? Updates at http://www.ourpublicairwaves.com
I really want to do something. I kept looking around on facebook and where ever to find some info about KGO or Green 960. We could use some social media to find each other. Remember the success against Glenn Beck on TV. List the sponsors, Occupy Clear Channel, find a multi-millionaire to buy us a station.
Burn them down? Come on Ed, settle down. That’s crazy talk. And stealing isn’t the answer, either.
Look on the bright side, at least we don’t have to hear that self righteous Go Vegan show anymore.
Maybe someone should start a “shame on clear channel advertisers website” and keep updating for whom to boycott, and contact info. to let each advertiser know about that they are being boycotted.
Big Brother, flexing his muscles. Will you submit, or will you boycott?
Occupy America, or lose it!
Let them cling to this as the industry shifts to more online based, streaming radio either via built in like Pandora is on some cars or via a smart phone with a data plan.
More and more people are going to make the shift to online based ‘radio’ this is just yet another reason to make the shift.
Here is a link at which you can file a complaint with the FCC.
That’s where I go to listen to you Brad on the Malloy Show when your sittin in. SHIT! I say its about time the FCC started pulling licenses. They clearly are not serving the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!
@tony p: I hadda laugh. CanNOT stand that guy’s voice. As a former Bay Area denizen, I made a connection w/John Scott, former programming guy. He wasn’t the greatest, and didn’t listen to me when I advised him to build a community of listeners. The best way to fight back on this is as recommended: contact the advertisers & protest. There are many online options, but they don’t deliver programming to the car. I now live in Seattle (hi Ed!) And I am grateful for 1090am. There is also 620am in Portland. We hardly listen to the radio anymore-just occasionally. Info overload is a b1(9h. Git on it Bradbloggers: join together, figure out a plan, and make some noise! Move your $$ if you haven’t yet from those dastardly banks (their ratings have already been revised downward-we can DO this!) And stop spending your cash (esp STOP using the credit cards) at corporate monoliths. Shop & eat local. Wake up the populace. We’re being abandoned while stolen from. But WE have the $$ & the power, if we’ll just use it. Oh, and drop our buddy Brad a sawbuck or two before the end of the year-and do it for Rob Kall at opednews, too! Be well-it’s gonna be a fascinating year…
first KGO cans all it’s liberal talk show hosts and now Green 960!!!!
WTF Clear Channel! I demand an FCC Investigation into these clear violations of the equal time laws in political campaining!
Brad, what can we do to stop this?
Chris –
I see that Media Action Center is launching an Occupy CC effort on Monday. Details here.
Other than that, I suspect it’s up to folks in San Francisco and elsewhere to organize however they see fit to let CC know that they’d like to keep Progressive Radio on the air in one of the nation’s most progressive cities!
Trouble is, there’s little if any local programming on Green960 any more, so don’t even know if anyone in SF is letting listeners know what’s about to happen to their station, and the media up there doesn’t seem to be covering it either, as most attention is going to the format change at SF’s powerhouse KGO instead.
Thanks, Brad, for posting the link to Monday’s action. I urge people to join us in physically going to your local Clear Channel station Monday (or anytime you can, really,) and inspecting their public files.
It accomplishes a two key things:
1) it empowers we the people to fully understand that WE own the public airwaves.
2) it lets Clear Channel know that we KNOW we own the radio airwaves
Is this enough? NO! In Sacramento, where we are physically protesting, we are demanding alternative talk radio so all voices can be heard on our local radio airwaves. And we are promising license challenges and boycotts of sponsors until we get it.
But by sending teams into Clear Channel stations to exercise our rights as the owners of the airwaves ALL ON THE SAME DAY, we are sending a powerful message.
Join us!
MediaActionCenter.net
This is very interesting as far as the timing goes. The recent NDAA bill having been passed giving the president unprecedented power to pillage with impunity, disappear anyone on the planet at will, the revelation of the intent to begin staffing the F-E-M-A camps, and now the right-wingers have full control of the airwaves in critical markets. Great way to control / stifle dissent. Are there any parallels here with Nazi Germany I wonder. God help us, we are in deep shit.
“Watch the Nazis run your town” fm “Call Any Vegetable” F. Zappa
This could very well work in favor of the left. The more Americans hear idiots like Glenn Beck and other GOTEA right wings nuts, the more they realize voting Republican is the last thing they want to do. That’s why I’m hoping for a long, drawn out debate between Newt and Mitt. The longer they make asses of themselves in front of ‘sane’ Americans, the better chance for Obama’s re-election.
[ED NOTE: This commenter is not Brad Friedman. Brad, if you could choose a differently identifiable “Brad” name when posting here, it’d be appreciated. Sorry for the inconvenience! And thanks! – BF]
@bradfriedman
The left did not benefit at all from the right wing takeover of the airwaves that started under Reagan and was accelerated after the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
I don’t know exactly how much of all of this truly influenced people’s thinking but I have to believe that it was considerable.
This may also be a means to “project” a way of thinking onto the public giving issues an air of more support than they actually have – a psyop if you will.. All very dangerous no matter how you look at it
The one thing that gives me some hope is that peoople are waking up from their sleepwalking as things continue to get worse and worse, as one would expect.
My concern is the draconian measures put in place by this administration are designed to contain any challenge to the power of the elite so they can continue to wage unjust and immoral wars to feather their nests.
Obama has been an utter disaster (sorry BF),. He has done virtually 0 for his constituency all while driving us further down the road to fascism.
Brad F – Why have you said nothing about the fact that Obama is the one that asked for the language protecting Americans in the NDAA be removed. If you did and I missed it please accept my apologies. Even if passed with that language protecting Americans the bill is still like something out of Nazi Germany and is truly frightening and totally unAmerican! Constitutional scholar my ass. Fascist trojan horse is more like it.
Not sure if I put my thoughts in the most coherent form but I hope you get the idea.
Yep, AJ; the 1996 TCA =that’s maybe the worst, in the long run, of any of the 3 or 4 HORRIBLE things he signed/promoted.
They are almost all operating outside, far outside, their licensing parameters/”regulations”haha) to operate in the public interest.
It can be easily demonstrated, but, to whom , and with some actual resultant change/denial-of licensure ?? That’s the problem.
“Brazil….1984….Metropolis…The Handmaid’s Tale….Clockwork Orange…Fahrenheit 451…Bob Roberts…Face In The Crowd….Full Metal Jacket–a superb non-fiction/documentary, as far as I’m concerned–
Almost any novel by richard Condon; Jerzy Kosinski -(“..all (citizens)must be eliminated as suspects by the State”)
Just suggestions, not admonitions 🙂
The local news/talk Santa Rosa CA station KSRO 1350 (Amplitude Mod.) is very good, esp in the afternoon. PM’s.
Radio is great, much better than TV, IMHO.
Boycott if you can figure out whom, sure; but the BIG players don’t need us anymore.
BHO is taking the easy, LOW ROAD.
Are he and the Dem’s being blackmailed ? maybe by the forces Sibel mentioned ?? It would explain A LOT.
Keep the Faith, somehow, y’all 🙂
PS, you forgot Enemy of the State…
The Parallax View, All the Presidents’ Men, that one about tape recordings with Gene Hackman, ah, the list is endless. When I wanna know what’s GOING to happen, I read the newspaper. They ALWAYS put it in the clearest terms what they are planning. They say: experts ‘predict’ blah blah blah-flu epidemics, financial catastrophes, etc. Made me stop reading newsrags due to excessive nightmares. The present everyday events are just bad enough… 🙂