Talking Radio

Clear Channel Caves

to Protestors in Madison

There's lots of speculation in the talk radio blogs and bulletin boards about what motivated Clear Channel to cave in to community pressure and keep the lib talk format on their Madision station WXXM-FM 92.1 "The Mic."

Some say that CC just "gave in" to the overwhelming community support, which included a petition drive (with over 5,000 signatures) community protest actions, advertiser appeals, and statements by prominent politicos. On the other end of the spectrum (the right-wingers that is) the sentiment is that it was just a stunt by CC to promote the station. Actually, while I don't think this is the case, there is no doubt that "the Mic" received a lot of local and national attention after CC announced that they were pulling the plug on lib talk.

Another theory, espoused on the talk radio blog Liberal Talk Radio is that there was a rivalry between two CC management groups. This theory sees the Madison management group, led by Jeff Tyler, Madison vp operatons winning out over the regional management group in Cincinnati, which is headed up by CC vp Darryl Parks.

In any case, alls well that ends well. Also, in month where there has not been a lot of good news for lib talk, the turn-around in Madison bodes well.


Here are some comments from various message boards and blogs about the expected demise of
WXXM:

"The 'petition and protest' is only the 3rd stage in the Progressive's acceptance of the death of AAR. When this fails, they will quickly move on to the 'bitter and buying into the conspiracy theories' stage, and then, finally, 'back to NPR with the tote bag'. wow. 4,500 signatures and only 30 liberals show up? makes you question the validity of those 'signatures'. I sure would be concerned about those... moonbats unhappy with the format change."

"The Mic's" site has a countdown to how many days Bush has left in office but the station's progtalk format will be gone long before that...Darn capitalist system...a station actually has to make money?

"And whether liberals like to admit it or not, most people with a liberal political attitude aren't all that interested in hearing liberal political talk on the radio. In order to be a liberal, one has to believe in sitting back and letting the government take care of your needs, while you enjoy your bread and circuses. It makes perfect sense that liberal listeners would prefer to ignore politics and listen to sports talk."

"Enough with the petitions... really."

And here's what Brian Maloney -- the Radioequalizer-- had to say

"Determined to save their failed liberal talk radio station, Madison's so- called "progressive" community has already resorted to several of its usual noisy "hey hey, ho ho!" tactics. With those efforts having so far failed to convince station management to keep "The Mic" as a libtalker, given weak ad sales and mediocre ratings, activists are now looking to escalate their campaign."