Groups in Two More Markets Start Fighting Back
Groups of radio listeners in Duluth and New Haven and are starting to organize grass roots campaigns to restore liberal talk radio in these markets after the owners of the incumbent lib talk station pulled the plug on the format earlier this month.
In Duluth, a group calling itself "Duluth-Superior Progressive Talk" has initiated an on-line petition drive and a Yahoo message board. In New Haven, "Save Progressive Talk CT." is just getting organized . They have initiated a on-line petition drive and will soon be starting a message board.
This makes six markets where there are on-going campaigns to protest the moves of station owners, who are often thousands of miles away, to make impulsive programming changes without consulting anyone in the local community and without any advance notification.
In addition to Duluth and New Haven there are on-going campaigns to restore lib talk in Boston, Columbus, OH., Dallas, and Cincinnati. Three of the stations that have dropped lib talk are owned by Clear Channel Communications. CC, which is based is San Antonio is laying off hundreds of employees all across the country and selling about 500 stations (one third of the stations that they own) as they prepare to take the company private. It is suspected that the move to dump lib talk is probably being done to save money.
For more information about the groups that are fighting back to save lib talk, go to Non-Stop Radio for more information.
Listener organized campaigns to save lib talk have been successful in Portland, ME and Madison.
3 comments:
Just received confirmation from XM Radio that they are screwing Thom Hartmann out of the 12 noon to 3:00 pm EST slot in favor of Ed Schultz.
They have the audacity to claim that Ed Schultz was part of the original AAR programming and that is part of the reason they will carry him instead of Thom Hartmann in the time slot being vacated by Al Franken.
It appears that AAR does not have the ability to control what parts of their programming XM Radio either carries or does not carry, so they get to pick and choose, and in this case they are going with Schultz. Not getting Thom Hartmann as the replacement for Franken is a tremendous loss for AAR listeners that do not have a local affiliate and are forced to listen on XM Radio.
This might be reason enough to change from XM to Sirus.
Since XM did not ask its listeners to Channel 167 what they want in that time slot, we should get to vote with our subscriptions, and to get Thom Hartman is reason enough to subscribe to Sirus Radio instead of XM Radio.
Wow, that stinks. If they claim Ed was originally part of AAR, they are lying; he has been Jones Network from the start, actually before AAR even hit the air I understand. Randi is predicting XM and Sirius will merge, but they certainly should program what the subscribers want; I thought 'choice' was supposed to be much of the reason they are supposed to be 'superior'? Oh well.
Yes, we are fighting back here in New Haven, and we are fighting mad! We should have some ongoing news at myleftnutmeg.com. Thanks for mentioning us!
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