The EYE doesn’t generally pay much attention to talk radio, but the other day we wandered over to KBND’s website to check out the program lineup. We found it covers the full spectrum of political opinion … if by “full spectrum” you mean everything from the right to the far right to the lunatic-fringe right.
Here’s what the weekday schedule looks like:
5 am to 9 am: News
9 am to Noon: Rush Limbaugh
Noon to 1 pm: Paul Harvey
1 pm to 3 pm: Lars Larson
3 pm to 5 pm: Bill O’Reilly
5 pm to 6 pm: News
6 pm to 8 pm: Sean Hannity
8 pm to 10 pm: Dr. Laura Schlessinger
10 pm to 3 am: George Noory
3 am to 5 am: Jim Bohannon
If our arithmetic is correct, that’s five hours of news and 19 hours of talk. And out of the 19 hours of talk, 12 hours are conservative talk – make it 14 if you include Dr. Laura — and zero are liberal talk.
Now, The EYE realizes that Central Oregon is a conservative place – but is it really that monolithically conservative? Isn’t there some market segment that might be interested in hearing from somebody a little to the left of Limbaugh and Lars?
Maybe progressives and moderates in Central Oregon ought to let KBND know they’d appreciate an hour of programming a day – hell, even an hour a week – to balance out the station’s lopsided lineup a little bit. The address is PO Box 5037, Bend OR 97708; the e-mail is talk@kbnd.com, and the phone number is 541-388-0456.
In the meantime we guess we should be thankful that KBND doesn’t air Michael Savage. Yet.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2008.
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Old news. They’ve been running that line up for a couple years now. And yes, it does suck (and that’s not even entirely accurate, either, as their afternoon news is only 30 minutes now before it goes straight into Sean Hannity).
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2006/04/26/sorry_kbnd_but.php
You’re right, it’s not news that KBND’s lineup is heavily right-wing. But I think it’s worth pointing it out once in a while. Maybe they’re not aware that Central Oregon (especially Bend) is not quite the right-wing bastion it used to be.
Probably why they’re always going in circles.
Would this be a good time to remind folks there is an alternative: Bend Community Radio, 106.7 LPFM, streaming 24/7 at http://www.kpov.org?
I would be curious why anyone would want to broadcast liberal talk talk radio in Central Oregon when it can’t even find listeners in the remainder of America? Anyone heard of Air (bankrupt) America?
It could be that even an hour of liberal talk would be too much and no advertiser would want to be affiliated with it. The holier than thou, smarter than all, elitist liberals like HBM turn everyone off.
KBND airs the programming they feel gives them the greatest opportunity to obtain/retain listeners and collect ad revenue. Nobody cares what Al Franken, Mike Malloy, and Randi Rhodes have to say. Air America proved that.
Got news for you guys. Liberal talk shows cant compete. They only survive with government help. On the open market they go down quick. No one will listen. Even LIBERALS hate it.
“Liberal” talk radio has proven more financially stable in its infancy than right-wing hate speech did when it crawled out from under a rock more than twenty years ago. Righty liars like Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Hannity have seen marked drops in listenership since the advent of a fact-based radio alternative as seen in Air America.
Uber-Fascists, oops! I mean, conservatives should thank their lucky stars for President Clinton’s deregulation of the airwaves that has allowed monopolistic ownership of entire markets. Funny that only conservative radio companies buy up stations with an opposing viiewpoint to eliminate competition. Happened in Montana. Happened in Arizona. What are they afraid of?
“Liberal talk shows cant compete. They only survive with government help.”
What “liberal talk shows” is the government subsidizing?
“President Clinton’s deregulation of the airwaves … has allowed monopolistic ownership of entire markets.”
That was a factor in the rise of right-wing talk radio, but an even bigger one was Reagan’s elimination of the FCC “Fairness Doctrine” that required radio and TV stations to give air time to opposing political viewpoints. This freed stations like KBND to broadcast conservative propaganda 24/7. Right-wing dogma, being 99% bullshit, can’t compete in the free marketplace of ideas.
Interesting insight from a veteran radio professional on how the right wing came to dominate talk radio, starting in the mid-198s:
“Joe Pyne (a conservative who almost always had a liberal with him on the air) was dead, and conservative investors and programmers were looking to unseat the fabulously popular liberal talker Alan Berg and bring “balance” to America’s airwaves. (In June of 1984, the year Rush began “issues talk” on Sacramento’s KFBK, Berg was machine-gunned to death by right-wingers claiming they were from the Aryan Nation.) Within four years, Rush rose to national status by offering his program free of charge to stations across the nation. Station managers, not being business dummies, laid off local talent and picked up Rush’s free show, leading to a national phenomena: the Limbaugh show was one of America’s greatest radio success stories, spreading from state to state faster than any modern talk show had ever done. (Such free or barter offerings are now standard in the industry.)
“And, station managers discovered, there is a loyal group of radio listeners (around 20 million occasional listeners, with perhaps one to five million who consider themselves “dittoheads”) who embraced Rush’s brand of overt hard-right spin, believing every word he says even though he claims his show is “just entertainment” to avoid a reemergence of the Fairness Doctrine and the political-activity provisions of McCain/Feingold. The sudden success of Rush led local radio station programmers to look for more of the same: there was a sudden demand for Rush-clone talkers who could meet the needs of the nation’s Rush-bonded listeners, and the all-right-wing-talk radio format emerged, dominated by Limbaugh and Limbaugh-clones in both style and political viewpoint.
“Thus, the extreme fringe of the right wing dominates talk radio not because all radio listeners are right-wingers, but, instead, because the right wingers and their investors were the first to the market with a consistent and predictable programming slant, making right-wing-talk the first large niche to mature in the newly emergent talk segment of the radio industry. Listeners always know what they’ll get with Rush or one of his clones, and programming to a loyal and identifiable audience is both the dream and the necessity of every radio station’s management.”
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1203-08.htm
guest: I sure as hell hope you’re wrong, but I confess I’ve had worries about Barack Obama. He’s a charismatic liberal figure along the lines of JFK and RFK, which makes him a tempting target for the loonies. Pray the Secret Service does its job well.