Brownwood Propoganda Minister Keeps Ed Schultz At Bay

What are the Brownwood "Neo-con Republicans" afraid of ? Are they afraid to present a fair and balanced talk radio station for their community members ? Of course they are afraid ! Thank God for Sattelite Radio ! Read on...............

From: D________ H________
Date: Fri May 21, 2004 09:26:10 AM US/Central
To: 'Steve Harris and Steve Puckett'
Subject: RE: brownwood's kxyl and ed 's show

Hi Steve,

Phil called me and said he wanted to add the Ed Schultz show. We spoke and
he asked me to follow up with him the following week. I did and the
receptionist said he would call me back. He never did. I've call a few
times and still no response. So, I'm not sure what his plans are...to add
or not to add. I tried to open your attachment and was unable to. Can you
re-send in a word doc? We're closing on the 26th station and KXYL could be
#27. If Phil decides to add. Great hearing from you.

D_____________

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Harris and Steve Puckett [mailto:steve_squared@verizon.net]
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 8:09 AM
To:D________H_______
Cc: Steve Harris and Steve Puckett
Subject: Re: brownwood's kxyl and ed 's show


Morning _________, With all the silence from Phil (KXYL- Brownwood)
regarding carrying Ed's show, was just wondering what your thoughts
are. I've been listening to Ed's show daily and have noticed all the
Texas callers. I guess when fair and balanced voices are kept out by
the "powers that be" folks will seek out on their own to hear and
support shows like Ed's. Any help or strategies we can work on to get
Ed on in this area (maybe an Abilene station ?), let us know. I also
have a favor, would you please get the attachment to Ed and any other
person in the media that you feel could use this letter to the editor
that ran in our paper yesterday.

Regards, Steve Harris
----------------------------------
Posted on Sat, Feb. 07, 2004
ENTERTAINMENT: Meet talk radio's 'gun-toting, meat-eating lefty'

You probably know him better as Ed Schultz, former voice of Sioux and Bison
By Stephanie Simon
Los Angeles Times

FARGO - It may well have been the bologna sandwich that spun Big Eddie "the Redhead" Schultz down the path of self-enlightenment, transforming him from a bull-neck, bombastic conservative into a bull-neck, bombastic liberal just itching to grab his talk-radio mike and give Rush Limbaugh hell. But that story will have to wait.

"The Ed Schultz Show" is about to air.

Schultz swings into his seat as his producer counts down 10 seconds until the live broadcast opens. He clamps on his headphones as the taped introduction rolls: "From high above the North American continent, democracy has a new voice. Powerful. Passionate. Persistent."

Schultz lets out an enormous yawn, then swings the microphone toward himself. He's on.

"Lock and load, baby," he booms. "If it's got mad cow, I love beef so much I'll still eat it."

He's still chortling at his own quip as he introduces his first guest: conservative commentator Pat Buchanan.

Democrat mission

For this, Democratic politicians helped solicit $1.8 million from private donors, enough cash to keep the brand-new "Ed Schultz Show" on the air for at least two years. It's not a whim. It's a mission. Democrats are counting on Schultz - a one-time sportscaster who used to mock the homeless on the air - to anchor the AM dial nationwide as the provocative new voice of the left.

Well, maybe not exactly the left. Schultz, 49, has voted for only one Democrat that he can recall, a local congressman. He's opposed to abortion in all circumstances. He considers Buchanan a friend. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, he says, gives him "the willies."

He's prone to say such things as: "I'd like to see the president get all the illegals out of the country, so we can start all over again."

And yet, thanks to that bologna sandwich, Schultz considers himself "a gun-toting, meat-eating lefty."

The anti-Rush

While Limbaugh was calling former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill "childish" for criticizing President Bush in a new book, Schultz was gleefully trumpeting O'Neill's harshest comments. While Limbaugh was mocking O'Neill as deaf and blind to reality - "the Helen Keller of the Cabinet" - Schultz was dredging out clips of the president praising his Treasury secretary as a "straight shooter."

"By God, Ed, you're doing good stuff, trying to get the truth out," Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa told him on the air.

Limbaugh's comments, of course, commanded a much larger audience. He draws 15 million listeners a week, on 600 stations nationwide.

Schultz's show, which premiered Jan. 5, airs on just a dozen stations, mostly in small towns such as Steamboat Springs, Colo., Brownwood, Texas, and Needles, Calif. Its biggest market is Oklahoma City. (It's also broadcast live on XM satellite radio and online, although the server crashes often, at www.bigeddieradio.com.)

Ratings won't be available for several months. Still, Schultz's backers say they're confident his show will take off. "Democracy is best served," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D., "by having many voices on the air."

QB days

A much-loved (and much-hated) sportscaster famed for his raucous play-by-play of North Dakota college football, Schultz grew up in Virginia but moved to the Midwest to study - and play quarterback - at Minnesota State University Moorhead. His passing skills earned him tryouts with the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets. When he didn't make the cut, he switched to reporting on games from the sideline. He still has a football player's brawny build, but his red hair is thinning.

After two decades of sports reporting, Schultz launched a 21⁄2-hour regional talk show in 1996.

The show, which he continues to host, blends interviews with local officials and sharp-edged banter with callers, spiced up with Big Eddie's rants about national affairs. He might report on a local school board meeting, break for the latest on pork-belly futures, then swerve into acid commentary on the presidential primaries. The broadcast area reaches into South Dakota and Minnesota; on any given morning, nearly 30 percent of radio listeners in the region are tuned in.

Conservative years

For years, Schultz's patter on the regional show was conservative. He scoffed at the homeless for complaining about the cold. "How about getting a job?" he'd say. He sneered at the three Democrats who represent him in Congress, nicknaming them the Three Stooges.

"I lined up with the Republicans because they were anti-tax, and I wanted to make a lot of money," Schultz said.

About two years ago, listeners began to hear a softer tone.

Schultz had once derided farmers for relying on government subsidies. Now, he was pounding Bush for not offering extra aid during a drought. He was calling for universal health insurance. And more services for homeless veterans.

Some dismayed fans suspected a cynical motive. "My own opinion is, he knew he would never go national if he stayed on the right or in the middle. I truly believe he moved to the left because he thought that's where his career would get the biggest boost," said Ron Gilmore, 42, who runs a cleaning business in Fargo. "You don't change your politics overnight like he did without a goal in mind."

That sandwich

Schultz insists his transformation was genuine. It all started, he says, with the bologna sandwich.

In 1998, Schultz met Wendy Noack, a psychiatric nurse, at a party. She agreed to a lunch date but told him they'd have to meet at the Salvation Army cafeteria next to the homeless shelter where she worked.

"You should have seen his face as he was moving along the line with his tray, getting his bologna sandwich and his cup of Campbell's soup. He was appalled," said Wendy, now his wife.

One of the homeless men eating there recognized Schultz from his TV sportscasts and called him over. Schultz had always written off the homeless as lazy. But as he talked to the man, he says, he started to realize that was too simplistic. On future dates - over better food - he and Wendy talked about the men in the shelter. Hearing their stories, he regretted dismissing them all as bums.

Those conversations started him thinking. But Schultz's political outlook did not swing fully around until 2001, when he took his regional show on the road. In their 38-foot Winnebago, Schultz traveled North Dakota with Wendy, broadcasting from small towns and ranches.

For the first time, he sat down to talk with farmers, with teachers, with mothers who couldn't afford to take their kids to the doctor.

"I saw suffering," he said. And he aired it, opening his mike to ordinary people and their stories of struggle. The more he listened, he said, the more he came to believe that Democrats were doing more for "the little guy."

Schultz knows his critics view him as an opportunist.

"I just ask 'em, 'Do you want me to go back to the other side?'" he said.

"Isn't it great, though," he added, serious now, "that people can change?"

Hillary's friend

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., agrees. Although his views may not line up with hers on every issue, the former first lady considers Schultz a friend of the Democratic Party because he takes on the Bush White House with gusto.

"I believe in redemption," said Clinton, who twice this month has made time for Schultz to interview her on air. In the national show's first few days, Schultz interviewed Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and a dozen other top politicians.

The market

Although Schultz has proved he can land interviews with big-name Democrats, skeptics wonder whether listeners want to hear them.

Conservative hosts say their fans turn to talk radio for views they can't find in the rest of the media. "Network TV and The New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times axis is totally dominated by the left," said G. Gordon Liddy, whose talk show is broadcast on 178 stations.

"Now the left, never satisfied with nine-tenths of the pie, has gotten its knickers in a twist about talk radio. It's a free country. They're certainly welcome to try," Liddy said. "But I'm inclined to think ... listeners will say, 'Look, we can get all that stuff already.'"

Many station managers apparently agree. Nearly all the top national hosts are conservative: Limbaugh, Liddy, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham and others. Programmers are reluctant to tamper with that formula.

Even KFGO, the AM station out of Fargo that broadcasts Schultz's regional show, has not picked up the national program.

KTOX in Needles did take the risk. Station manager David Hayes bumped Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who's rated third in the nation, to run Schultz live. He's received close to 60 calls, he said, and they're running 2-to-1 in favor of Schultz.

Schultz plays up his man-of-the-people persona, calling himself the voice of the "working stiff."

"The average commercial radio listener in America is not looking for lofty, intellectual subjects," Schultz said. "This isn't brain surgery. It's about striking the passion of the people."

At the same time, Schultz makes clear that his goal is to win ratings, not woo converts to the liberal cause. He wants listeners to tune in because they enjoy his commentary and laugh along with his braying "heh heh heh heh!" If he convinces them that he's right, great. But his main motivation for doing the show, he said, is "to be successful, to go as far in my career as I can."

Later, he lets himself daydream about taking the Winnebago on the road for his national show, inviting fans in state after state to the mike.

"Do you know how cool it's going to be when we get on a bunch of stations and we can go do the show from a small town in Middle America?" he said. "People are going to think, 'This guy really cares.'"

Big Eddie grinned. "And I do."

source: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/local/7897092.htm

02/23/2004
North Dakota 'Liberal' Starts Radio Show
Ed Schultz was set to make his debut on his own national radio show when he suddenly got a nosebleed. Unfazed, he turned the blood into a prop.
The Mercury News

DAVE KOLPACK - Associated Press

FARGO, N.D. - "I'm so mean, there's blood on my sheets of paper," Schultz told his listeners, kicking off a project last month that some Democrats and other supporters have billed as a liberal alternative to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Schultz might be considered a liberal in Fargo, but they wouldn't know what to make of him in, say, Berkeley, Calif., or Cambridge, Mass.

He is anti-abortion and pro-guns. In his opening monologue, Schultz, an avid hunter, told listeners in his typically loud and bellicose style: "I'm a gun-totin', red meat-eatin' liberal."

In fact, Schultz began his talk show career in the early 1990s as a conservative, imitating Limbaugh by telling listeners he was broadcasting from "high atop" the studios of a Fargo radio station.

Somewhere along the line - around 2000, he said - he switched sides, much to the delight of Democrats he once vilified and the chagrin of Republicans he once supported.

"The Ed Schultz Show" promises "straight talk from the heartland" - meaning, not from those out-of-touch-with-the-common-man liberals in Los Angeles or New York.

Schultz was recruited for the afternoon program after more than a decade as host of a talk show on Fargo's KFGO.

About a dozen stations are carrying the national show, mostly in smaller markets like Hardin, Mont., Brownwood, Texas, and Lisbon, N.D., but also in Ann Arbor, Mich. The Jones Radio Network, the programming company that produces the show, said it is looking to get the program on 40 stations by year's end.

Schultz, 49, a former college quarterback and sports broadcaster, likes to be known as a fighter. He once bolted out of the broadcast booth while doing play-by-play for a college football game to chase down a fan who threw a whiskey bottle at him. He once threatened to "bop" a "bozo" who was harassing him during a broadcast of a college hockey game.

Some listeners have accused him of opportunism, saying he made the right-to-left switch for the chance to make more money.

"You can't believe anything Schultz says because you don't know what his core beliefs are," said Larry Astrup of Fargo, a former listener who describes himself as "so conservative I'm mad at Bush."

Schultz, a native of Norfolk, Va., said his transformation from Republican to Democrat was genuine, and started when his wife-to-be, Wendy, asked him to meet her for lunch at a Salvation Army cafeteria - an experience that made him feel guilty about poking fun at homeless people.

He said it was not until he took the show on the road to rural North Dakota in a 38-foot motor home that he realized his views had become more aligned with those of the Democrats.

"I saw that we were gutting the infrastructure of the country," he said. "People in rural America are suffering and I'm really concerned for the country."

He considers himself in line with the Democratic Party on such issues as farm policy, education, veterans and the homeless. Among the first guests on his national program were Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

"They are probably the two most vilified people on conservative talk radio in America," Schultz said. "This program, from time to time, is going to give those folks an opportunity to fight back."

State Democrats had once considered Schultz a possible candidate to run against Republican Gov. John Hoeven, a man Schultz often derides as an "empty suit." But the national radio opportunity came up, and Schultz said he figured "I can fry more fish and help more people have more of an impact if this goes."

Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine, said Schultz's show can work because he is entertaining, not because of any lack of liberal politics on the air.

"There are other liberals on the radio, but you need a host who's funny, engaging, talented and charismatic," Harrison said. "Ed Schultz is known around the country, even though he's basically in a small market, one that's off the beaten path. That says a lot for the guy."

David Campbell of Elizabeth City, N.C., a trucker who listens to Schultz on XM satellite radio, said he likes the contrast between Schultz and another one of Campbell's favorite talk show hosts, Michael Savage.

"I'm more of an independent, really," Campbell said. "The difference between Ed and Michael Savage is like Mars and Earth. You listen to Michael and you're afraid he's going to have an aneurysm, and Ed is more low-key."

Schultz said many conservative talk show hosts have "this big political engine" buying advertising to get them onto stations, making it difficult for him to break into bigger markets.

"I know I'm climbing a pretty tall mountain," he said. "I also know the conservative hard-right attack is coming. I know they're going to go after me any way they possibly can. My feet are on the ground. I'm ready for it."
Related Link

source: http://www.bigeddieradio.com/news.view.html?newsItemId=1328