KXYL-Connie Carmichael's Propoganda: " There is no audience for liberal talk radio " !

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August 30, 2004

Clear Channel brings Air America to Albuquerque airwaves

NMBW Staff

Clear Channel Radio has announced it will launch a new "Progressive Talk Station" in Albuquerque this month.


The station's new format, featuring Air America Radio Network programming, starts today, August 30, on KABQ AM 1350.

The new, "progressive" talk format is "radical" in the Albuquerque radio market, a release from KABQ says.

"Albuquerque has been clamoring for a new talk radio station like this and with some of Air America Radio's personalities, like Al Franken and other progressive talk show hosts, we will satisfy that need," says Bill May, program director, KABQ AM 1350.

Weekday programming on the show includes: "Morning Sedition," "The Al Franken Show," and "Majority Report with Janeane Garofalo," along with five others.

"The types of guests we'll have include independent film maker Michael Moore and U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. We'll also have a 'people's version' of the events at the Republican National Convention in New York," says Lupe Todd, spokesperson with Air America Radio Network.

The new station was initiated in response to local demand, discovered through "fairly extensive research, nationally and at the state level," says Jon Sinton, president of Air America radio. "We've been gratified to find significant demand for this format in a number of markets, including Albuquerque and New Mexico. Ultimately, I'm sure we'll be in Santa Fe, too, and I've had some conversations with Ruidoso and El Paso. So we will be statewide eventually."

Sinton says he doesn't know what percentage of the market the station will attract, but he's optimistic.

"What does it take for us to have economic success? Only 1.5 percent of the 25 to 54-year-old audience. I'd guess that within a year or less, we'll be among the top ten radio stations."

source: http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2004/08/30/daily5.html

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07/31/2004
A Real Imbalance
Newsweek on-line interview with Ed Schultz.
A Real Imbalance
Talk-show host Ed Schultz discusses why the nation needs more liberal voices on the radio

By Jennifer Barrett Ozols
Newsweek
Updated: 12:11 p.m. ET July 31, 2004
July 30 -

Ed Schultz may have the fastest-growing liberal radio talk show in the country, but outside of the Midwest many listeners have yet to hear of the North Dakota-based host. His new three-hour syndicated "Ed Schultz Show" airs on 38 stations (as well as Sirius and XM satellite radio), but talk radio is still dominated by conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who pulls in millions of listeners each afternoon. This week, Schultz moved his show to the Fleet Center in Boston to cover the Democratic National Convention. There he found himself surrounded on "radio row" by conservative colleagues and overlooked by many of the big-name Democratic speakers and supporters. But that may soon change. At the rate that Schultz has been adding new stations (about one a week) since his syndicated show made its debut in early January, the man Limbaugh reportedly called "the poor little guy from North Dakota" seems well on his way to becoming a big presence on the radio.

NEWSWEEK's Jennifer Barrett Ozols spoke with Schultz from Boston about the challenge˘and the need˘of getting more left-leaning voices on the radio. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You broadcast live from the Democratic National Convention this week. Did you have a chance to interact with many of the politicians whose politics you espouse on your show?
Ed Schultz: When it comes to radio, the Democrats don't quite get it yet. All the speakers that have been up at podium, none of them˘to my knowledge˘have worked talkers' [radio] row. Where is Dick Gephardt? Reverend Al Sharpton? Bob Graham? Though he has been good in the past. [Pennsylvania Gov.] Ed Rendell? Hillary [Clinton] gets it. She knows how to communicate on the radio. But the Democrats need to go on the offensive ˘ and a three to five minute interview once every couple of weeks is not going to get their message out anymore. They need to make this (radio) part of their communications strategy.

Do you think the Democrats did a good job of delivering their message at the convention?
I think they have done a good job on the podium of presenting a positive message about who they are and what they stand for and what they believe.
But is the message getting out? Even the networks only aired an hour or so of programming a night.
And even when the networks do broadcast, what are they saying? There's no one talking-head show going on the offensive for the Democrats. CNN even interviewed Ralph Reed last night as soon as the Edwards speech was over. He was just taking it (the speech) and the Democrats apart, and there was no counterpunching at all. I think CNN is running scared because they see Fox˘s success and they want to tap into that conservative base. The Cowardly News Network that's what I call CNN. I think the Democrats have done a good job of presentation at the podium. I think Al Sharpton and John Edwards were absolutely spectacular. But radio row too is nothing but a bunch of right-wing talkers making fun of the Democrats.


Maybe that's why some of the speakers were afraid to go to radio row?
Well they need to ˘ There˘s a real imbalance on what's going out on the airwaves these days.
Do you think that might affect the election outcome?
I think that talk radio has had a very profound effect on the nation˘on local and regional elections, and it has the potential˘no, I˘d say it has actually affected˘some national elections. Fewer people are reading newspapers or researching information now. The audio culture is very prominent. We live in a quick-fix society: give it to me quick and don't bore me with details and let's get on to the next subject. That's just where America is at this moment.
You've been picking up about a station a week since you launched your syndicated show in January. Do you feel like stations are more receptive to liberal voices on the radio now?
I think people are just tired of homogenized radio. They want diversity. More than half the country voted for Gore in 2000. Are you going to tell me that they don't listen to radio? The industry's got it wrong. When we first started this, we had industry experts telling us that liberal radio would never work, that an integrated program wouldn˘t work˘you can't have a liberal, then a conservative, then a liberal.
I've heard it compared to mixing hip-hop and country on the same radio station.
That is not true. That is a lame excuse to beat down the progressive movement in this country. Good radio is good radio. You˘ve got to have pace. You've got to have activity. You've got to have communication and you've got to have entertainment. If you lose any one of those elements, you lose ratings ˘ Getting ratings is not a hard thing to do, it˘s getting the opportunity ˘ Where we˘ve gotten the opportunity, the show has been a tremendous success.


I understand you˘ve now got the top-rated afternoon radio program in Portland, Ore. How many other stations are you on now?
We˘re carried on 38 stations now. We just picked up Miami, and we˘ll start in Phoenix on Monday. There are other stations in big markets on the verge of making a decision. But you have to understand where this started, where we are, and what our potential is. We started on two stations on Jan. 5 of this year: in Needles, Calif., and Langdon, N.D.˘right on the Canadian border. So, actually, I was almost out of the country on one end and almost out of the country down on the other end, too.
Well, you could honestly say, "broadcasting from one border to the other."
(Laughs.) Yeah, well we knew we had a whole bunch of dots to connect.


Do you think you˘or any liberal radio talk-show host˘will be pulling in as many listeners as Rush Limbaugh does in the near future?
Rush Limbaugh was on 56 stations his first year of syndication. And we're on 38, and we've been in business for seven months. That's the exciting thing about this. We don't know where it is going. Rush Limbaugh called me "the poor little guy from North Dakota." Sean Hannity said my show would not work and that I was funded by the DNC˘which is a lie. And Ann Coulter said on the (Joe) Scarborough show that 11 liberal talk-show hosts have failed and that I'd be another.


What do you say to them now?
They don't know what they are talking about. There˘s no magic to this. It˘s all about good radio and good ratings. Only 10 percent of listeners listen to radio based on their political beliefs anyway.
Where did you get that figure?
That's a longtime industry figure. People listen because they want information, they want to be entertained, they want to have fun.
Why has it taken so long to get a liberal presence on talk radio?
I have a theory. Rush Limbaugh deserves a lot of credit. If you're in business and you make a product and it works, what are you going to do? You're going to make more of it. Rush had some success and so people on the local and regional level looked for people to do similar kinds of programming. The only reason there hasn't been any liberal or progressive talk is that there hasn't been a need for it.


No need for it?
Not an industry need. They've been making money from conservative talk radio. From a business standpoint, they haven't needed to try anything different. This is about business. Are there really people out there that want to listen to something different and will they support it? Will advertisers come to this program? I know they will, and they have. You've just got to get audience and ratings.


˘ 2004 Newsweek, Inc.


source: http://www.wegoted.com/news.view.html?newsItemId=1329