Who’s where in Progressive Radio… after reading the comments at Michele Malkin, it’s clear most people don’t know what’s been going on with Progressive radio for the past few years (no surprise)
So here is the list of who is (or was) on Progressive Radio:
Dial Global (formerly [mother] Jones Radio)
– Bill Press
– Ed Schultz
– Thom Hartmann
– Stephanie Miller
Air America
– Montel Williams
– Lionel
– Richard Greene
– Jack Rice
– Ron Reagan
Fox News Radio
– Alan Colmes
Premiere / Clear Channel
– Randi Rhodes
– Dr Dean Edell
– Jesse Jackson
Radio America
– Doug Stephan
Radio One
– Al Sharpton
Self Syndicated
– Mike Malloy
Talk Radio Network
– Phil Hendrie
– Dr Michio Kaku (and Pacifica)
WOR Radio Network
– Joey Reynolds
– Dr Joy Browne
Doug Stephan?
Yes, Doug clearly identifies himself as a Progressive
What are their ratings like?
According to a news story, the highest rated progressive station is WPOJ in Portland Oregon, which is in the 3% share range…. most of the others that I’ve noticed are around 1%, which is about the point at which a radio station isn’t economically viable unless it relies on contributions from listeners or is staffed by volunteers (like religious stations)
Just heard on Mike McConnell: Arbitron was unable to detect any listeners on WZAA (Air America) in December
Air America was leasing the station. They may have been partly snookered by Bonneville – the stations in DC have been a set of musical chairs the past few years. The 50 kw AM station formerly known as WTOP is now WFED (they carry Federal Government news)… the WTOP-AM call sign was moved to a small 3,500 watt station in Silver Spring, MD (probably just to save the call sign for when/if they wanted to move it back to DC)… It’s plausible that Air America thought it was leasing the 50 kw powerhouse. At night, it goes to 44 watts, which doesn’t even reach into the District other than the far North corner…
I also looked up the ratings on WZAA and noticed the same thing. Washington DC is now a PPM market that relies on the encoding of the signal so the PPM device “hears” what station the person is listening to… it wouldn’t suprise me if they never got around to encoding their WZAA call sign and the Air America people knew so little about the radio business they never knew to ask…
DC is a very peculiar market – it has three non-commercial stations with high (4%+) ratings – WHUR (Howard University), WAMU (American University) and WETA (NPR)
WOL-AM – the station that Kathy Hughes used to launch Radio One and carries Al Sharpton- once in a while gets a 0.1% share, but mostly zeros… a radio market that is 26% black and this is a “black talk radio” station – and the FCC rules force advertisers to advertise on the station.
I thought Press was Dial Global and Kaku was TRN.
Also, Malloy’s now self-syndicated. On Second Thought folded a month after it launched. As for Press and Kaku, as I understand it, my information might be a little out of date on those.
So Second Thoughts had second thoughts? Press is Dial Global (he is listed on their site now) and Kaku is TRN (on the weekends)…
I mostly put Kaku on the list since I’m guessing few people who hear him on TRN know he does a show on Pacifica – and you don’t get more “Progressive” than that. I’m puzzled why an expert in string theory spends so much time doing radio…
Self Syndicated
– Mike Malloy
Shouldn’t that really read, self medicated? lol
yeah, he’s a sick one….wonder if he’s still going on about “the Bush Crime Family”, lol…
Art, here is where it might have got confusing for a lot of folks. Found this over at Winki.
“Air America counts any station that carries any of their programming as an affiliate,”
You’ll even find my userid in the history of the wikipedia Air America affialte list – the Air America fans were very slow to move stations to the former affiliate list, so I helped out :) (before I quit helping Wikipedia)….
There were maybe 3 or 4 stations carrying the entire air america lineup – mostly they picked and choosed – after Hartmann and Rhodes left, they had almost no affiliates for any of their programs…. only last month, they started renting a CRN channel…
Shultz and Stephanie Miller were always on Dial Global, but carried on stations that were promoted as “Air America” radio stations, which created most of the confusion. Unlike Air America, Ed and Stephanie have long careers in radio and Dial Global actually knows how to run a syndication operation. Had it not been for Clear Channel’s support, Air America never would have gone as far as it did – which makes all the left-wing criticism of Clear Channel as a right wing wacko George Bush run network all the more “crazy talk”. CC cares about green, not blue and red…