Larry Elder (the Sage of South Central) will be back on KABC on Monday. He will be on 9AM to Noon (Pacific), the same time as Rush Limbaugh.
If you don’t know who he is, he’s a Black hard core Libertarian. He’s not a Republican. Citadel (ABC Radio) had tried to syndicate his show nationally, but he never got traction. When Citadel was approaching bankruptcy, they started slashing costs, and Larry was one of the casualties. Citadel has now gone through bankruptcy and no longer under that pressure, so they called Larry up and asked if he wanted to come back to work. Larry has been treading water doing an internet thing while he was on the beach.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect. When Larry was cut, I had to eliminate the “Libertarian Talk” category, because it only had one person left in it. I certainly look forward to his return – I’m not sure America is still ready for his message. People want a smaller government, but do they really?
Will his show be under the “Libertarian” category again?
FYI, Brian Wilson of 1370 WSPD Toledo, OH is also a libertarian.
There are several local guys who are Libertarian, but one of the things I’ve learned doing this is nobody streams shows of local hosts. That doesn’t mean that nobody listens to them, but they don’t go to Google and then sit here and randomly listen to small market hosts hoping to find gold.
So my “only one” remark was within the context of national or major market stations. (Neal Boortz being the 1 left standing).
What about Jason Lewis? I listen to his show fairly often and he portrays himself as a libertarian. He has recently done several segments about the need to cut government spending and ditch the nanny state mentality. He has challenged listeners that if they really want to fix this mess then their “pet project” has to be cut just like everything else.
I don’t always agree with Jason, but I would definitely put him in the Libertarian and not the Republican column.
Larry was let go from Citadel in December 2008 (which is when I dumped the category) – Jason Lewis didn’t begin national syndication until February 2009.
I haven’t listened to Jason Lewis enough to get a feel for his overall philosophy. After 18 months, he still has yet to get any traction in syndication. Only 3 stations carry his entire show live (one being his home station) – most of his affiliates are down in the South after the sun goes down and the AM transmitters go to 20 watts and can be heard about 3 blocks.
His biography page doesn’t mention anything about being Libertarian or small government. His only political mention is he ran as a Republican candidate in 1990.
http://www.jasonlewisshow.com/pages/psn_about.html
I have a feeling that will change if (when?) Savage decides to up and quit his weekday show. They’re in the same time slot, and Premiere makes up a whole lot of Savage’s clearances. What better than to have a fallback option–and in house, no less?
I left out another segment that Jason Lewis recently did on his show. He argued it is time to scrap the failed war on drugs ( it is a colossal failure just like Prohibition was in the 1920’s). The war on drugs has spent billions of dollars, added agencies and thousands of bureaucrats to FedGov while incarcerating thousands of American adults for use of substances the government deems ‘unacceptable’. (These are Jason’s thought, not my own).
Definitely don’t hear “Republican” talk show hosts arguing that position! Sounds more like a plank from the Libertarian platform to me.
Was William F Buckley a Libertarian?