That’s the imaging chosen for the Mike Huckabee show by the Cumulus Media consultants to describe the new civility that Lew Dickey wants to bring to Talk Radio.
This message though is about Mark Levin – no person in syndicated talk more clearly is in the old school Bob Grant talk radio school of call the caller a name and hanging up on them. So as Lew Dickey admires his $14 million in compensation and his company reporting a loss this quarter, where else can he find expenses to cut?
While everyone (haha) was focused on Huckabee, Mark Levin’s voice popped up on Salem Radio on the Dennis Prager show as a guest talking about his latest book, Ameritopia.
During the initial “nice to finally meet you at last” dance, Levin sarcastically threw in that “we in talk radio now are going to have more conversation, less confrontatio – a pretty direct shot across the bow of his own boat.
Salem radio probably would make him an offer if the opportunity presented itself…
Levin and Salem’s Hugh Hewitt are long time friends, having served together in the Reagan administration. Ironic that they are pitted head-to-head against each other (at least when it comes to the live airings of their shows).
I was toying with what Salem could do…. Hewitt’s show ends at 9 PM ET, and many of the Salem stations put on Savage on delay. I don’t see a place for Levin unless one of the exist hosts left (or retired)
Salem is basically run by two guys – I went into some detail in my profile about Salem circa 2009. Stu Epperson is the radio nut – he bought a failing AM radio station in North Carolina and decided at some point that there was money to be made in Christian Radio (Salem is a for profit company).
http://streamingradioguide.com/blogradio/?page_id=723
His partner is Edward G. Atsinger who is the brother of Epperson’s wife. They rode the “Let’s do an IPO and borrow a lot of money to buy radio stations” thing in the late 1990s, early 2000s. At one point they were close to being insolvent, but managed to get their debt refinanced. The company is publicly traded as SALM
Stock Chart
They’ve made more money from selling subscriptions to Townhall.com than from running radio stations