Terry Cowgill

Liberals on the Radio: Will Anyone Listen?

August 8, 2006 on 5:03 pm | In Main, Media, State |

This is a column I wrote for The Lakeville Journal op-ed page in January 2003, when a group of investors first announced its intention to start a liberal talk radio network called Air America, which declared bankruptcy Oct. 16, 2006.

If it is true, as the great French philosopher Montesquieu once observed, that “what orators lack in depth they make up to you in length,” then a proposed new talk radio network to showcase liberal ideas will be an uphill battle.

Last week, Progress Media announced that it intends to launch a 24-hour radio network to counter the influence of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Such an endeavor is breathtaking in its scope. Imagine trying to fill a day’s worth of air time with confabulations from the ideological soulmates of Al Franken.

Can Progress Media CEO Mark Walsh, a former AOL executive, pull it off? He has cleared one hurdle with the signing of Franken to square off daily against Limbaugh, whose drug addiction and legal problems don’t seem to have alienated his conservative audience in the least.

And there is a reason for that. Limbaugh’s supporters, and talk radio listeners as a whole, are passionate about the medium. Indeed, over the years, it’s served them remarkably well as an alternative to what they view as the historically left-of-center mainstream news media. After all, don’t the liberals already have The New York Times and the taxpayer-funded NPR?

It remains to be seen whether a newly energized liberal media group can succeed where lefties like Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower have already failed. Progress Media faces at least three huge challenges. It goes without saying that the company must find listeners, but can it find enough stations to compete with the 600-plus that air Limbaugh and the hundreds who blare the rantings of his protégé, Sean Hannity? Do Franken and his colleagues have the discipline and resourcefulness to man the mikes for hours a day without boring their listeners to tears?

Then, of course, Progress Media must find the kinds of high-profile hosts who will attract those listeners and stations. While Walsh has said his company plans to announce more hirings soon, the best he could do after Franken was to get a commitment from humorless corporate basher Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to host a show called “Champions of Justice.” This will be a tough sell. I can already hear Limbaugh encouraging the family of Mary Jo Kopechne to call in.

Truth be told, talk radio has always been an inconoclastic, reactionary medium. I remember in the early 1970s growing up as a teenager in the Boston area and listening to Jerry Williams, a populist firebrand who was the north’s answer to Huey Long. I can’t remember the name of Williams’s liberal counterpart at WRKO, but no one I knew ever talked much about him. My personal favorite is Gene Burns, now on KGO in San Francisco. Burns combines eloguence and knowledge with the kind of passion and droll cynicism only a Libertarian can muster.

Locally, it has been much the same story. In the mid-90s, archconservative host Mike Flint railed every Sunday morning against the Region One school board, the political chicanery in Falls Village and, occasionally, this newspaper. There were pratfalls along the way, as when one of his shows degenerated into a name calling exercise against a local reporter who later threatened legal action against Flint and Lakeville’s WQQQ.

Flint was subsequently taken off the air. But in post offices and coffee shops throughout the Northwest Corner, people talked about that show — not only because he was unafraid to speak his mind, but because Flint had the good sense to keep the content of the show as local as possible.

Consider WQQQ’s latest entry into the talk radio sweepstakes. Calling their show “L.A. Steele,” a group of far left activists, who were originally affiliated with the now-defunct “Voice” newspaper, gather every Tuesday evening to inveigh against corporate evils and cast aspersions on the intellect and motives of anyone who disagrees with them.

This crowd has virtually no sense of humor and is so bitter about the power of the right and plight of the left as to render the program unlistenable. Worse, aside from a few tirades against Gov. John Rowland and other state officials, the show has little or no local content. As a result, few people I have spoken to have ever heard of the program.

It remains to be seen whether Progress Media’s programming will be any more substantive than the Limbaughs and O’Reillys of this world, but aside from Franken, there don’t appear to be any funny men (or women) on the horizon. And as Limbaugh has shown, poking fun at the hypocrisy of the left can be humorous to all. Hey, even progressives don’t like it when liberals sidestep homeless people on their way to vegetarian fundraisers for Tibetan exiles.

The writer is a former editor of The Millerton News. He lives in Lakeville.