Another Radio Station Falls to Fox News

[alocispepraluger102]

Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Capital Times (Madison, WI)

Another Radio Station Falls to Fox News

by Dave Zweifel

Earlier this year public radio's Garrison Keillor wrote a great piece for the Nation in which he lamented the passing of radio programming as we once knew it.

He talked about the heyday of great radio stations like WCCO in Minneapolis, WOR in New York, KMOX in St. Louis and WGN in Chicago and how they were filled with down-home programming on everything from fishing and home repair to baseball games and live coverage of the local news.

But, more importantly, the stations were about their hometowns. In smaller communities, Keillor recalled, you would hear the local livestock reports, the announcements of service club meetings and a listener calling to thank everybody for helping her find her lost dog Pookie. Every station had its own personality or two who could speak to the listeners like they were longtime close friends.

Thus it was right here in Madison not all that long ago.

There were strong local personalities on the air throughout the day and into the night, not just during the morning drive time, and they were certainly not foaming at the mouth with hate-filled political diatribe. Jim Mader, Clark Kellogg, George "Papa Hambone" Vukelich, "P.K." Powers and dozens of others were such familiar voices, with whom listeners identified and actually considered friends.

But, as Keillor pointed out, the deregulation of radio was terribly tough on what he called "good neighbor" radio.

Texas-based Clear Channel and others began gobbling up all those little money-making stations and homogenized their content to make even more money. So Rush is on everywhere. On many of the FM stations, the same music fills the air. An iconoclast like Hambone no longer exists.

This all came to mind earlier this week when WIBA/AM, one of those Clear Channel properties, announced it was switching its longtime affiliation with CBS radio news to Fox News. The station manager, Jeff Tyler, chalked it all up to "some issues with CBS' credibility," as if Dan Rather had something to do with CBS radio. The real reason, of course, is that Fox News - Tyler should check its credibility - is cheaper. And that's all that matters.

So now all of Clear Channel's stations in Madison, except WXXM, which will continue with CNN News, will be broadcasting Fox News. Keillor, incidentally, had an answer in that Nation article for why huge numbers of right-wingers appear on those chain-owned radio stations while liberals are hard to find.

"It's simple," he said. "Republicans are in need of affirmation, they don't feel comfortable in America and they crave listening to people who think like them. Liberals actually enjoy living in a free society; tuning in to hear an echo is not our idea of a good time."

Dave Zweifel has been editor of The Capital Times since 1983. A native of New Glarus, Wis. and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his life-long goal was to be the editor of this newspaper.

© 2005 Capital Times

[ghost of miles]

Madison, Wisconsin? Unless it's changed radically (haw haw, pardon the pun) in the past few years, it's a pretty liberal city... what gives with the Foxola?

Supposedly Clear Channel is in the process of dumping a # of its radio stations. I hope it's a trend that continues. We're lucky here in Bloomington; we have a very good community radio station (WFHB--I used to do a jazz show there--all volunteer programmers, with a great GM named Ryan Bruce and a couple of other paid employees...somewhat close to Keillor's described throwback/ideal).