Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has something to say about the past and future of Liberals on the Marconi machine:
...In the short run, I suppose the wingnuts can crow about how they once again "own the airwaves." But the airwaves that don't have video attached to them have become increasingly less important. Yes, the call-in format is dying on the progressive side, but once you get past Morning Schmoe, MSNBC boasts a pretty impressive prog-news lineup. Taken in conjunction with the phenomenal success of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, it becomes clear that progressive media isn't dying, it's just changing form. Sam Seder is still out there with The Majority Report. Cenk Uygur has been from podcasting to terrestrial radio to podcasting to TV and back to podcasting. We Act Radio has a full lineup and is available on TuneIn Radio. And with Blog Talk Radio, anyone who has the time can create a podcast (even my cousin Dan)....Back when WCPT AM started broadcasting a five watt Liberal trickle, I was hopeful, going so far as to wander the halls of the late Castle Driftglass, crystal set in-hand, dowsing for the sweet spot.where I could catch the progressive what-what before the sun went down and the signal was handed back to house music, farm reports and interstellar radiation..
Since that time WCPT has expanded to around-the-clock broadcasts and an FM profile.
But in all of that weekly broadcast time, the 3rd largest radio market in the American empire still has not managed to produce more than one Liberal show using Chicago talent: Hal Spark's Saturday program (which I very much enjoy) is relayed through the Chicago station, but originates wherever Mr.Spark happens to be at the time (and which -- thanks to the bewildering array of gadgets and gimcracks they throw at the relatively simple problem of putting a "person" in front of a "microphone" which broadcasts using a "99.999999% reliable, century-old technological" at a fixed time every week -- turns what should be a simple and routine event into an exciting weekly adventure of "Will this be a dead-air week?", "Will this suddenly be a rerun?", "Will it be audible anywhere but Ustream?", "Will the host be capable of taking "phone calls?" and "Will 'guests' spontaneously vanish mid-sentence?") ...and everything else -- including their rebroadcasts -- comes from somewhere else.
I have no idea why Liberal radio is a basket case, but it is. And nothing makes that point that more clearly than the fact that a radio town like Chicago can't figure out field more than one local Liberal talker a week.
