Progressive Talk Radio Back in Boston! YOUR TURN 2 Support

Last week we got Progressive Talk back in Boston!

Now we need your help to make sure EVERY liberal progressive who is able to get the signal, wants to stream on-line, or just show support, knows about this.

If you have liberal and/or progressive family and/or friends who live and/or work in Eastern Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire or Northern Rhode Island (today I discovered the signal carries down that far) please email them the note below.

It's up to us to support and promote liberal progressive talk radio.

Please copy and paste everything in the blockquote

SUBJECT: Guess What? It's Back!



Guess what?

Liberal/Progressive TALK radio is back in Boston and Eastern Massachusetts! At WWZN-Boston AM 1510 http://revolutionboston.com/

You may have wondered where the “counter” to Rush Limbaugh, Jay Serverin, Sean Hannity and the like were on Boston radio. Isn’t a healthy debate where at least two sides of an issue are represented? Like many liberal talk radio formats across the country progressive talk radio in Boston disappeared.

It wasn’t and isn’t because left wing radio isn’t marketable. That’s a fairy tale. It is because it hasn’t been supported by the companies that owned the radio stations. After all, if you can’t make liberal progressive talk radio work in the bluest city in the bluest state in the union, you have no business in radio.

WWZN-Boston AM 1510 is the new home of liberal progressive talk radio in Boston. With a 50,000 watt signal to reach the greater Boston area, west to Worcester, south to Brockton and north to Concord, NH. The signal has been found strong enough to reach as far south as Attleboro, MA and Pawtucket, RI some 40 miles away!

Here is the Monday - Friday line up

* The Jeff Santos Show 6am - 10am

* Stephanie Miller 10am - 12pm

* Ed Schultz 12pm - 3pm

* Thom Hartmann 3pm - 6pm


You can find out more about the hosts below.

You can listen to AM 1510 in your car or on the train to and from work, and you can LIVE STREAM on your computer at http://revolutionboston.com/

Forward this email to all your liberal and progressive friends and family who live and work in Eastern Massachusetts! Let them know that “Progressive Talk Radio is BACK in Boston!”

Thanks!

Hosts:

Jeff Santos
http://revolutionboston.com/santos/
on twitter http://twitter.com/JeffSantosShow

Stephanie Miller
http://revolutionboston.com/miller/
http://www.stephaniemiller.com
on twitter http://twitter.com/radioguychris

Ed Schultz
http://revolutionboston.com/schultz/
http://www.wegoted.com/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30017670

Thom Hartmann
http://revolutionboston.com/hartmann/
http://www.thomhartmann.com/
on twitter http://twitter.com/thomhartmann

Support progressive talk radio!
http://www.bostonprogressivetalk.net/



(After 7pm M-F and on the weekends WWZN-Boston AM 1510 is almost totally sports)

Please check the links before you send out the email (to as many people as you can) because some email programs do not like the way I've formatted the links.

Thank you again for your help!

Conservatives hate the FREE market of ideas

Conservatives love to say that they are in the market place of ideas. But how can it be a market or a free market, if there is no choice? They say progressive radio is doesn't sell, but even streaming on the web (DC station because we lost our station in Boston) I've noticed a whole bunch of commercials; a whole range of local commercials we never heard in Boston . "Beecause we know progressives in Boston and our "metro area," don't eat, don't go grocery or car shopping, don't go to shows( like monster truck rallies), don't shop for prom wear or any clothes for that matter, don't take our family to fun places. . . etc.

In reality conservatives don't like a real open/free market, because if they did they would be meeting the talk radio needs of half the nation. They don't want to have a real competition - and they need to be challenged every time they spout the marketplace of ideas and that progressive radio doesn't sell. They are saying, by default, that they can only win in that marketplace when the cards are all stacked in their favor. (NPR isn't a commerical radio network and cannot be used to compare commerical to commerical radio)

I'm fired up, I am tired of watching progressive radio stations fall. If it is truly an ownership issue and radio stations are expensive to buy we need to have progressives donating to the cause of buying station and progressives with deep pockets helping to buy stations.

Progressive talk was a large part of the reason for the 2006 Democratic talk over of the house and senate. And conservative power brokers know it. The loss of more and more progressive stations also confirms this - without progressive talk we may loose the gains we have gotten and 2008.

In Boston we can't hear Kennedy's wonderful speeches on the Senate floor, Ohio can't hear Sherrod Brown. If the average joe can't hear our message, if the Republican's get to define who and what we are on their unchallenged talk radio stations, how do we truly compete? How do we get our message out? How do we keep our gains and get more?

This liberal media bias is a specious argument. Back in the day when it was only newspapers many large communities had two newspapers, one newspaper was known to be conservative and one was liberal. Everyone accepted that. If you wanted both sides, you read both newspapers. Now many places have lost one of their newspapers, once liberal newspapers like the LA Times are owned and controlled by conservatives and their bias is there.

We don't have radio balance. Some how we've allowed the conservatives to make a liberal bias in the media a bad thing instead of what it was when we had choice in media (two newspapers, etc.) a normal accepted thing BECAUSE both the conservative and liberal bias were represented in the choice of newspaper/media.

And if progressive radio can't sell, why are three (3) progressive talkers (Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, and Randi Rhodes) listed in the top 15 in Talkers magazine. That's even more impressive when you realize that they are on less radio stations than the other 12 are.

Examples of what was two newspaper ideology representation:
Denver Post (used to be considered Liberal) and the Rocky Mountain News (conservative)
Boston Globe (liberal) and the Boston Herald (conservative)
NY Times (liberal) and the NY Post (conservative)
etc.

(Donate to Non-Stop Radio where ever you are to keep us on in every city in the nation)

Something about Eddy

Okay hokey title I know. Here's some links you might want to investigate:

General Wes Clark on his website WesPAC, is urging people to send an email to Members of Congress now to persuade the Pentagon to enforce fair play on Armed Forces Radio by honoring their promise to broadcast Ed Schultz's radio show! Put Ed Schultz on Armed Forces Radio!
(hat tip: http://www.wegoted.com)

Democracy Radio (Ed's radio affliation) has a petition:
"Join thousands of other Americans in demanding that our troops around the world be provided a balanced political perspective on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS)." Radio for the Troops

from Media Matters:

Rush Limbaugh still the only political radio show broadcast on American Forces Radio

Last year, with your help, Media Matters for America drew attention to right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh's presence as the sole political commentator on American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), a taxpayer-funded service that provides radio programming to American armed forces around the world. In the wake of Limbaugh's reckless and harmful endorsement of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Media Matters called for AFRTS to remove Limbaugh from its broadcast schedule.

There is no way to truly provide "balance" to Limbaugh's hateful rhetoric, which ranges from calling people "feminazis" to saying "A Chavez is a Chavez. These people have always been a problem" to claiming that women "actually wish" to be sexually harassed. But AFRTS was set to take a step in the right direction by adding progressive radio host Ed Schultz to its broadcast schedule, beginning October 17.

However, AFRTS put those plans on hold at the last minute -- and now claims it never decided to add Schultz in the first place. Defense Department official Allison Barber personally announced the cancellation just three days after Schultz drew attention to Barber's role in a controversial scripted event President Bush held last week. Barber reportedly called Schultz's producer at home on the morning of the 17th with the news that Schultz would not be broadcast on AFR. The Defense Department's apparent decision to cancel Schultz means that Limbaugh will continue as the only political commentator on American Forces Radio and Television Service.

The brave members of our armed forces deserve an alternative to Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh, NPR and Ed

Limbaugh says that he is the balance on AFRN because it carries NPR. He contends that AFRN doesn't need Ed. However, many on the left have noticed a steady shift to the right in NPR since Kenneth Tomlinson (AFOK) was named to CPB’s Board of Directors. Many long time NPR liberal listeners now turn off NPR.

Ed Schultz remarked on his radio program the other day that there is a vast difference between public and commercial radio and television. And he is right! This is something that conservatives like Limbaugh have said for years. So to try make an equal comparison between public and commercial media now is disingenuous.

Ed is the true balance to Limbaugh on AFRN because he's a liberal in the commercial market. Until now, Limbaugh liked to trumpet that liberal talk shows could not flourish in commercial radio. That the only place they could project their ideas was on NPR. They were not, as he liked to say, commercially viable.

Air America, Democracy Radio and Ed Schultz are proving Limbaugh wrong and that's his real rub. Plus Ed is actually in "fly over country" delivering his radio show from North Dakota. Limbaugh broadcasts from New York City or Florida, but says he speaks for the heartland of America. In addition Ed takes his radio show on the road, something Limbaugh rarely does. (Rush on Broadway is not a live radio show) So who's really out of touch?

Limbaugh really doesn't want to go head to head with an equal on the other side of the aisle, a conservative commercial talk radio host vs. a liberal commercial talk radio host. Despite all his "free market" talk he would rather not compete that way.


*AFOK = A friend of Karl (Rove)

Ed protest banner

See also:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oId=18930
http://christian-dem-in-nc.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/152413/97
http://mediamatters.org/archives/search.html?string=Limbaugh
http://mediamatters.org/items/200510190010

When I heard about Ed I was so outraged I couldn't speak about it

Now that I've got a spare minute. . .

What was done to Ed Schultz today is, well, unprofessional and just plain wrong. It's petty. If they had heard him on Friday and knew he wasn't going to be on AFRN then they would have called him Friday. Not 6am on the day of the first show.

Either they planned this well in advance, and are using it as an attempt to demoralize the opposition, or some immature person got their knickers in a twist and had to take it out on Ed in the most juvenile way possible.


So here is my protest. I made two because I couldn't decide which I liked better.

And I'm going to link it to Ed's page:
http://www.wegoted.com


see also
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/17/email-contradicts-pentagon-spin/