San Diego AM radio station KLSD, which used to broadcast a progressive talk format, ceased that format and turned into sports talk as of Monday November 12, 2007. This pending format change had been bandied about for months on the morning Stacy Taylor show. There was even a rally on August 27 in the parking lot of Clear Channel, a giant media corporation that owns the station, to show "support" for the progressive talk format. 
It was somewhat strange to see all these fans pledging their support to the advertisers. One lady even donated $10,000. to keep Progressive Talk on the air - but to whom? Clear Channel, a multi-billion dollar corporation? To one of their advertisers? This all seems very bizarre. From my point of view, the change in format had more to do with the sub-prime mortgage crisis than the failure of KLSD listeners to "support" the radio station by buying more of the advertisers' products. Let me explain.
Several of the biggest advertisers on KLSD were mortgage companies who obviously chose to advertise to the demographic that the Progressive Talk format represented. Such companies as Paramount Mortgage with Hayes Barnard intoning syrupy messages to potential customers - "If you ever thought of refinancing your home, now's the time..." From Hayes' point of view, it was always the right time to refinance your home. Countrywide was another client - "Nobody can do what Countrywide can..." You do not have to be too well informed to realize that a sub-prime mortgage crisis has hit the country lately. Hayes persisted in hawking his mortgages to the very end, but most of the others had given up realizing that the market for sub-prime mortgages had dried up. Many mortgage companies have gone out of business or have gone bankrupt. So that advertising revenue source for Clear Channel is history. That leaves a big hole in their advertising revenue, one difficult to fill. But there are probably no end of advertisers for sports talk radio which represents a different demographic altogether. So I don't think it has anything to do with Clear Channel's ulterior motives unless you consider maximizing profits to be an ulterior motive which I actually do.
The other major advertisers on KLSD were get-rich-quick scheme promoters. There were some local advertisers such as Corky's Pest Control, but advertising on KLSD Progressive Talk was dominated by non-local mortgage companies and get-rich-quick schemes. Most of these ads were particularly obnoxious making listening to Progressive Talk for me a perplexing experience. I loved Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes. I liked Al Franken when he used to be on and even Jerry Springer, but I hated and suffered through the ads which were numerous, and - did I mention - obnoxious. 
They even had ads for an organization that lobbied against children's health care, a position the exact opposite of every progressive talk show host or hostess. Once I heard an ad for DynCorp, a defense contractor in Iraq, and this was just after a segment in which the host trashed Iraq contractors! Talk about a disconnect. Were the advertisers trying to convert the listeners to a right wing point of view or was Clear Channel management using them cynically to tweak our noses? It got to the point where I found a use for the timer on my wristwatch. When the ads came on, I set the timer for four minutes and turned off the radio. It worked pretty good.
Now they even have a website for ex-listeners to KLSD Progressive Talk who want to commiserate with each other. You wonder what the motivation of "Cliff," the only person who can submit a blog to the site, actually is. His profile says that he's the local San Diego station KLSD Program Director. What?? The one who is overseeing what now is sports talk? You have to wonder about the motivation of these people. Is this a way to let former KLSD listeners down slow? So they won't be too pissed off about having their radio station change formats? Are we out to prove that Clear Channel is not just a cold-hearted profit maximizer? Is this just more PR? Former listeners are welcome to leave comments; I even left one, but what is the point?
I've got good news for former listeners of KLSD Progressive Talk. You can listen to Randi Rhodes and Thom Hartmann via podcast without the advertising. You can get an ipod shuffle for $79. and download the podcasts for free. It's something I should have done even before KLSD Progressive Talk went off the air. I think Ed Schultz charges for his podcast, but I don't like him anyway. You also can listen to Thom and Randi via XM radio, but even though you pay a monthly fee for XM , not to mention the start-up costs, you still have to listen to all the fricken commercials, and you can only listen in your car or in your home. You can listen to a podcast anywhere. It's supremely portable. Randi's daily show is in one long segment and Thom's is in three - one for each hour he's on the air. You can listen to the local Portland station, KPOJ, with no commercials or Thom Hartmann nationwide which does have commercials (not as obnoxious as Air America's), but you can fast forward through them with the ipod.
A word about the local "progressive" DJ, Stacy Taylor. Stacy was bitching for months about being taken off the air, and he encouraged all the brouhaha about listeners joining together in the parking lot to show "support" for the "progressive" format. A caller called in and told Stacy what he very well knows: he could do a podcast out of his home and make his living off the subscribers. Stacy gave this approach very little shrift so you know that Stacy basically just wanted to have some corporation cut him a check every two weeks and wanted an advertising based show on conventional radio despite his "progresssive" blather. I wish Stacy well, but as long as podcasts are available, I'll never listen to him again if he pops up on some other San Diego station. And although the podcasts I subscribe to are free, I would gladly pay a fee if I had to. In addition to the portability of the ipod, you can even listen to it in the car instead of the radio. It's got plenty of volume! And you don't need any fancy docking equipment - just the ipod and a set of earphones.
But there is more than just Air America talk show hosts that you can download sans advertising. For instance, Meet the Press, Bill Maher on HBO, language lessons, NPR broadcasts, history of the Byzantine empire, a course in quantum mechanics - stuff that you'd either have to pay for or suffer through commercials to view. I know what Tim Russert looks like. I don't really need the video portion. For those folks who want to call in to talk radio, the podcast may leave a little to be desired. However, there are other means of feedback i.e. blogs and email.
A final word about advertising. Those who have read my blog know that I hate it. It's the bane of my existence. If I never had to listen to or see another ad again for the rest of my life, I'd think that I'd died and gone to heaven. That's why this is an ad free blog. Those who make their living off it are basically whores, and it's corrupting the whole political process as Congressmen and Senators and Presidential candidates have to raise outlandish sums just to buy TV ads. You know it's not really necessary. I can find out anything I want to know about a product (or a candidate for that matter) just by googling it on the internet. I can also comparison shop and get ratings and reviews. Why do I need to be force fed some garbage like all the drug commercials where they tell you "Ask your doctor" about this drug and that drug. My doctor should be telling me what I need after he diagnoses some condition that requires a drug in the first place. It shouldn't be necessarry for me to prompt my doctor. If it is, he's not a very good doctor. And as for the advertising on former KLSD Progresssive Talk, a lot of it, if not all, was predatory and ethically questionable, and I don't see how those progresssive talk hosts, in good conscience, could cash their paychecks. I say good riddance to KLSD, Clear Channnel and their ilk!
