Ramping Up the Wingnut Propaganda for 2012: Clear Channel Radio Moves in San Francisco

Mike Malloy talks about the demise of San Francisco's Green 960, and a parallel development in Sacramento -- and the late stages of the right-wing corporate capture of American radio.

by Noah

The Plague Of Texas is upon us. Will it ever stop? This time it’s not children’s textbooks warping the minds of the younger citizenry and it’s also not a bunch of Texans shouting “We’re number one” when their governor proudly announces that his state has executed more people than any other state. No, this time it’s San Antonio-born Clear Channel (now owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital) moving once again to add more pollution to the radio airwaves with their disease, just in time for the 2012 election year.

Clear Channel plans to make over, effective January 3rd, the San Francisco area’s last progressive AM radio station, Green 960-KKGN, and give the radio jackboot to progressive talkers Stephanie Miller, Mike Malloy, and Thom Hartmann, replacing them with incoherent conspiracy monger Glenn Beck and a cabal of FOX “News” Radio freaks like John Gibson and Dave Ramsey. On the plus side, progressive talker Randi Rhodes (who works for Clear Channel’s Premier Network) will serve as a token lefty and still have her noon-to-3:00 slot, at least for now. FOX calls it “Fair and Balanced.” The pointless Alan Colmes gets an evening slot. Only FOX could call him a liberal.


Randi Rhodes survives on the soon-to-be-former Green 960 -- for now.

Short of a Christmas Miracle, the progressive talk format in San Francisco will now be, courtesy of Clear Channel, super ghetto-ized on the FM-HD2 band as Malloy, Hartmann, and Miller move there in what amounts to a forced relocation to the radio reservation. How many people do you know that even own an HD2 receiver or phone app? Republicans like to refer to things like this as “shrinking it down so much that you can drown it in a bathtub.” As I said, jackboots.

The final touches have yet to be applied, and the move is no doubt being met with the moves of smaller competitors and the anger and derision from many who were operating under the assumption that the airwave licenses really are publicly owned, but this is happening right in San Francisco, the city Republicans love to hate. They just can’t stand its "live and let live" brand of healthy, nourishing liberalism. Oh, how they long to change its ways!

Says Clear Channel’s San Francisco Director of Operations, Don Parker:

We saw the opportunity to expand our footprint in this crucial arena as we head into an election year and a population increasingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism.

I’ll give this fascist PR flack credit. At least he’s honest. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read between the lines of his mission statement. He could have just said, “We need to ramp up the wingnut propaganda for 2012!” I bet he even wears some kind of quasi-military uniform while he struts around his office, though, to be kind, maybe he just wears it at home behind closed doors.

Remember hearing about when Germany invaded France and installed their teams of media propagandists and governing officials in every city and town in the country? It took D-Day and a whole lot of deaths to fumigate the place. Let’s also not forget that some state governors such as Michigan’s Rick Snyder are doing something similar when they essentially declare elections null and void and bring in their own teams to run things. Local media and government control have long been favored tools of the right. It’s not just for history books. It’s happening right now.

Of course, the righties can’t abide with calling the station Green 960 anymore. Plans call for it now to be called KNEW. I would have suggested KKKNEW or KLIE, but no one asked. Perhaps a guerilla billboard campaign is in order. After they find some reason to alter or burn Rhodes’ contract, we can honestly refer to KNEW as --

KLIE -- All Lies, All The Time!
KLIE -- Where Truth Goes To Die!
KLIE -- Beautiful Delusions!

Apologistas from the right will, no doubt, say that it was just a money and ratings decision, but statements like that don’t pass the smell test when progressive on-air talent like Stephanie Miller routinely beats neo-fascist/FOX guest loon Laura Ingraham in markets where they go head to head. Ingraham also happens to be carried by 300+ stations to Miller’s 36. Now go ahead and ask yourself if corporate Amerika has a bias or not. Liberal media? What liberal media?

How does something like this happen in America? It happens when two right-wing corporate fascists named Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich team up to ram the Telecommunications Act of 1996 down our throats, allowing some well-moneyed goons in Texas to buy up as many stations, even in the same market, as they possibly can, exterminating competition and assuring that only one message, a right-wing extremist one, will blanket communities across the country. Clinton and Gingrich obviously regarded the term “publicly owned airwaves” as quaint or outmoded.

Thanks, clowns.

You want a dark thought for the day after all of the above. Think about Mitt Romney in the White House, controlling Clear Channel, through Bain Capital, and all of its vast array of radio stations across the country. The ghosts of Saddam Hussein, Khrushchev, and so many other dictators will glow a bright gooey green with envy.

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