Friday, October 24, 2008

An Open Letter to AM Radio Programmers

Dear Mr. Jeff Wade:

As program manager you must have some say over who you hand your airwaves to every day. As a devoted radio fan who grew up with Wolfman Jack and KRLA and, because my dad was stationed in the U.K. briefly, matured to the BBC, I have despaired of American radio for the last 20 years, ever since Limbaugh first went national. Talk radio had real potential before hate mongers and propagandists like Limbaugh were given free rein. Now it is nothing more than a draining sewer.

Is this national election and the economic disaster not enough for you to see that Limbaugh and his ilk are King Wrong in the Land of the Wrong People? It has been a national travesty that your station and others like it have not had the anatomy to stand up to the lying liars who lie at the helm of this ideological nightmare that has become public media policy in this country.

Time is now officially up. With the Dow in free fall, Milton Friedmanesque economists heading for the hills in disrepute, Republicans afraid to admit they ever voted for any Bush ever, and the best investment in the Maine economy likely to be canning jars, you, yes you, Mr. Wade, must make a decision. Do you want your radio station to circle the drain with the rest of the sewer dwellers? Do you want to continue to supply disinformation to your unsuspecting, deluded and duped listeners? Stop it. If you say you have no control over the programming and are of the Nuremberg breed, quit and join the thousands of those unemployed because of the venal tax polices supported by Limbaugh and his followers.

We are going to need real information in these next months and years, facts, economic education, advice and above all compassion. Not propaganda from greedy, self-interested bloviators.

With hope for the future of radio,

Lee Roberts
Mike Colbert

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Give thanks that you can enjoy the freedom to change the station. Jeff N.

Lee Roberts said...

Yes, that's a freedom I enjoy and employ frequently. I'm hard to please though and find poorly produced radio dull.

The Fairness Doctrine was like the American government, the worst in the world, except for all the others.

We should bring it back.