Sam Nunberg told Gabriel Sherman for New York Magazine 4/3/2016 that he listened to 1000s of hours of talk radio and reported to Trump. Much of the propaganda used by Putin’s social media trolling operations have been preceded by or reinforced by talk radio repetition.
While Fox gets all the attention talk radio does the unchallenged repetition that enables Fox to exist. Trump watches fox but he's getting the talk radio talking points and memes. Fox announcers are there to put blond perms and block heads on a distilled version of what Rush Limbaugh and 300 other liars on 1500 unchallenged radio stations have been pounding into the earholes of 50 mil people every week.
Protests at state capitols and other locations can be ignored by media and politicians because Republican radio stations can yell over them for weeks after protestors have gone home. Radio talk show hosts attack and mischaracterize protestors, their tactics, and their objectives. They also encourage local officials and police to break protests up and excuse violence directed at protestors. They repeat fabricated stories of protestor violence, looting, etc.
Limbaugh stations that broadcast sports are among the loudest in the country. Since Ronald Reagan killed the fairness Doctrine in 1987 those stations have been operating exclusively for the benefit of Republican interests. They are licensed to operate in the public interest but they all:
- deny global warming and always support fossil fuel alternatives like fracking over renewables.
- work to defund and privatize public education, attack teachers and work to lower their salaries, attack their unions, push voucher solutions and standardized testing, and obstruct efforts to lower student debt.
- sensationalize and excuse militarism
- use public airwaves to sell voter suppression legislation with lies and exaggeration about voter fraud, millions of “illegal aliens” and dead people voting for Democrats, etc.
- oppose environmental regulation
- oppose health care reform and have lied about foreign single payer systems for 3 decades.
- attack free speech: they have sold “money is speech” and “corporations are people” memes for decades, arguing for media deregulation, defunding of public programming like PBS and NPR, and an end to net neutrality.
- oppose campaign finance reform
- use and excuse racism, misogyny, homophobia, and hate to divide communities and push voter suppression and other anti-democratic Republican legislation.
- work to deny reproductive rights for women and access to contraception, defund Planned Parenthood and other services, and excuse misogyny.
- fight efforts to increase minimum wage, and advocate eliminating it.
- use public airways to repeat propaganda that is demonstrably false and continue to lie after being corrected, use call screeners to exclude dissenting opinions.
- coordinate on national and local level with and provide free publicity for Republican politicians and think tanks when needed for elections, passing legislation, and attacking critics and opponents.
- influence elections of university regents and selection of administration, including presidents and chancellors.
- use monopoly power to avoid direct competition while pretending to represent an expression of free speech. It is a myth that there is free and fair competition between liberal and Republican talk radio. It is a 95% monopoly, Mom and Pop vs Wall Mart.
- while railing against “political correctness”, they loudly demand political conformity
The universities don’t owe the stations anything. Most of those university/radio relationships began when the stations broadcast music and general non-partisan programming, before 1987 when Ronald Reagan ‘killed’ the Fairness Doctrine and Republicans began buying up radio stations to create and protect a talk radio monopoly. Today there are more options for viewing and listening to sports. If stations want to keep broadcasting university sports there is no reason they can’t convert to music or sports talk. There are many sports talk stations that want to broadcast those sports events and would be more appropriate. They talk sports all day and sell sports and sports merchandise, not politics.
Usually a licensing company like Learfield Sports pays the university for the broadcasting rights and either resells them to the radio station or pays the radio station to broadcast the games. In some cases there is no bidding process and licensing terms are kept secret, even from university administrations. The schools receive very little licensing revenue from radio compared with TV broadcasts. If loss of licensing revenue is an objection, can donors be found to make up the difference? If there is a loss, how does it compare with the harm it is doing to its own students and community, or the damage from defunding public education?
Consider the absurdity of 10 universities in Texas and Florida endorsing 36 Limbaugh stations for years while they denied global warming and fought for building and development deregulation.
Here is the list of universities with the number of Limbaugh stations for each school and the total for each state. The list is incomplete. There are many other schools, and even high schools, used this way by right wing Republican radio. It does not include stations that do not headline Limbaugh. For instance, the University of Wisconsin broadcasts on 5 Limbaugh stations but also on 2 stations that headline Sean Hannity. Some universities may have made changes recently.
From republicanradio.org:
ALABAMA 8 Auburn 3, Alabama 2, Southern Alabama 2, Troy 1
ARIZONA 2 Arizona St. 1, Arizona 1
ARKANSAS 3 Arkansas 3
CALIFORNIA 5 San Jose State 2, USC 2, Fresno St. 1
COLORADO 4 Air Force 2, Colorado 1, Colorado State 1
CONNECTICUT 1 Connecticut 1
FLORIDA 20 Florida 10, Florida St. 4 Miami 2, South Florida 2, Central Florida 2
GEORGIA 14 Georgia 7, Georgia Tech 5, Georgia Southern 2
IDAHO 7 Boise St. 4, Idaho 3
ILLINOIS 7 Illinois 7
INDIANA 11 Notre Dame 6, Purdue 4, Indiana 1
IOWA 5 Iowa 4, Iowa St. 1
KANSAS 4 Kansas St. 2, Kansas 1, Wichita St. 1
KENTUCKY 3 Louisville 2, Kentucky 1
LOUSIANA 3 LSU 2, La.-Monroe 1
MARYLAND 2 Maryland 2
MASSACHUSETTS 1 Boston College 1
MICHIGAN 19 Michigan St. 11, Michigan 7, Western Michigan 1
MINNESOTA 4 Minnesota 4
MISSISSIPPI 6 Mississippi St. 3, Mississippi 2, Southern Miss 1
MISSOURI 6 Missouri 6
NEBRASKA 6 Nebraska 6
NEVADA 1 Nevada 1
NEW JERSEY 2 Rutgers 1, Seton Hall 1
NEW MEXICO 3 New Mexico 2, New Mexico St. 1
NEW YORK 7 Syracuse 6, Army 1
NORTH CAROLINA 16 North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 3, Duke 3, East Carolina 2
OHIO 10 Ohio St. 6, Toledo 1, Dayton 1, Bowling Green 1, Xavier 1
OKLAHOMA 5 Oklahoma St. 3, Oklahoma 1, Oral Roberts 1
OREGON 12 Oregon St. 7, Oregon 5
PENNSYLVANIA 14 Penn St. 11, Pittsburgh 2, Temple 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 South Carolina 2, Clemson 2
TENNESSEE 7 Tennessee 4, Memphis 3
TEXAS 16 Texas A&M 9, Texas Tech 4, Texas 1, Texas Christian 1, Baylor 1
UTAH 1 Utah St. 1
VIRGINIA 6 Virginia Tech 5, Virginia 1
WASHINGTON 6 Washington 5, Washington St. 1
WEST VIRGINIA 2 West Virginia 1, Marshall 1
WISCONSIN 5 Wisconsin 5
= new reply since forum marked as read
)))
