Posted on 05/31/2008 9:09:51 AM PDT by jjw
Over the years whenever anyone asked how my radio show was going my stock answer always has been: "Well, they haven't told me to stop."
Earlier this month, they told me to stop. As a master of nuance, I took it as an inkling things weren't going well.
So last Saturday, after nearly eight years of holding forth for three hours from 9 a.m. to noon on WFLA, 970-AM, I concluded my final broadcast.
Some friends have suggested I was canceled because of the perception that I am some kind of liberal, as if pointing out on a regular basis we are led by a buffo in the White House and believing in the U.S. Constitution somehow defines me as a radical, liberal, troublemaking wisenheimer.
It is true that some listeners have accused me of being a pinko Commie, usually right after I suggested that Global Warming was a serious problem, or maybe it's a bad idea to execute people who might be innocent, or perhaps it might be nice if after torturing terrorism suspects we let them talk to a lawyer and see the evidence against them.
You know, crazy, wacky, insane, extremist ideas like that.
Marx & Engels
On the other hand, since this is the dollars-and-cents business of radio, I also know if I went before the microphone every week and starting reading the complete works of Marx & Engels, including "The Communist Manifesto" (in the original German), and I was pulling in huge ratings, not only would Clear Channel have left me on the air - they would have syndicated the show across its more than 1,110 stations across the country.
In all fairness to my moonlighting employers, although it's disappointing to lose my radio perch, I can't really complain too terribly much.
For nearly eight years I was given a forum to shoot my mouth off on whatever annoyed me at the moment. In case you're curious, not once in all that time did anyone from station management ever tell me what I could or couldn't talk about.
Talk Radio? Really?
I was treated very decently by Clear Channel. I worked with a number of first-rate broadcasters and a litany of terrific board-op/call screeners, most notably my last partner Kevin Green.
If I have any beef, it is this: "Talk radio" remains something of a misnomer.
Call it the "Limbaugh Defect," but all too often the last thing many callers were interested in was talk, or (at the risk of being accused of heresy) a conversation.
More often than not callers merely wanted to give a speech, or a sermon, or a diatribe.
To disagree, to have a different point of view was to invite accusations of being a dreaded liberal, although in my experience 99.9 percent of the time the caller couldn't even provide a definition of what a "liberal" is. These were hardly Algonquin Roundtable moments.
Callers who decried the "liberal" New York Times, for example, would, with some prodding, admit they've never read The New York Times. Is it any wonder why I drink?
Still the job was great fun. I'll miss it, although I now get to sleep in on Saturday mornings.
Oh, and one more thing - I still believe we need to get rid of all the guns.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Keyword: Book of Ruth, to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.
Both of his listeners are deeply saddened.
Never heard of him or his show but reading this sure convinces me: he IS a commie puke. No doubt about it.
After reading what he said here, I can see why they dumped him.
I haven’t heard of him either, but I clicked on the story because I misread the headline: Rush off Radio.
I never knew Dr. Ruth was on the radio.
Dang!
I thought it said “Rush off the radio.”
I figured maybe the network popped him with a drug test or something.
He just needs a job at NPR. They don’t need ratings since they have monthly beg-athons and my tax money to pay the bills.
side note: Click and Clack don’t suck like the rest of NPR.
99.9 percent of the time the caller couldn’t even provide a definition of what a “liberal” is
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Liberal: A person working hard to be a Marxist.
But he's just another useful idiot.
I could not tolerate listening to Daniel Ruth, and I would switch WFLA-Tampa 970AM on the dial to ANYTHING else when he came on.
Now he is gone. Some gardening show, or fishing show, I don’t know, but it IS NOT Daniel Ruth.
He made Garrison Keillor sound like easy listening.
Rush very will might get kicked off the radio someday, but it won’t be because his ratings suck. It will be because our New President/Mullah Obama will have used a New Fairness Doctrine to yank the plug on radio free speech. (In fact, there’s nothing to say a New President/Nitwit McCain won’t do the same thing.)
Yes, those nasty criminals will stop using them as soon as we make it against the law
Liberals are too stupid for words
the word in arabic is fatwah...rush will lose his head under mullah obsama, but then again, so will every left wing pinko queer commie.
He also has a weekly column in the local birdcage drop catcher.
He was at first very good: funny, sardonic and witty, he slowly changed to be a parrot of the weekly faxed DNC taking point.
He claims not to be liberal, and probably in his mind doesn't think he is one, just like the NYT's opinion writers don't think they are either.
When you walk like one, talk like one, act like one, you come across as one. I'm sure his rating over the last couple of years went down the tubes do to his serious case of BDS
After a while listening to him say: Bush is a moron, Bush is a criminal, Bush is a ............gets pretty old even if you are funny, sardonic and witty
Goodbye, Daniel, you putz
Right now, the leftists and the jihadists have formed a tactical alliance. Once western civilization is destroyed, then they’ll go at each others throats, but for now, they are on the same side.
I never heard of him either, but I can believe your take on it.
I used to enjoy listening to “A Prairie Home Companion.” Lake Woebegone, Guy Noir, Private Eye, and so forth. Garrison Keilor was very funny, and easy to listen to.
Then it started to get more political. I suppose he was always a liberal underneath it all, but he didn’t seem to feel obliged earlier to talk about it.
The last straw was his vicious display of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Who on earth wants to tune in to a formerly relaxing, comic, easy-going show, with pleasant musical interludes, and find himself listening to constant, bitter political rants? It’s not even entirely a matter of left or right. It would have wrecked the show if he had started cursing Democrats at every opportunity.
But of course that would be exceedingly rare in these times.
Although I never listened to his radio program, I’ve seen his columns in the local paper for years. Total waste of ink. Seldom do I read one all the way through. Yes, he is a Bush-basher and a flaming liberal.
Here’s the new line-up...they are replacing him with recaps of news of the week.
http://www.970wfla.com/pages/weekendlineup.html
ouch
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