Posted on 02/17/2003 6:53:01 AM PST by nypokerface
A group of wealthy Democratic donors is planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance the conservative tenor of radio programs like "The Rush Limbaugh Show."
The group, led by Sheldon and Anita Drobny, venture capitalists from Chicago who have been major campaign donors for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, is in talks with Al Franken, the comedian and author of "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot." It hopes to enlist other well-known entertainers with a liberal point of view for a 14-hour, daily slate of commercial programs that would heavily rely on comedy and political satire.
The plan faces several business and content challenges, from finding a network of radio stations to buy the program to overcoming the poor track record of liberal radio shows. But it is the most ambitious undertaking yet to come from liberal Democrats who believe they are overshadowed in the political propaganda wars by conservative radio and television personalities.
The concern has been around for years: Hillary Rodham Clinton first mentioned a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in 1998. But the sentiment has taken on new urgency with the rise to the top of the cable news ratings of the Fox News Channel, considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the Republicans' gaining control of the Senate in November. Such events have spurred many wealthy Democrats to explore investments in possible, liberal-skewing media ventures. New campaign finance rules that restrict giving opportunities also gave them further incentive.
The new liberal radio network is initially being financed by the Paradigm Group, of which the Drobnys are the principal partners. Ms. Drobny is the chairwoman of the venture, which is being called AnShell Media L.L.C. Jon Sinton, a longtime, Atlanta-based radio executive, will be its chief executive. He helped start the nationally syndicated radio program of Jim Hightower, the former Texas agriculture commissioner. Liberals had hoped that would be their answer to Mr. Limbaugh, but it was canceled shortly after its start in the mid-1990's.
The failure of Mr. Hightower's show supported the notion of many in radio that liberal hosts do not have what it takes to become successful and entertaining hosts: the fire-and-brimstone manner and a ready-made audience alienated by the mainstream news media it perceives to be full of liberal bias.
Mr. Sinton said the new venture would seek to disprove not only those who doubt liberal hosts can make it in radio, but also those who believe that success in radio depends on an alliance with one of the handful of major distributors or station groups.
The group said it was prepared to go it alone, selling its programming to the individual radio stations rather than go through a middleman. It has an initial investment of $10 million, which radio analysts said was enough to start up. Ms. Drobny said the cash would be placed in a fund that she hopes to grow to at least $200 million within the next year, which she hopes to use to finance other media ventures like the acquisition of radio stations and television production.
"The object of the programming is to be progressive and make a statement that counters this din from the right," Mr. Sinton said. "But we have a solid business plan that shows a hole in the market."
Many conservatives who assert the news media in general is infused with liberal bias say the premise of a liberal radio network is silly to begin with. But liberal Democrats say even if a liberal bias does exist, the mainstream news media strives for balance and fair play. They say their concern is that there are far fewer successful, outright partisan voices on the left than there are on the right.
"I feel like there's a monologue out there," Ms. Drobny said. "I just had this tremendous feeling with great passion that we had to make sure we're heard and make sure having a dialogue in this country of ours."
The list of successful conservative radio hosts is, in fact, fairly long Rush Limbaugh; Sean Hannity; Michael Savage; Michael Reagan. And there is no equivalent list of liberals. Past attempts, such as the programs of Mr. Hightower and Mario Cuomo, have failed.
Some radio executives said they simply did not believe liberal radio could become good business. Among them was Kraig T. Kitchen, chief executive of Premiere Radio Networks, one of the nation's largest radio syndication arms with the programs of Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Reagan and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, among others. Though Mr. Kitchin said he was a conservative, he also said he would have pursued liberal programs had he thought there was money in them. He ascribes to the popular view in the industry that liberal hosts present issues in too much complexity to be very entertaining — while addressing a diffuse audience that has varying views.
"Individuals who are liberal in their viewpoints can be all-encompassing," he said. "It's very hard to define liberalism, unlike how easy it is to define conservatism. So, as a result, it doesn't evoke the same kind of passion as conservative ideologies do."
Mr. Sinton said he thought past attempts failed because they were not properly executed. He said he believed a big problem for Mr. Hightower was that his program was sandwiched into a schedule crammed with conservatives. "It is very hard to succeed when you throw liberal programming between bookends of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity," he said. "That violates expectations of the listener."
This is why he said he was proposing a full slate of liberally skewing programming with morning, afternoon and early evening shows featuring hosts with as many big names in entertainment as possible.
"This side has failed by going at Rush, and trying to be Rush — you're not going to beat him at his game," Mr. Sinton said. "What really makes this work is tapping into Hollywood and New York and having a huge entertainment component, where political sarcasm is every bit as effective as Rush Limbaugh is at bashing you over the head."
Mr. Sinton acknowledged that his biggest challenge was in getting national distribution for the network. He said he would seek to strike deals with underperforming radio stations in major markets.
Analysts said that while the plan might seem difficult to achieve, it is not impossible. "It is going to be trickier in the top-10 markets, easier in the middle markets, but it will be possible," said Jonathan Jacoby, a radio industry analyst for SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. "There is a case that if they have the right product, they will be able to find distribution."
Talent, of course, will be key, Mr. Sinton acknowledged. A deal with Mr. Franken, the comedian, would help greatly in luring other big names, as well as in gaining distribution. He said he envisioned a daily program featuring Mr. Franken perhaps in the early afternoons (around the same time as "The Rush Limbaugh Show").
A representative for Mr. Franken, Henry Reisch of the William Morris Agency, said Mr. Franken was seriously considering the offer, and was mostly focusing on whether he could handle the commitment of a daily radio program. Judging from his comments as a guest last month on Phil Donahue's program on MSNBC, Mr. Franken would probably take a far different approach from that of Mr. Limbaugh. "I think the audience isn't there for a liberal Rush," he said. "Because I think liberals don't want to hear that kind of demagoguery."
The argument is valid, but irrelevant if no one is watching, listening to, or reading liberal media drivel.
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What happens when a citizen actually believes a campaigning politician’s idle promises?
At a May 24 Democratic National Committee fund-raiser at the M.C.I. Center in Washington, D.C., Anita Drobny and her 16-year-old daughter, Jessica, found themselves sitting at a table next to Hillary Clinton’s. Jessica Drobny, a high school sophomore from Highland Park, Ill., who had met Mrs. Clinton twice before, took the opportunity to tell the First Lady about a project she was working on for history class; the subject was female genital mutilation (F.G.M.) in Africa. Mrs. Clinton had given speeches about it in the past.
"They had a dialogue for several moments," Anita Drobny said.
"She was really interested," her daughter gushed. Following the exchange, Mrs. Clinton wrote down Jessica’s name and address and promised to send her copies of her notes and speeches on the subject.
By Sunday, June 4, however, the promised material had not arrived. The project was due in three days. So Jessica’s mother, who had contributed $5,000 to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign, did what any slighted donor would do: She called up the campaign’s Seventh Avenue headquarters to complain. Christopher Fickes, deputy finance director, took the call.
"She was really mad," Jessica later recalled of her mother.
"I can’t imagine that Mrs. Clinton would promise you something and not deliver," Anita Drobny said.
Mr. Fickes passed the problem along to Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s personal assistant at the White House. What followed, according to a source close to the campaign, was "an urgent and worried game of phone tag" between harried underlings.
The staff reacted swiftly to the mounting crisis. A search was ordered for the missing materials and for the staff member responsible for their disappearance. The task of mounting an attack against new Senate campaign opponent Rick Lazio was ever-so-briefly shelved so that Jessica Drobny could get her project in on time.
Eventually, the speeches on F.G.M. were discovered. The campaign staff faxed them to Jessica Drobny. But it was too late. She had finished her project.
A source close to the campaign said that the delay in sending the copies of the speeches occurred because Mrs. Clinton "had told someone on the White House staff, but she thought she had told someone else on the White House staff. It just kept passing from one person to another."
Lissa Muscatine, the First Lady’s press secretary said, "I have a hard time seeing the importance of this, other than that somebody didn’t get information in a timely matter." (That sounds familiar.)
After Jessica had delivered her report, an envelope from the White House containing Mrs. Clinton’s speeches arrived at the Drobny household. It was a poignant reminder of what might have been.
Without the First Lady’s timely help on the project, Jessica failed to get an A. "It’s very hard to get an A in that class," she said.
Leslie Gray Levin, her teacher in the class (World History Since 1500), explained, "The reason why her grade wasn’t an A was she was missing some of the requirements on the requirement sheet." Besides, Mrs. Levin had seen this kind of thing before. "I had a student last year and a student this year who hosted the parties for the Clinton-Gore benefits."
–Jonathan Goldberg
Actually, I think you overestimate their capacity for understanding, or at least for caring. If they really understood the terms they throw around or if they really cared about them, their approach to them would be very different.
ROTFL!! THAT statement, without a doubt, is going to be the most laughable I will hear all day!!
1. The liberals will announce with much fanfare that there is a new sheriff in town to take on Black Bart Limbaugh. Of course, they will use all of their buzzwords in their promotion and will call their show the "progressive" alternative to Rush, "progressive" being used because liberals are quick to hide that they are liberal.
2. In a short time after the start of their abysmal failure, the libs will note very publicly that ratings for the schmuck they put in front of the fools gold LIB microphone are in the toilet and will begin to blame the VRWC for their low ratings, but more importantly, for keeping their new show from getting play on mainstream stations around the country.
3. A group of libs will attempt to organize some kind of boycott against the major players in radio (Clearchannel, Infinity, etc), much along the lines of the attempted boycott against Limbaugh, but they will attempt to organize against all the major conservative commentators.
4. Having seen the boycott fail and with ratings still in the toilet, the sponsors of whine fest will announce privately, yet publicly, that the show will likely not survive past another month, and point to this as an example of conservative media bias pervasive in society.
5. Once the show fails miserably, Phlegmocrats in Congress will attempt to springboard this failure into new legislation to put limitations on radio shows like Limbaugh's, in order to get "fairness" back in the media.
The libs and Phlegms have already made noise in this direction. This attempt to put on a liberal show is nothing more than a means to get America to believe conservative media bias exists.
On the upside to Al Franken et al, doing their show is that it will provide endless buckets of coffin nails to seal their own coffins. Unlike e-mail and FBI files, what goes out over the air cannot be burned, shredded, erased, or forgotten. And you don't need an order from Lamberth to find stuff out. Any guest on liberal talk radio had better keep his/her yap shut cause Bill and Hillary will have the tape rolling. The format will be as spontanious and informative as Hillary in a deposition. 14 hours of "I don't know about that Al, but........those old fart rich republicans are the real evil in our society Al......" will not be very funny or entertaining.
If they want to dump their money into a venture that doesn't match the market, that's okay. If they want to create another financial sink-hole like salon.com, that's a win-win situation. They waste their money and effort on a losing cause, rather than putting it into marginal Democrat campaigns where a few more expensive media lies might produce a Dem win. So be it.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "Using the Old Noodle," now up on UPI and FR.
The whole hate radio thing.....It's not like anyone in DNC circles does not offer that solution at least once during each meeting on strategy!
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