LIVE from the Left Coast with Al Franken
Al Franken is back in Seattle today with his radio show. I am blogging live from Town Hall in Seattle. It's been a pretty great show, we're in the third hour as I write this We heard from King County Executive Ron Sims in the second hour, and we just heard a group of children singing songs for peace.
We also had Joel Connelly and Greg Nickels as guests earlier, and of course, Franken talked about Alito during the first hour. We are scheduled to hear next from Dan Savage, editor of the alternative weekly, The Stranger, who writes the internationally-syndicated advice column, “Savage Love,”.
UPDATE: It was a great show with very good turnout, but it wasn't packed completely - there were some empty spots. Unlike last May, 1090 did not do much to promote Franken's appearance, which is too bad. The only thing they've succeeded at so far is successfully showing up at a lot of Democratic/progressive events.
What really irks me is that Infinity Broadcasting, the owner of AM 1090, is not investing in local programming. There's a huge audience that would listen to a progressive host or two, someone who would be the opposite of KVI's John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur. KVI has shown the way to build listener loyalty is to cover local issues successfully, but Infinity hasn't acted. They've had Air America for a year now, and yet they still carry syndicated programming only.
It won't be good enough to bring Al Franken here a couple times a year. They need to get a local talkshow host. We already have Dave Ross, who is very thoughtful and a great host, but he's fairly moderate. He does, however, cover local issues with great success.
Meanwhile, KVI is apparently doing debates on all the initiatives this week. I've been invited to debate Tim Eyman tomorrow morning on Kirby's show, and ironically, KVI, the main engine behind I-912, is also having an I-912 debate this Thursday.
We also had Joel Connelly and Greg Nickels as guests earlier, and of course, Franken talked about Alito during the first hour. We are scheduled to hear next from Dan Savage, editor of the alternative weekly, The Stranger, who writes the internationally-syndicated advice column, “Savage Love,”.
UPDATE: It was a great show with very good turnout, but it wasn't packed completely - there were some empty spots. Unlike last May, 1090 did not do much to promote Franken's appearance, which is too bad. The only thing they've succeeded at so far is successfully showing up at a lot of Democratic/progressive events.
What really irks me is that Infinity Broadcasting, the owner of AM 1090, is not investing in local programming. There's a huge audience that would listen to a progressive host or two, someone who would be the opposite of KVI's John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur. KVI has shown the way to build listener loyalty is to cover local issues successfully, but Infinity hasn't acted. They've had Air America for a year now, and yet they still carry syndicated programming only.
It won't be good enough to bring Al Franken here a couple times a year. They need to get a local talkshow host. We already have Dave Ross, who is very thoughtful and a great host, but he's fairly moderate. He does, however, cover local issues with great success.
Meanwhile, KVI is apparently doing debates on all the initiatives this week. I've been invited to debate Tim Eyman tomorrow morning on Kirby's show, and ironically, KVI, the main engine behind I-912, is also having an I-912 debate this Thursday.
