Clear Channel kills progressive talk in Portland; activists rallying to bring it back

Clear Chan­nel has struck again.

Last Fri­day, with­out pro­vid­ing any expla­na­tion, the radio and out­door adver­tis­ing con­glom­er­ate trashed the entire pro­gram­ming line­up for KPOJ 620 AM (“Port­land’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”) and con­vert­ed the sta­tion into a Fox Sports affiliate.

The sud­den for­mat change means Ran­di Rhodes, Mike Mal­loy, Thom Hart­mann, and oth­er pro­gres­sive hosts can no longer be heard over the air in Port­land, Ore­gon’s largest city. Carl Wolf­son’s live and local pro­gres­sive talk show, which aired in the morn­ings, has also been cancelled.

KPOJ was one of the now-defunct Air Amer­i­ca’s orig­i­nal affil­i­ates. It car­ried shows like Unfil­tered (with Rachel Mad­dow, Lizz Win­stead and Chuck D) Morn­ing Sedi­tion,  The O’Franken Fac­tor (lat­er The Al Franken Show) and the Major­i­ty Report (with Sam Seder and Janeane Garo­fa­lo). Like CBS Radio’s AM 1090 in Seat­tle, KPOJ was large­ly unaf­fect­ed by the 2010 breakup of Air Amer­i­ca because it was air­ing pro­gres­sive talk shows syn­di­cat­ed by oth­er companies.

Clear Chan­nel, which was tak­en pri­vate in 2008 by Bain Cap­i­tal, is one of the largest media con­glom­er­ates in the Unit­ed States. It has become infa­mous among media crit­ics for cen­sor­ship, abrupt for­mat changes (like this one) oper­at­ing many of its sta­tions remote­ly and robot­i­cal­ly, and pay­ing actors to call into its talk shows.

Clear Chan­nel spends hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars every elec­tion cycle on polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to can­di­dates. Repub­li­cans have typ­i­cal­ly received more Clear Chan­nel mon­ey than Democ­rats, though Democ­rats received a greater share in the 2008 and 2010 elec­tion cycles because the par­ty con­trolled Con­gress at the time. The com­pa­ny pri­mar­i­ly gives mon­ey to incum­bents as opposed to challengers.

Clear Chan­nel owns dozens of sta­tions in the Pacif­ic North­west. Most are locat­ed in Wash­ing­ton. Five are in Ore­gon, all in the Port­land area (includ­ing KPOJ). Anoth­er eight are in Ida­ho (Pocatel­lo, Ida­ho Falls, and Twin Falls).

Kari Chisholm, a friend of ours and the founder of Blue­O­re­gon (which is indexed by Pacif­ic NW Por­tal) has launched a peti­tion to Clear Chan­nel to bring KPOJ back. The peti­tion reads:

620 KPOJ was a respect­ed and prof­itable sta­tion with ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­ers and adver­tis­ers. KPO­J’s local pro­gram­ming also played an impor­tant role in our com­mu­ni­ty, con­nect­ing elect­ed offi­cials and advo­cates with lis­ten­ers across the region.

We strong­ly urge you to bring back pro­gres­sive talk radio in Port­land, Oregon.

On Blue­O­re­gon, Kari explained that he was moti­vat­ed to act after receiv­ing phone calls from anguished lis­ten­ers. “As some­one who appeared near­ly every Tues­day morn­ing on KPOJ for sev­en years — and was their longest-run­ning week­ly guest — I’m well aware of the pow­er and reach of KPOJ. It real­ly was a crit­i­cal gath­er­ing spot for our pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty… I believe that we can reverse this decision.”

“It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fast. But by demon­strat­ing that KPO­J’s pro­gres­sive audi­ence is ded­i­cat­ed and large, we can get Clear Chan­nel to reverse course. And if they won’t budge, then we’ll demon­strate to anoth­er com­pa­ny, anoth­er sta­tion that there’s an audi­ence here for pro­gres­sive talk. ”

If you agree, con­sid­er sign­ing on to Kar­i’s peti­tion at SaveKPOJ.com. Espe­cial­ly if you live in Port­land, Beaver­ton, Tigard, Gre­sham, Amer­i­ca’s Van­cou­ver, or their sub­urbs — the area that KPO­J’s sig­nal reaches.

We at NPI launched a sim­i­lar site in the after­math of the can­cel­la­tion of The David Gold­stein Show more than four years ago. That site, Let­ter to 710 KIRO, remains online as an NPI archive. It had over one thou­sand sig­na­to­ries, which demon­strat­ed that David’s week­end show had a sur­pris­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed and loy­al audience.

We hope Kari is suc­cess­ful in his efforts to begin a dia­logue with Clear Chan­nel. But we wish media con­glom­er­ates did­n’t have this kind of pow­er. When a group of exec­u­tives sit­ting in a board­room in Texas have the author­i­ty to choose what over-the-air pro­gram­ming is avail­able to peo­ple in cities like Seat­tle and Port­land, some­thing is wrong. If it was­n’t for Nation­al Pub­lic Radio (NPR) and its affil­i­ates, prac­ti­cal­ly the entire medi­um of radio would be con­trolled by com­pa­nies like Clear Chan­nel, which care about mon­ey and pow­er, not com­mu­ni­ty or sustainability.