NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, November 16th, 2012

“Seattle’s Progressive Talk” to be shut down; CBS Radio converting AM 1090 to sports

Last week, as we report­ed a few days ago, Clear Chan­nel pulled the plug on pro­gres­sive talk radio in Port­land, con­vert­ing AM 620 KPOJ (“Port­land’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”) to a Fox Sports affil­i­ate after more than eight years of serv­ing as a home for pop­u­lar hosts like Thom Hart­mann, Ed Schultz, Ran­di Rhodes, Nor­man Gold­man, Rachel Mad­dow, Al Franken, and Sam Seder.

Now we’ve received con­fir­ma­tion that CBS Radio will be doing the same thing with AM 1090 in Seat­tle as of Jan­u­ary 2nd, 2013.

On Jan­u­ary 2nd, CBS (which used to be known as Via­com before it spun off sev­er­al of its busi­ness units as a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny called Via­com) plans to con­vert KFNQ, for­mer­ly KPTK, to the sports radio for­mat, along with many oth­er sta­tions around the coun­try. The appar­ent objec­tive is to cre­ate a stronger net­work of sports radio sta­tions so that CBS can bet­ter com­pete for nation­al sports pro­gram­ming contracts.

Seat­tle, of course, already has plen­ty of sta­tions offer­ing sports talk. These include KRKO (broad­cast­ing as Fox Sports Radio 1380), KIRO (broad­cast­ing as 710 ESPN Seat­tle) and KJR (broad­cast­ing as Sports Radio 950).

But CBS exec­u­tives don’t care. As far as they’re con­cerned, AM 1090’s cur­rent for­mat isn’t mak­ing enough mon­ey — so they’re going to com­plete­ly trash it, just like Clear Chan­nel did with AM 620 in Portland.

CBS has­n’t yet offi­cial­ly announced the change, and they haven’t autho­rized an on-air announce­ment or an expla­na­tion for AM 1090’s web­site, but staff in Seat­tle have been told that it is hap­pen­ing. And they have com­mu­ni­cat­ed the news to peo­ple they know (includ­ing many of AM 1090’s most loy­al listeners).

So we know this isn’t a rumor.

Man­age­ment at CBS claims that although pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal talk has a ded­i­cat­ed core audi­ence, the over­all audi­ence has been declin­ing, both in our region and nation­al­ly. We haven’t seen any num­bers back­ing up that asser­tion, but that is part of the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the for­mat change that CBS Seat­tle staff have been given.

Those unfa­mil­iar with the radio busi­ness might be sur­prised to know that AM 1090 has been through a lot of for­mat shifts before. AM 1090 is Seat­tle’s third old­est-radio sta­tion; it began broad­cast­ing in 1927 as KVL.

In 1947, Dorothy Bul­litt launched KING AM on the fre­quen­cy. KING AM was ini­tial­ly a NBC News affil­i­ate; it also broad­cast tra­di­tion­al pop music, jazz, and swing. In the 1970s, 1090 became “Mus­i­cra­dio 11 KING”, prin­ci­pal­ly broad­cast­ing hits from Bill­board­’s “Top 40” chart. KING AM shift­ed to soft adult con­tem­po­rary music in 1980, but rat­ings remained low, and two years lat­er, the sta­tion stopped broad­cast­ing tunes entire­ly due to the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the FM band.

The sta­tion was relaunched in 1982 as KING New­sTalk 1090, with a slate of hosts that includ­ed Mike and Can­dace Siegel, Randy Row­land, Jim Althoff, Carl Dombek, Jeff Ray, and Pat Cash­man (lat­er one of the stars of Almost Live!). Four­teen years lat­er, in 1994, the sta­tion quit pay­ing all of its local tal­ent and instead began car­ry­ing the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ All News Radio. Not long after, the sta­tion was sold by the Bul­litt fam­i­ly, and its call let­ters were changed near­ly half a dozen times.

By 1996, 1090 AM was broad­cast­ing coun­try music, and it was bought by Infin­i­ty Broad­cast­ing, which lat­er became CBS Radio (a unit of Via­com, now CBS Cor­po­ra­tion). Infin­i­ty exper­i­ment­ed with a news talk for­mat again after the turn of the cen­tu­ry (with local tal­ent such as Bob Rivers and Ron & Don), but pulled the plug after less than a year. 1090, which was by this time known as KYCW, returned to coun­try music, and con­tin­ued broad­cast­ing that until Octo­ber 2004, when it became KPTK (“Seat­tle’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”).

Now the genius­es at CBS want to con­vert 1090 AM to a sports for­mat. They fig­ure the audi­ence for sports pro­gram­ming is larg­er, and the sta­tion will be able to make more mon­ey by com­pet­ing for that audience.

We won­der if they’ve done their home­work. This is not a mar­ket that is cur­rent­ly under-served.

KJR already has Husky foot­ball and bas­ket­ball; KIRO (AM + FM) has the Mariners, Sounders, and the Sea­hawks, and both sta­tions also car­ry plen­ty of sports com­men­tary and analy­sis in addi­tion to games.

And as of a few weeks ago, sports fans in the Pacif­ic North­west have even less incen­tive to lis­ten to games or analy­sis on the radio.

If they sub­scribe to Com­cast cable, Fron­tier FiOS, or Dish Net­work, they can watch all the games that the likes of ESPN and Fox don’t decide to car­ry on the Pac-12 Net­works, a fam­i­ly of tele­vi­sion chan­nels cre­at­ed by the Pacif­ic 12 conference.

The Pacif­ic 12 con­fer­ence, as many read­ers know, con­sists of twelve schools, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon’s four largest pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties. The schools col­lec­tive­ly decid­ed a cou­ple of years ago that they could bet­ter mon­e­tize their ath­let­ic events by cre­at­ing a broad­cast­ing arm under their direct control.

Now that the Pac-12 Net­works are live, col­lege sports fans can watch far more games on TV than they could before. Each region of the con­fer­ence has its own chan­nel, and there’s also a nation­al Pac-12 chan­nel as well.

This is what CBS is up against. They’re mak­ing an extreme­ly risky bet. By con­vert­ing AM 1090, they lose the sta­tion’s cur­rent loy­al audi­ence and all the good­will they have tried to cul­ti­vate over the years through “Precinct 1090” and annu­al town hall forums. No oth­er sta­tion in Seat­tle broad­casts pro­gres­sive talk, which means that AM 1090 — in its present incar­na­tion — has a niche.

And it has boost­ers, too. Many local activists have pro­mot­ed the sta­tion for years with AM 1090 bumper stick­ers or win­dow decals on their vehicles.

CBS exec­u­tives are mis­tak­en if they think this com­mu­ni­ty of lis­ten­ers, which their Seat­tle staff has worked hard to build, are going to stick around once the com­pa­ny turns its back on them by junk­ing “Seat­tle’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”.

At least CBS has­n’t made the switch yet, unlike Clear Chan­nel. If you’re an AM 1090 lis­ten­er who wants pro­gres­sive talk to stay on the air in Seat­tle, you can voice your dis­plea­sure regard­ing CBS’ plans to its cor­po­rate office.

CBS RADIO
1271 Avenue of the Amer­i­c­as FL 44
New York, NY 10020

There’s also a Face­book page called “Keep Pro­gres­sive Talk in Seat­tle” which you can become a fan of. The cre­ator of the page is urg­ing peo­ple to send post­cards to CBS head­quar­ters protest­ing the for­mat change.

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33 Comments

  1. I just start­ed stream­ing this sta­tion when we lost KPOJ in Port­land and was so hap­py to find it… I lis­ten at least five hours a day.

    # by Laurie Fort :: November 16th, 2012 at 4:25 PM
  2. KFNQ will go after the broad­cast rights for one of Seat­tle’s mar­quee sports prop­er­ties. The Mariners, and/or the com­ing NBA team. I pre­dict Waz­zu will be in their port­fo­lio very soon; WSU has been — unde­served­ly — a red-head­ed stepchild in the Seat­tle sports mar­ket. Dra­ma queens like Mike Leach make for great sports talk radio fod­der (I say all of that as a UW alum).

    Pro­gres­sive radio’s future lies not with the Big Three C’s (CBS, Clear Chan­nel, Cumu­lus) but with medi­um-sized radio net­works and inde­pen­dents that offer more local con­trol. We pro­gres­sives need to build our media ecosys­tem on this infra­struc­ture base.

    In the long run, we’ll be bet­ter off with­out ’em.

    # by Daniel L. :: November 16th, 2012 at 9:33 PM
  3. Try stream­ing WCPT, Chicago’s pro­gres­sive talk, which is inde­pen­dent­ly owned and has a sim­i­lar line up.

    # by Karen S. :: November 16th, 2012 at 11:33 PM
  4. As we now lost KPOJ 620 Port­land, I also looked to KPTK 1090 for the Pro­gres­sive dis­cus­sions of the day.
    If the exec­u­tives at CBS, which I always thought was a fair and bal­anced net­work (?), would see that the Pro­gres­sive move­ment is the strongest audi­ence in the USA, take for exam­ple the recent Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. If you, CBS, steps up and rep­re­sents this pow­er­ful seg­ment of our soci­ety, you will be hailed as for­ward lean­ing network.
    Keep KPTK 1090 as a Pro­gres­sive for­mat voice for the North­west and the nation.
    PS: Sav­ing KPOJ would also be a great idea.

    # by Skip Stein :: November 17th, 2012 at 11:27 AM
  5. “Lis­ten online” real­ly isn’t much of an option for those of us who don’t have easy access to the internet.

    # by Dnver :: November 17th, 2012 at 5:39 PM
  6. I LOVE the Pac-12 Net­work (and those like it), and real­ly appre­ci­ate their effort to chal­lenge mono­lith­ic net­works like CBS. I know DirecTV has­n’t inked a deal yet, but I have DISH, and Pac-12 is con­stant­ly play­ing around my home on the week­ends. DISH itself is no stranger to con­tro­ver­sial pro­gram­ming moves, and it only makes sense that DISH would be one of the few providers to offer a rel­a­tive­ly new net­work like Pac-12. A DISH cowork­er told me we would be get­ting it, and although I love the sports like any oth­er Pac-12 fan, I also like the inter­views and behind the scenes work, which offer a larg­er per­spec­tive into the goings-on with­in the conference.

    # by javi :: November 18th, 2012 at 11:41 AM
  7. Tough deal for the staff, who will have to spend weeks of answer­ing angry phone calls on why the sta­tion switched.

    # by MIke Barer :: November 18th, 2012 at 3:58 PM
  8. I lis­ten to KPTK sev­er­al hours a day as I sit at my desk to work. I for­mu­late my polit­i­cal beliefs by lis­ten­ing to Thom, Ed, Nor­man, and Ran­di. I like sports too, but to have four sport sta­tions com­pet­ing against each oth­er seems like an over­load. What do we pro­gres­sives do now? I feel like boy­cotting the new station!

    # by William Curtis :: November 20th, 2012 at 4:11 PM
  9. Please, please keep Seat­tle A.M. 1090 on the air. It is our only life line for hon­est broad­cast­ing of cur­rent polit­i­cal hap­pen­ings as well as edu­ca­tion­al. Not every­one has access to cable t.v., or inter­net. I lis­ten to 1090 every day sev­er­al hours faithfully.

    There are so many sports cov­ered on t.v., and radio, there many times when there is noth­ing sub­stan­tial to lis­ten to or watch.

    I am so upset I may nev­er watch CBS again.

    # by betty coulson :: November 20th, 2012 at 4:49 PM
  10. Wow! Imag­ine Seat­tle with­out a pro­gres­sive radio sta­tion! That would be like New Orleans with­out Jazz and Mil­wau­kee with­out beer. This can’t be allowed to hap­pen. Is it pos­si­ble to get an army of spon­sors signed up before the dead­line to show CBS that this for­mat will make plen­ty of money?

    # by John Alwyn :: November 20th, 2012 at 9:03 PM
  11. I am total­ly sick­ened. The news that KPTK will stop broad­cast­ing pro­gres­sive talk radio is absolute­ly unbe­liev­able. I’ve lis­tened to it 6–7 hrs. a day 7 days a week, since 2004, while I’m work­ing in my shop. Now what? CBS?.….you all go to hell and rot!

    # by Doug Pratt :: November 21st, 2012 at 9:53 AM
  12. While pro­gres­sive remains syn­ony­mous with Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, I say good rid­dance to pro­gres­sive radio am1090’s format.

    This is com­ing from some­one who spent way too much time lis­ten­ing to Hart­mann, Schultz, RR and others.

    I like Nor­man near­ly entire­ly and I’ll miss Mal­loy as well.

    Hart­mann went wrong sub­tly at first but quite pro­gres­sive­ly the longer he remains in DC. Close prox­im­i­ty to that cesspool was a bad move for him. Schultz may as well do sports radio, am I right? And RR is often thought pro­vok­ing as much as she is sim­ply wrong.

    The future isn’t pro­gres­sive equals Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, rather, I think it is clos­er to some­thing like pro­gres­sive equals independent.

    The polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion is over. There is one par­ty on the big issues.

    Maybe pro­gres­sives can’t wrap it around their heads that the coun­try is in dire straights and needs a pol­i­tics that does­n’t include the nor­mal see­saw of D vs. R which is a false choice when you get past the divide and con­quer issues.

    WA state has gay mar­riage and mar­i­jua­na is legit if still not entire­ly legal. I real­ly do won­der when peo­ple will wake up and real­ize that we have been con­quered by TBTF inter­na­tion­al crime lords like J Dia­mond and Lord Nofine. I’m not try­ing to be cute, but the time for the usu­al radio is over unless the sta­tus quo suits you.

    Any­one lis­ten­ing to am1090 for long must have thought this was com­ing. I mean come on, it’s cbs radio. Don’t you all get it? 

    I think this an admis­sion by cbs that the oli­garch’s won. Thanks, cbs.

    # by mithreal :: November 21st, 2012 at 10:37 AM
  13. I feel so sad & angry that CBS is tak­ing Pro­gres­sive radio off 1090 am. I feel it’s a place I could go to hear the truth. I always checked things out else­where before I made my final deci­sion. I lis­ten to 1090am Mon­day thru Fri­day for about 10 hours a day. I feel if it weren’t for pro­gres­sive radio Mitt Rom­ney might be pres­i­dent. Not some­thing I real­ly want to think about. I used to be part of the mid­dle class but now that I’m unem­ployed I’m not. From what I’ve heard there’s plen­ty of sport cov­er­age out there. But what can you expect from a cor­po­ra­tion. (Even though cor­po­ra­tions are con­sid­ered to be per­sons.) I don’t feel like prob­a­bly lis­ten to too much sports!

    # by Diana Manhan :: November 21st, 2012 at 4:18 PM
  14. Went away for two weeks on vaca­tion and found anoth­er sports radio sta­tion (We don’t watch or fol­low any sports) replac­ing Pro­gres­sive Talk AM 620 KPOJ.
    I lis­tened most of the night to that sta­tion and streamed it into my com­put­er dur­ing the daytime.
    I refuse to watch any Fox news or sports sta­tion so will have to rely on stream­ing inter­net until the media moguls take that away. Bad move on their part as it was the only way they could reach some Pro­gres­sive Consumers.

    # by William ODell :: November 23rd, 2012 at 4:44 PM
  15. Dear CBS.

    We as lis­ten­ers to pro­gres­sive talk radio, under­stand the cor­po­rate need to make a prof­it. In that regard, I absolute­ly know that you are mis­guid­ed. The lis­ten­ers to AM 1090 in Seat­tle and KPOJ in Port­land are vast­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed when you look at your cus­tom­ary num­bers. From lis­ten­ing to the call-ins, it is rare to hear some one that says that they lis­ten live. The vast major­i­ty stream the pro­gram or pod­cast it (as I do) to lis­ten to them at their convenience. 

    So in your cal­cu­la­tions as to whether you can get well-healed adver­tis­ers on your pro­gram to sup­port the pro­gram, you have missed the boat. 

    But let’s say you don’t make mon­ey, because you fail to con­vince adver­tis­ers that is a good place to dis­play their prod­ucts. Even in that case, where is pro­gres­sive talk to find a voice? When did the air­waves cease to exist for the pub­lic good? When did PROFIT become the only rea­son to con­tin­ue broad­cast­ing? Where is the ethics of a sta­tion? Why is it OK to have Lim­baugh on every sin­gle sta­tion in Amer­i­ca spew­ing his hate and lies? Is there no end of greed, allow­ing you to over­look peo­ple like him and their destruc­tive role in society? 

    The FCC should have a say in this, but from our stand­point they are prob­a­bly bought as well. 

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly for you, you just cut off the most intel­lec­tu­al group of radio lis­ten­ers in the coun­try. If you ever lis­tened to Ran­di Rhodes you would know what I mean. Many many thou­sands of peo­ple depend on her for her pre­sen­ta­tion of fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion with resources and encour­age­ment to read for our­selves the reli­able sources.

    Take your mon­ey and run — just remem­ber you are use­less to this soci­ety with one more sports pro­gram. We need that like anoth­er “fis­cal cliff.” 

    Wish we could change your mind, but it’s a waste of time.

    Ray West­er­mey­er, M.D.

    # by ray westermeyer, md :: November 25th, 2012 at 10:31 PM
  16. It may now to time to force the FCC to give due def­er­ence to com­mu­ni­ty inter­ests in allow­ing sta­tions to retain their licens­es. Allow­ing more sports radio sta­tions on over the air radio broad­cast­ing fre­quen­cies serves no pub­lic pur­pose what­so­ev­er when there are already 3 com­pet­ing sta­tions broad­cast­ing sports. It is also gen­er­al­ly true the sports enthu­si­asts are will­ing to pay for ser­vices like satel­lite radio pro­grams than can allo­cate tens of sta­tions to sports programming.

    In con­trast talk radio is almost total­ly dom­i­nat­ed nation­al­ly by arch con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal views.

    It clear­ly does serve the pub­lic inter­est to have radio sta­tions on the air with dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­spec­tives, to facil­i­tate a mar­ket for ideas. This is espe­cial­ly true for AM band fre­quen­cies which might oth­er­wise be reded­i­cat­ed to oth­er types of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and aban­doned for broad­cast­ing. In sports pro­gram­ming, an AM sta­tion with its inabil­i­ty to broad­cast stereo sound can­not con­vey the thrill of a sta­di­um crowd or its enthu­si­asm near­ly as effec­tive­ly as stereo FM stations.

    Hav­ing hav­ing radio sta­tions offer­ing dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­spec­tives does serve the pub­lic pur­pose, espe­cial­ly for AM fre­quen­cies which are infe­ri­or to FM fre­quen­cies because they can’t broad­cast stereo, such as the crowd nois­es from sports the­aters. Port­land, Ore­gon’s AM 620 KPOJ was prof­itable and should not have changed for­mats, espe­cial­ly in the very Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pacif­ic Northwest.

    If this kind of change can hap­pen eas­i­ly and with­out pub­lic hear­ings in Port­land, OR, and Seat­tle, WA, no radio mar­ket is safe for Pro­gres­sive Radio, which is hard­er to gath­er pro­gram­ming for with stream­ing inter­net ser­vices that sports programming.

    # by Walter L Johnson :: November 26th, 2012 at 1:43 PM
  17. I start­ed lis­ten­ing here when KPOJ went sports — I will not lis­ten to sports radio — Us north­west­ern­ers need to show the PTB at those sta­tions who think that sports talk is won­der­ful exact­ly who they are deal­ing with ! I don’t roll over!

    # by Mike :: November 27th, 2012 at 1:38 AM
  18. I see KVI isn’t being pulled, so Rush Lim­baugh and Mike Sav­age still have a soapbox.

    # by Paul Clark :: November 27th, 2012 at 4:27 PM
  19. I am shocked, out­raged, and appalled that Seat­tle Pro­gres­sive Talk is being replaced by sports. But truth be told, I’m not all that sur­prised because the CBS exec­u­tives are prob­a­bly a bunch of sim­ple-mind­ed, greedy Repub­li­cons who could­n’t care less about qual­i­ty pro­gram­ming like Pro­gres­sive talk. I hope they see huge prof­it loss­es as a result of this hideous decision.

    # by Angela Coryell :: November 27th, 2012 at 4:58 PM
  20. I am a long time AM1090 lis­ten­er. First they took our 98.9 Smooth Jazz. Now this. Noooooooo. I did expect it soon­er or lat­er. CBS=Capitalists. Their val­ues are in mon­ey not inform­ing with truth. I feel sick and sad.

    # by Jane/Seattle :: November 28th, 2012 at 8:55 PM
  21. I’ve long sus­pect­ed that my fel­low pro­gres­sives are cheap­skates, wear­ing old
    Birken­stocks, recy­cling com­pul­sive­ly, shop­ping at thrift stores, dri­ving 20-year-old Japan­ese cars if they aren’t com­mut­ing by bicy­cle, and gen­er­al­ly absent from the eco­nom­ic radar in the Seat­tle area.

    So this is what we get. Nobody with any seri­ous cap­i­tal is going to gam­ble on Pro­gres­sive Talk Radio in any mar­ket because it’s not that peo­ple don’t tune in, they don’t spend mon­ey with adver­tis­ers. My busi­ness adver­tised on 1090 and it was a los­ing invest­ment, even though the major­i­ty of our cus­tomers are pro­gres­sives. Maybe if we were sell­ing majic crys­tals or astrol­o­gy read­ings we would have done better.

    So I would sug­gest a look in the mirror…what have you done to sup­port 1090 and its advertisers?

    # by James Banks :: December 1st, 2012 at 1:54 AM
  22. I nev­er real­ly lis­tened to Radio 1090, as it seemed to be preach­ing to the choir.
    When I want my “feel good” news, I turn to MSNBC.

    # by Mike Barer :: December 1st, 2012 at 4:29 PM
  23. Thank (insert deity of choice here), could­n’t have bet­ter news for the holidays!
    Can’t wait to be rid of that sim­per­ing bunch of whin­ers on AM 1090.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    # by Andy Nielsen :: December 3rd, 2012 at 8:41 AM
    • Andy, you do real­ize that none of the “sim­per­ing bunch of whin­ers” on AM 1090 are going away? AM 1090 just broad­casts nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed shows, all of which stream online and/or have a pres­ence on Sir­ius Satel­lite Radio.

      I’m guess­ing you don’t even lis­ten to AM 1090 and sim­ply want to crow about Seat­tle-area pro­gres­sives los­ing a favorite sta­tion. Tell me: if the shoe was on the oth­er foot and KVI and KTTH were con­vert­ed to sports, would you be hap­py if pro­gres­sives showed up on forums you fre­quent­ed to cel­e­brate? Just curious…

      # by Andrew :: December 5th, 2012 at 5:02 PM
  24. This is a sta­tion I lis­ten to for cur­rent events and edu­cat­ing myself as well as oth­ers. I am sick­ened that we will lose this sta­tion to sports? Don’t we have enough of that? I guess what we have left is Democ­ra­cy Now on the Belle­vue Col­lege Campus. 

    Is there any hope for this coun­try as they try to con­trol what we lis­ten to?

    And yes, I miss the jazz sta­tion too!

    # by Barb Lord :: December 3rd, 2012 at 9:19 PM
  25. We have cre­at­ed an on-line petition:

    DON’T LET SEATTLE LOSE PROGRESSIVE RADIO

    It was just announced that AM 1090 will drop pro­gres­sive talk and switch to
    an all sports for­mat after the first of the year.

    Pro­gres­sive radio lis­ten­ers in the greater Seat­tle area are appalled at the
    prospect of los­ing the great pro­gres­sive radio shows host­ed by Ed Shultz,
    Thom Hart­mann, Nor­man Gold­man, Ran­di Rhodes, Stephanie Miller and others.

    Please join us in let­ting AM 1090’s adver­tis­ers know that we, their
    cus­tomers, want pro­gres­sive voic­es be heard! We want to encour­age another
    local sta­tion to step up as Seat­tle’s pro­gres­sive voice.

    MoveOn.org has cre­at­ed a SignOn.org peti­tion. Please sign it and for­ward it
    to as many peo­ple as you can in the greater Seat­tle Area. We need this to
    go viral as fast as possible.

    http://signon.org/sign/dont-let-seattle-lose‑1

    # by Carolyn Tamler :: December 4th, 2012 at 1:01 PM
  26. This is a fla­grant mis­use of the pub­lic air­waves. The FCC must be held respon­si­ble for allow­ing com­pa­nies like CBS to monop­o­lize the radio dial in the Pacif­ic North­west and take away pro­gres­sive voic­es. It seems like a plan to keep us unin­formed and disorganized.

    # by Christine Njoroge :: December 5th, 2012 at 4:46 PM
  27. Air­ways, free­ways, water­ways and Air­waves are owned by the Amer­i­can people.
    No com­pa­ny has the right to them. 

    There are two things one does not see in fas­cist coun­tries. Unions and oppo­si­tion press.
    Today in Amer­i­ca we are see­ing both groups under attack.

    # by Guy Pere :: December 10th, 2012 at 8:53 AM
  28. Clear chan­nel is owned by Bain Capital.
    Bain cap­i­tal is shut­ting down two oth­er Pro­gres­sive stations.

    No way Mit has a hand in this.

    # by Guy Pere :: December 10th, 2012 at 8:59 AM
  29. This is very sad news. I can only hope that CBS’s prof­its will not mate­ri­al­ize when they make the switch to sports. I already change the chan­nel when they put sports on. I don’t have any rea­son to watch CBS tele­vi­sion any­more at this rate.

    A lot of peo­ple have com­ment­ed about how all this pro­gram­ming is still avail­able, just stream it off this sta­tion or that sta­tion… well, I can’t do that on my car radio…

    CBS both sucks and blows… may they drown in red ink.

    # by Nigel T :: December 12th, 2012 at 5:46 PM
  30. What will pro­gres­sives do now? Heav­en for­bid actu­al­ly think for them­selves. I lis­ten dai­ly to the angry hosts make weak argu­ments, debate obvi­ous morons and talk over any­one who dis­agrees with them. Gov­er­nor Etch a Sketch, Repub­li­cons? Is that the best these guys can come up with? Even in the lib­er­al bas­tion of Seat­tle these hosts lack enter­tain­ment val­ue… what rep­utable busi­ness would adver­tise with them? Hill­side Roof­ing? (Are lib­er­als real­ly sur­prised you can have your roof looked at for free?) CBS sees that the adver­tis­ing rev­enue is near nonex­is­tent, they could not care less about the pro­gres­sive agen­da as deliv­ered by these hosts.

    # by Ron Sharp :: December 12th, 2012 at 8:27 PM
  31. I’m one of the folks try­ing to keep up with the qual­i­ty com­men­ta­tors out there after los­ing KPOJ. I am so tired of hear­ing we can just turn to the stream­ing on the inter­net. Guess what: right now I’ve not been able to tune into 1090…it just con­tin­u­ous­ly loads, no sound. I want to just be able to turn on the radio and move about while lis­ten­ing, as before!! What are all the tricks to lis­ten­ing to ones favorites in some fascim­i­le of real-time as before? At least my fel­low North­west lis­ten­ers in Seat­tle will get to lis­ten to their old friends over the hol­i­days. Not us. It’s like los­ing a group of old friends and the silence is deaf­en­ing! At least I can still turn on the TV and lis­ten to Ed Schultz on MSNBC. Even Thom Hart­man’s broad­casts have been removed from pub­lic media TV late­ly — because of his spon­sor’s pledge dri­ve, I’m told. What a mess. Folks, focus on get­ting the mat­ter “aired”(ha!) in Con­gress: the abuse of the pub­lic-owned air­ways. Sign the peti­tion for Con­gress­man Walden for a Con­gres­sion­al hear­ing: http://www.savekpoj.com/walden/action/

    # by Bert :: December 13th, 2012 at 10:36 PM
  32. The loss of pro­gres­sive RADIO hits the peo­ple who need it the most the hard­est: the poor. Those who can’t afford the gagetry like iPhones and com­put­ers; who get their infor­ma­tion from the radio in the bath­room or car. We in Spokane lost our pro­gres­sive sta­tion over a year ago (KTPQ) and I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Ran­di Rhodes and Thom Hart­mann by pod­cast, and record­ing Stephanie Miller on Cur­rent TV since. But when I’m mak­ing one of my fre­quent trips to Seat­tle, I punch my pre­set to AM 1090 as I leave Spokane, and some­times I’ll be hear­ing it fight with a San Diego sports sta­tion(!) as far east as the Spokane Coun­ty boundary!

    # by Michael :: December 14th, 2012 at 10:38 PM

One Ping

  1. […] at Portland’s KPOJ-AM elim­i­nat­ing lib­er­al talk radio in that city is not an aber­ra­tion. This out today: On Jan­u­ary 2nd, CBS (which used to be known as Via­com before it spun off sev­er­al of its business […]

    Ping from Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest » The killing off of liberal talk radio :: November 19th, 2012 at 12:53 PM
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