The Man lurks just behind every sweet smelling rosebush, and for David Goldstein--otherwise known as Goldy, the proprietor of HorsesAss.org and absurdly liberal weekends at LDS-owned KIRO 710 in Seattle--The Man dispatched The Turk* to come a calling. Summoned suddenly--never a good sign--to the station on Wednesday, the news came from management that the ax was falling on weekend live talk, where Goldy lives on both evenings in prime time. According to him, over 40 hours of local programming in the schedule have been cut recently, and nationally or regionally syndicated feeds piped through instead.
This is definitely not a disconnected cost-cutting move by one station; this kind of de-localization of media, and radio in particular, has been moving apace for at least the last decade. It's ugly; it makes creating a hit record or a buzz story that much easier: you know when you send it out, all the stations along the line are dutifully carrying it. The advertisers are buying time in bulk and spreading their bland messages en masse. And the people are, generally unwittingly and at the least subconsciously, picking it up and reacting in predictably similar ways to it.
McDonald's perfected the consistency of franchising; you knew in every McDonald's in any city in America, you were going to get the same Big Mac, fries and Coke. Clear Channel and some limited others like the LDS Church's Bonneville group that owns KIRO have done for/to radio what McD's did for beef tallow. You can go on vacation, find the JamminXX station for the good hiphop, the PowerXX for more straight R&B and oldies, BearXX for country, HotXXX for hits, and listen to exactly the same shit as at home--because it's the same tape playing the same song at the same time back home while you're here on vacation.
I'll be showing up at 9 tonight with David Goldstein, AKA "Goldy" from Horse's Ass.org and the king of weekend Seattle talk at night, blasting wicked watts from KIRO's tower of power. If you're still out of earshot of all that power, luckily for you it comes over the tubes in live stream as well.
In another iteration of the "blogger's panel" that we've tried a couple of times, Jimmy from McCranium in Eastern WA will be joining me for the hour, and we'll talk about what's going on in our respective neighborhood necks. Jimmy's got the great story of sockpuppetry in Yakima, and I'll be talking about the Goobernor's exec order on licenses, as well as the Senate race. Call in, and make it more interesting! 877-710-KIRO (5476)
I'll be showing up at 9 tonight with David Goldstein, AKA "Goldy" from Horse's Ass.org and the king of weekend Seattle talk at night, blasting wicked watts from KIRO's tower of power. If you're still out of earshot of all that power, luckily for you it comes over the tubes in live stream as well.
In another iteration of the "blogger's panel" that we've tried a couple of times, Jimmy from McCranium in Eastern WA and McJoan (most notably of DailyKos) will be joining me for the hour, and we'll talk about what's going on in our respective neighborhood necks. Because Seattle is going through its own debate on lightrail we'll be talking about their use of Oregon as an example to follow (or not), but I'll probably sneak in some time to talk about the Senate race as well.
Hope you'll listen, and maybe even call in if you've got the gumption.
If you missed them, I did a few radio spots this week--once on Portland's KPOJ, once on Thom Hartmann's national Air America show (our national media debut, thank you), and my regular monthly gig on Goldy's KIRO show in Seattle. I've had a couple requests to provide the links and let you re-live history (history in the same way that 5 seconds ago was history), so here's where you can soothe/anger your blood all over again.
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I'll be showing up at 9 tonight with David Goldstein, AKA "Goldy" from 