'The Patriot,' conservative talk in Modesto, will shut down

[Newsjock]

What does it say when, even in the reddest part of Red California, a hate-talk radio station can't survive?

http://840thepatriot.com
http://840thepatriot.com/Images/KMPH-AM--Open%20Letter--08%2019%202010.pdf

To Our Employees, Listeners, Advertisers and Vendors:

It is with a heavy heart that we announce the suspension of operations of KMPH-AM 840 "The Patriot."

Due to the ongoing national, state and local economic downturn, combined with the insufficient growth in revenue at KMPH-AM 840, our company is no longer willing to fund the continued growth and development of this radio station and its present rate of operating loss. As a result, operations at KMPH-AM 840 will be suspended on Tuesday, August 31, 2010, at 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

A look at their homepage, or what's left of it, shows plenty of red meat:
- Patriot Constitution Class
- Obamacare Chart
- Listen to Allen West candidate for U.S. Congress in Florida

[sendero]

1. I have a strange feeling..

... that a lot of folks are starting to figure out what the GOP is all about, which is fleecing the poor and middle class, and even the racist rhetoric isn't enough to overcome it.

I'm betting that a lot of these stations are going to fold.

[Pab Sungenis]

9. One of them, I forget where

is failing so bad that they moved it to FM, trying to argue that their target audience no longer listened to AM.

[Lasher]

2. It might not be just the economy.

There was a rightwing radio station here that shut down. Turned out, it had always operated at a loss. The wingnut owner had been subsidizing it for years with revenue from another station - one that was not politically oriented.

Well the asshole owner died and his daughter inherited his estate. It took her just a few days to end the wingnut station's gravy train and it went off the air.

So you see, the proliferation of righwing hate radio stations is not necessarily an indication of popular support. It takes just a few extremist CEOs using their companies' money to keep them going. And in this case it took just one wingnut station owner to pay for his propaganda outlet.

[BlueIdaho]

4. The truth of the matter...

You hit the nail on the head. The neo-cons decided they could use am radio propaganda to turn the country further right over a decade ago. Most of the radio outlets do not turn a profit, they are heavily subsidized by fat cat fascists who understand that owning a "network" of am propaganda stations is worth whatever it costs since it forwards their agenda for amerika.

[Strelnikov_]

6. Lot longer than 10 years

It all started in 1964.

Tentacles of Rage
The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history
Lewis Lapham, Harpers Magazine, September 2004


http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080196

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x72178

About the workings of the right-wing propaganda mills in Washington and New York I knew enough to know that the numbing of America's political senses didn't happen by mistake, but it wasn't until I met Rob Stein, formerly a senior adviser to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, that I came to fully appreciate the nature and the extent of the re-education program undertaken in the early 1970s by a cadre of ultraconservative and self-mythologizing millionaires bent on rescuing the country from the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism. To a small group of Democratic activists meeting in New York City in late February, Stein had brought thirty-eight charts diagramming the organizational structure of the Republican "Message Machine," an octopus-like network of open and hidden microphones that he described as "perhaps the most potent, independent institutionalized apparatus ever assembled in a democracy to promote one belief system."

. . .

Although small in comparison with the sums distributed by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, the money was ideologically sound, and it was put to work leveraging additional contributions (from corporations as well as from other like-minded foundations), acquiring radio stations, newspapers, and journals of opinion, bankrolling intellectual sweatshops for the making of political and socioeconomic theory. Joseph Coors established The Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000 in 1973, the sum augmented over the next few years with $900,000 from Richard Scaife; the American Enterprise Institute was revived and fortified in the late seventies with $6 million from the Howard Pew Freedom Trust; the Cato Institute was set up by the Koch family in 1977 with a gift of $500,000. If in 1971 the friends of American free enterprise could turn for comfort to no more than seven not very competent sources of inspiration, by the end of the decade they could look to eight additional installations committed to "joint effort" and "united action." The senior officers of the Fortune 500 companies meanwhile organized the Business Roundtable, providing it by 1979 with a rich endowment for the hiring of resident scholars loyal in their opposition to the tax and antitrust laws.

[BlueIdaho]

8. Thank you!

Very informative.

[EFerrari]

11. That's what they did in Venezuela and, well, everywhere

in Latin America where we were propping up fascist dictators.

[Arctic Dave]

3. One of the hate radio stations up here went back to the lender

because it couldn't make payroll. Not sure if it is off the air yet.

[T Wolf]

5. Hope it is a trend nationwide. But it seems to me that it is a matter of the greed of the owners...

The quote is "...insufficient growth in revenue at KMPH-AM 840, our company is no longer willing to fund the continued growth and development of this radio station..."

Let me get this straight - they cannot keep growing, so they fold?

What about simply having a level of spending that maintains their current level of bilge-spewing? Why is it necessary to continually get bigger?

If I netted more this year than last year, but that increase is at a lower rate than the year before's increase over two years ago - that is considered a failure and reason to shut down?!?

Seems pre-set to crash to me. Only the most ruthless of the predators gets to win (i.e., stay in business).

Reminds me of the Texas Hold-em philosophy of poker - strategy is based on killer, winner-take-all as compared to traditional games in which many can win (and lose). I prefer a non-zero-sum game.

The pukes have turned our entire society into a zero-sum game in which we get the zero.

[47of74]

7. The station's owned by Pappas Telecasting Companies

And back in 2008 a number of the stations owned by Pappas declared bankruptcy. Company founder Henry Pappas also was forced into bankruptcy in 2008 as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappas_Telecasting
http://www.fresnobee.com/2008/05/14/601856/pappas-forced-to-file-ch-7.html

[struggle4progress]

10. *sniffle*

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: