Saturday, October 13, 2007

Councilwoman Donna Fyre joins the Fight to Save KLSD

Friday morning, the grassroots group SaveKLSD held their biggest rally yet in support of KLSD/AM 1360 progressive talk radio, just before an expected format change decision by owner Clear Channel. San Diego City Council Member Donna Frye and San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre energized the crowd with their championship of KLSD and the need for our community to have diverse viewpoints on the publicly owned airwaves.

The event kicked off at 6:30 a.m., near Clear Channel’s office in the Kearny Mesa area of San Diego. Shortly after eight o’clock, bagpiper Chip Hatch led hundreds of people to Clear Channel’s parking lot, where participants rallied as The Stacy Taylor Show aired live from the studio inside. Callers to the show who expressed their support for KLSD included Reverend Madison Shockley of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad; Donald Cohen, director of the Center on Policy Initiatives. After the show, Stacy Taylor thanked supporters and program director Cliff Albert addressed the crowd, but made no definitive announcements about the fate of KLSD’s progressive talk format.


KLSD has been in limbo since August, when news hit of a possible format change. Within days, listeners formed SaveKLSD (http://saveklsd.com/) and held a rally attended by about 500 people. Since then, thousands of people have signed an online petition to save KLSD, and Clear Channel has been inundated with email urging it to keep the progressive talk format. Sources say KLSD’s format may change to sports talk, even though San Diego already has several sports talk stations. In addition, San Diego has plenty of conservative radio programming, but none from a progressive political point-of-view.

2 comments:

Duane Dichiara said...

KLSD is in trouble because of two basic rules of the market economy.

First, public broadcasting and Pacifica already dominate the demographics of listeners who would generally be customers. There are also a smaller number of ideological liberals than ideological conservatives to form a market base to start with, particularly in markets like San Diego. BUT I'd note even where the liberal market share is greater, in the big cities, the station is not doing well at best;

Second, the content of KLSD does not lend itself to a wider more mainstream audience. A regular public radio listener, I've found KLSD to be boring or shrill, even compared to Pacifica. On the other hand, conservative talk radio tends to be more humorous and entertaining. And remember... the conservative stations start with a larger possible listener base.

Anyway, all the protests in the world don't mean a whole lot if you can't generate listeners. And that's capitalism folks...

Anonymous said...

HA HA HA!!! Real Americans have spoken and they don't want to trash our airwaves with the Liberal/Gay/Terror enabling agenda! The free market wins every time!!