Freakazoids Stealing Public Rado Waves

Yes, stealing.  I don't care how much they paid for it.  That's a public radio station using broadcasts bands owned by the public. Public radio stations are the sole source of unbiased radio news in almost all the communities they reach.  Now that's gone in Northern Kentucky.

And it's being replaced by freakazoid propaganda, indoctrination and lies about creationism and the property status of women and children.

From the Herald:

The Northern Kentucky University Board of Regents on Tuesday approved the sale of campus radio station WNKU.

The radio station, which began broadcasting in 1985, will be sold to the Bible Broadcasting Corporation for $1.9 million, reported The Northerner, NKU’s independent student news organization. The university also sold WNKE for “$700,000 to Educational Media Foundation, which syndicates Christian programming through Air1 and K-LOVE,” The Northerner also reported.

WNKU was sold due to dwindling state funding and the $1 million subsidy the university expected to pay at the of this year for the station, said university spokesperson Amanda Nageleisen. The station had about 20 full and part-time employees.

WNKU will remain on the air until its sale is approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Citymusic.com organized a rally early Tuesday at the Northern Kentucky University Student Union Hall to decry the sale.

“While the executive session is closed to the public, we hope to send a message to the board before and after the session that the over 3,000 member stakeholders who fund WNKU will not stand idly by while NKU’s Board of Regents determines the fate of our station,” Citymusic.com wrote on Facebook.

The motherfuckers have already bought up every public hospital in the state, ensuring that medical values will adhere to those of Bronze Age desert goatfuckers.

Now it's the broadcast band.  Public schools are next, with libraries and bookstores to follow.


The motherfuckers started by buying

Anybody Notice When the Public Interest Died?

Actually, it was 1996, when Bill CLinton signed the death warrant of American democracy, also known as the Telecommunications Act, which buried the Fairness Doctrine.

This week's conservative motherfuckers have supposedly changed their mind, but that will last only until they think no one's looking so they can quietly get rid of progressive radio for good.

Brad Friedman:

Well, whaddaya know? Clear Channel, the largest radio station owner in America, a company owned by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital LLC, and the parent company of the largest syndication company in the U.S., Premier Networks, has now cleared our public airwaves of pretty much every single non-Rightwing voice. Cleansing complete, according to Politico. And, happily for all corporate interests, just in time for the 2014 elections!...

Premiere Networks on Wednesday announced it is dropping liberal talker Randi Rhodes' radio show at the end of the year, the syndicator confirmed to POLITICO.

Rhodes, whose nationally syndicated show airs Monday through Friday from 3-6 p.m., had suggested to her listeners since October that her days on radio were "totally numbered." Premiere said today it will no longer carry her show after the year ends.

"Premiere Networks will no longer produce and distribute The Randi Rhodes Show after Tuesday, December 31, 2013," Premiere's public relations director Rachel Nelson told POLITICO in an email. ...

SNIP

Clear Channel owns some 850 AM and FM stations across the country. They are allowed to operate them via free public licenses to broadcast over our public airwaves, as granted to them by the FCC in exchange only for "operating in the public interest". You're welcome.

They also control what will be played over those stations via their syndication arm Premiere, in what appears to me at least, as I have argued over the years, to be a violation of United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., the 1948 Supreme Court antitrust ruling that ended monopolies by movie studios which controlled both theater ownership and the products which were displayed in them.

Though they are axing the Randi Rhodes program, I suspect they will continue syndicating and broadcasting their other shows across the nation's public airwaves in 2014, as hosted in the public's interest by folks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Tens of millions will continue to listen to each of them --- for free, over our public airwaves --- on their way to and from work each day. Finding non-Rightwing voices, for free, over our public airwaves will become even more difficult than it already is and completely impossible for the vast majority of Americans.

Shame on You, KET

Don't do it, KET. Don't let the fuckers win.

Kentucky Educational Television is scrapping its traditional candidate debates this year, in part because incumbent politicians usually refuse to face their challengers on live television before a panel of questioning journalists.

Kentucky voters are losing something important with the disappearance of the debates, which were broadcast in every Kentucky county, said Stephen Voss, political scientist at the University of Kentucky.

“What you lose by not having a respected, neutral third-party like KET hosting a debate is that it removes even more pressure from the incumbents or the front-runners to prove that they deserve to win, to make them publicly state their case,” he said.

Exactly. The refusal by candidates to debate makes holding the debates far more essential, not less.

Candidates who decline to debate should be represented at the debate by empty chairs, prominently displaying the names of the cowardly weasels who fail to show.

The problem reached its zenith in October 2008 when U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, refused to debate his Democratic opponent.

Hours before the event, Whitfield demanded that KET air an unedited videotaped statement that his campaign prepared. KET complied, leaving Whitfield’s challenger to stand alone and be grilled about foreign policy and the economy, followed by the congressman’s campaign tape.

KET believes the 2008 incident was “unfair,” and it prompted a discussion at the statewide television network on how to proceed in future election years, KET spokesman Tim Bischoff said Wednesday.

Wow, Tim - way to lie like a repug.

The problem was NOT Whitfield's failure to appear. The problem was KET's despicable caving to his unreasonable demands. It's a debate, idiot - show up or shut the fuck up.

I am a long-time and strong supporter of public broadcasting, which is near the top of my list of things for which I gladly pay taxes.

But in return for my tax-dollar support, I expect KET to fulfill its responsibilities as a public broadcaster. That includes airing actual debates that force all candidates, especially incumbents, to address issues of concern to the public.

Shame on you KET. Shame, SHAME, SHAME.

Call KET management at (859) 258-7000 or (800) 432-0951 and tell them that candidates debates are the LAST program they should cancel.

Or call the Viewer Reaction Line: (800) 926-7765.

Or click here to try to figure out how to send an email directly to complain that by canceling candidates debates KET is failing to fulfill its public obligation.