'RKO launches blogger's show on Sun night

[Donna Halper]

Bob wrote--

>The interesting thing is
>that few stations would want to cherrypick between conservative- and
>liberal-leaning hosts. They feel their core audience would tune out
>if,
>at 3 pm, Rush gave way to Al Franken. Or if Michael Savage were to follow
>Ed Schulz.

But that is exactly what WHMP in Northampton has been doing.  It airs Bill 
O'Reilly till 3pm and then airs a delayed version of the Al Franken 
Show.  It has some conservative shows and some liberal ones.  At first, I 
thought it sounded odd to do it that way -- kind of like a "train wreck" on 
a music station (playing two songs from entirely opposite and contradictory 
genres back to back), but in a small community with no other access to Air 
America programming, I guess they figured a couple of 'liberal' 
shows  (they also air Alan Colmes late at night) were preferable to having 
no such shows at all.  Also, as Ed Schultz has acknowledged on the air, 
some stations only carry his show as a Best-Of on the weekend, airing only 
conservative talk the rest of the time.  SO, evidently a few stations that 
have all conservatives are experimenting with offering the other side, but 
aren't sure how much to broadcast. I still say that for a democracy to 
work, citizens need to be informed, and like them or not, the new 
liberal/progressive shows offer a much needed balance to the mostly 
right-wing direction of radio talk.