Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Love LPFM

You can bet that mainstream corporate radio is hating this:



How will they fight it? More bogus "studies"?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Forced Sterilization: Private Sector Style

Ah, the private sector. Always right. And oh, so good for our society:



These women are just lazy.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Wednesday Night Sermon

A Baptist Church near Asheville, N.C., is hosting a "Halloween book burning" to purge the area of "Satan's" works, which include all non-King James versions of the Bible, popular books by many religious authors and even country music.

The website for the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., says there are "scriptural bases" for the book burning.

...

The event also seeks to destroy "Satan's music" which includes every genre from country,rap and rock to "soft and easy"...

...
Full story from rawstory.com.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Authoritarian Mindset

Why does it seem that Americans are so divided these days? Is it OK to ask this question? We think so.

There's a new book out there which examines the role that authoritarianism plays in contributing to the political divisiveness in our country today--as well as something known as the "authoritarian mindset". Very interesting stuff.

Glenn Greenwald had a good interview with one of the authors of the book--Jonathan Weiler of UNC-Chapel Hill. The book is backed up with empirical data, which makes it all the more fascinating.

Listen to the interview here. Glenn's full post here.
The book -- Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics -- examines newly available empirical evidence to contend that America's political culture is more stratified than ever before. It makes the case that higher levels of authoritarian behavior -- such as all-consuming tribalistic loyalties and rage over group blasphemy (i.e., criticism of the group and its leaders from within or without) -- is the primary culprit, particularly (though not exclusively) among right-wing movements.
...
Weiler and Hetherington's analysis builds on and, in many important respects, departs from the excellent books on the same topic by John Dean (which I wrote about here) and Canadian Psychology Professor Bob Altemeyer (which I wrote about many times, including here). What makes this book genuinely impressive is that it remains grounded at all times in hard empirical evidence while simultaneously advancing provocative arguments about America's political conflicts...

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Scary

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Know Your Market

The DNHC Team is receiving unconfirmed reports that there may be a major state university located in the mountains of western North Carolina...and that this university (still unconfirmed) may be situated in Watauga County...

What do large universities do for local economies? Well, they employ lots of people. They tend to be fairly stable places to work. They are for the most part relatively immune to the ups and downs of the economic cycle...at least so far. Lots of people get to learn about the world they live in--and about other people they may not be familiar with. When students graduate, many of them want to hang around, especially in a beautiful place like Boone. And these are all good things.

We're lucky to have a relatively stable economy in Boone. In this sense, Boone is somewhat like Chapel Hill. Although Chapel Hill is bigger, it too has an economy dominated by a large, relatively stable state university. But guess what else? Boone and Chapel Hill also have similar politics, i.e. a substantial number of progressives live in each community (both students and non-students), and the progressive segment of the population in each community is not subject to any appreciable variation. Look around the state, and you will see that the blue counties usually have universities located within their borders.

The focus of this blog is on local media issues, so lets get to it. It's no secret that radio advertising revenues are in the tank, generally. But one community's local radio station is doing very well: WCHL-AM, Chapel Hill. Why?

1) A large, relatively stable state university--with lots of jobs.

2) Local/syndicated progressive programming (Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz) which matches local listener preferences; leading to

3) Advertising that works for the customer, and generates revenue for the station.

But don't believe us, listen to the station's owner:
The station has benefited during the downturn from being a "local medium in a prosperous town," Heavner said. "Local advertisers find that their ads on WCHL continue to work."
All of this must lead to the obvious question: why does High Country Radio not understand their own market demographics--especially when their market (Boone) is fortunate enough to have a large state university located there? And a large progressive population to boot?

Could it be that the current owners of High Country Radio--Curtis Media--also once owned WCHL, but couldn't seem to figure out how to make that station work?

Just sayin'.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Does WXIT Hate America?

That gleeful cheer you heard around the High Country yesterday--after it was announced that the U.S. would not be hosting the Olympics--was only made louder by WXIT's syndicated, all right-wing programming lineup.

By carrying this type of programming (listen to the audio link here), can it also be said that WXIT is also cheering for the failure of America? Why does conservative talk radio hate America?