Re: Please list the racist radio stations in the US since you give the impression there are many.
The following magazine is dedicated to radio talkshows and should be able to answer your request:
talkers.com
Straight from the horse's mouth:
Why Liberals Find Talk Radio So Threatening
By Don Feder, Florence King, Jesse Walker, Scott Walter
[...]
Talk is the hottest thing on the radio dial. Of the nation’s 10,000 stations, approximately 1,000 offer conversation on controversies ranging from sex to politics. Of the syndicated shows, Rush Limbaugh’s is far and away the most popular. His daily program, airing on over 660 stations, has an estimated 5 million listeners at any given moment, several times that over the course of a week. That is more than a third of all talk-show listeners nationwide. "What liberals hate most about Rush Limbaugh," observes Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff, "is the size of his audience."
Critics would have us believe that the average listener tunes to Limbaugh or Liddy while clanking along a rural highway in his pickup, gun rack in back, a John Deere cap covering his sloping forehead—the very epitome of a choleric Caucasian guy. Actually, according to a recent survey commissioned by the industry publication Talk Daily, nearly half of all adults in the U.S. tune in talk radio at least occasionally. This scientific survey of 3,035 individuals shatters stereotypes about the narrowness of the talk radio audience, finding that most listeners are educated, middle-class, and politically active. (See indicators, page 16.)
Hosts too defy generalities. A 1993 random sampling of 112 talk show hosts by the Times Mirror Center for People and the Press found that many more voted for Clinton (39 percent) than Bush (23 percent) or Perot (18 percent). Prominent liberals like Mario Cuomo, Jim Hightower, and Susan Estrich have their own shows. But those with a liberal bent tend to be much less popular than others. Of the nine most listened-to talkers nationally, only two—Michael Jackson and Tom Leykis—are liberals.
If conservatives dominate talk radio, a series of interviews I conducted with talk masters across the country indicates that it’s a broad band of conservatism that goes out over the airwaves. Among the most prominent conservative hosts are African Americans Ken Hamblin, syndicated out of Colorado, and Armstrong Williams, based in Washington D.C. Three of the leading conservative hosts I interviewed are Jewish.
Jerry Williams, the dean of Boston talk radio, might be described as a liberal populist who’s as critical of corporate America and Republicans seeking to deregulate the economy as he is of officious bureaucrats and political grifters. Bob Grant, who has New York’s top-rated show at wabc, says his defense of Second Amendment rights is principled not personal. "I hate guns," Grant told me. "I don’t want one in my house. But I don’t want to interfere with my neighbor’s right to own a gun." Liberalism was once broadly distinguished by this attitude of "I’ll defend to the death your Constitutional rights." David Brudnoy, a 20-year veteran of talk who dominates Boston’s nighttime airwaves from wbz, has two M.A.s and a Ph.D. Conservative on fiscal concerns and libertarian on other matters, last year the well-liked broadcaster announced he has aids.
Part of the appeal of talk radio is that unlike the New York-D.C.-L.A. liberalism of network television and newspapers of record, it offers almost every shade and hue of opinion. And it’s unfiltered. "It cuts out the middle man," comments G. Gordon Liddy, the nation’s second most popular talker. "There are no gatekeepers or spinmeisters. I can communicate directly with the audience, and they with me, and 8 to 10 million people are listening."
Talk radio is the one media forum where ordinary people can actually be heard. Says Brudnoy: "Write a letter to the editor and it takes days to publish, if it’s published at all—and then it’s often edited. Call a station manager to complain about TV news and get a polite brush-off or a recorded message thanking you for your interest. You can get on most talk shows just by dialing the phone." Oliver North, who’s been talking on the airwaves for only a year but is already in the top tier nationwide, notes that "Talk radio is interactive. Listeners know that what they’re hearing is authentic." Liddy confesses he can’t manage the forum, the way news is often shaped on network broadcasts. "If I hang up on a caller, it’s obvious to listeners that I can’t handle him. At least callers have a chance to make their points."
Talk radio does more than just kvetch and criticize. It regularly prods hidebound political systems into action, and mobilizes listeners to institute (or turn back) social reforms. The defeat of the Clinton health care proposal is attributed in part to activists of the airwaves. And when the administration tried to retaliate in 1994 with a bill that would have stifled citizen lobbying (Limbaugh dubbed it "Hillary’s revenge") calls and letters from angry listeners stopped the measure dead in its tracks.
In 1993, talk radio contributed to the enactment of an obscure but important reform that brought some glasnost to Congress. Prior to that time, the public could not know the names of House members who signed discharge petitions to pry stalled legislation out of committee. As a result, lawmakers would frequently pay lip service to a bill for public consumption, while secretly opposing efforts to bring it to the floor. But then several talk radio hosts took up the issue. Soon, angry constituents—filled-in on the problem by local broadcasts—began beseiging legislators who refused to back a proposal to make signatories public. The "gag rule" was lifted with votes to spare, striking a major blow for openness and action on Capitol Hill.
Another example of talk radio’s positive contributions to the political process is Washington state’s three-strikes-and-you’re-out law. This was one of the country’s first proposals to put serious repeat offenders behind bars for life, and John Carlson, who hosts a show on Seattle’s kvi, contributed heavily to the law’s enactment. Carlson says he discovered that a small number of violent criminals were committing the majority of crimes in Washington, and that punishment for repeaters was absurdly lenient. For someone convicted of a third child molestation, the recommended sentence was nine-and-one-half years. The Washington Institute, a think tank which Carlson co-founded, did research to support the measure, and then in 1993 the Seattle host used his radio program to mobilize a volunteer force that collected over a quarter-million signatures to put the initiative on the statewide ballot that year.
"I made it a priority on my show to discuss and debate three strikes at every opportunity," Carlson told me. "My goal wasn’t just to pass three strikes but to change public attitudes about how to fight crime." And pass it did, by a landslide 76 percent vote. When Carlson and his cadre came back the following year with another initiative called Hard Time for Armed Crime (providing longer sentences for crimes committed with weapons) state legislators threw up their hands and passed the reform before it could be placed on the ballot.
The success of conservative hosts is a populist phenomenon. Conservative shows are oases in a media desert that has been dominated by liberals for decades. "Liberals have been controlling the dialogue and they’ve gotten smug about it," notes Chicago host Dick Staub, based at wyll. "There was pent-up demand." Chuck Adler, of wrko in Boston, remarks that conservatives more easily relate to the values of middle-class listeners. "Liberals feel superior to working families. Conservative talk-show hosts champion the values liberals disdain, like the work ethic—work hard and you’ll get ahead."
Mike Rosen, whose show airs on koa in Denver, says the appeal of conservatives lies in their ability to empathize with and expand on the views of Middle America. "Someone calls. They’re sincere; but they’re not comfortable with the details. I restate their position, smooth it out, amplify the message for thousands of listeners. The caller is delighted: ‘Yeah, that’s what I wanted to say!’"
Hamblin, whose show is carried by over 100 stations, pronounces talk radio "the last electronic neighborhood" and "a giant backyard." Raised in a crime-ridden Harlem neighborhood by a West Indian mother with five children on welfare, Hamblin suggests "the conservative talk-show host becomes a lightning rod." Speaking with the authority of a man who’s been there, the self-styled Black Avenger says, "My listeners know when their parks aren’t safe. They know when they’re being taxed to death."
Dennis Prager is among the most unconventional talk masters. He’s the author of a widely read introduction to Judaism and a book on anti-Semitism, and is one of the most popular Jewish lecturers in the country. The focus of Prager’s show (12 noon to 3 p.m. weekdays on kabc in Los Angeles) is values. "I open the show the same way every day: ‘This is going to be a course in life.’ We talk about everything except cooking, poetry, and architecture." Prager thinks the success of conservative broadcasters is related to conservatism’s reliance on logic. "Liberalism is much more a feeling than a thought process. ‘I feel bad about racism.’ ‘I feel bad about poverty.’ You can’t just emote for three hours a day; it’s boring."
Another reason conservatives rule the airwaves, David Brudnoy believes, is their "great sense of humor." It tends to be the humor of the excluded, with a mordant quality. An increasingly alienated middle class can identify with this laughter from the outside that lampoons liberalism’s objects of ritual veneration. Limbaugh’s sense of humor is surely one of the secrets of his popularity. The man is a born satirist. Talk radio’s latter-day Swifts often hit exposed nerves with their jests. When they do, the opposition howls with pain.
Another root of liberal resentment against talk radio is the fact that it is the one exception to their entrenched monopoly over the media. (The Internet may be in the process of becoming another.) Liberals set tone and policy everywhere else—at the major newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times; at newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek; within network television (reflected in both news and entertainment programming); and in Hollywood. Some of the frustration of the mainstream media over talk radio is a longing for the good old days when the public heard only their voice, when they alone selected the topics for discussion and set the boundaries of debate, when they assigned the labels and had the exclusive concession on covering and analyzing the political process. They want their monopoly back.
Half a century of cultural hegemony has made the left lazy and arrogant. It doesn’t like being challenged, and despises being forced to debate or justify its positions. Meanwhile, intellectual dueling is the very essence of talk radio.
It’s also a longstanding conceit of liberalism that it is the authentic voice of the people. Talk radio completely spoils this fantasy. Tune in any day, and you’ll hear the opinions of ordinary Americans on these shows—views that don’t bear much relation to those of the people dominating the mainstream media.
North puts it bluntly: liberals "hate what the American people are saying." They hate it even more "because they can’t control it." Rosen believes that liberals shun accountability, and says talk radio "is the first effective platform that common people can utilize to hold liberals accountable for what they say and do."
Is liberal abuse of talk radio the reflex reaction of a political creed that is losing its constituency? Talk may simply be the convenient fall guy, due to its visibility, for a decades-long trend that has seen large segments of the American people peel themselves off from the liberal coalition.
Clearly, the liberal critique of talk radio reflects more than mere disagreement. "Rush Limbaugh...is a cretinous liar," splutters CNN’s Peter Arnett. If radio talkers "ever got real power," warns left-wing poet Allen Ginsberg, the result would be "concentration camps and mass death."
There are certainly rough edges to talk radio, which in many ways is still in its infancy. Programs range from cogent and informative to banal and puerile. Hosts come in every shape and size—from the diligent and informative who can structure a floating conversation like a conductor waving his baton, to the screamers and out-and-out goof-balls. Listen long enough, and you’ll hear both some occasional far-out stuff from callers, and lots of interesting and enlightening analysis.
Public opinion can be unsettling.
Published in Old and New Media March/April 1996 Issue
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