One less extremist broadcasting

It has been noted by many blogs, including Crooks and Liars and Political Blotter, and confirmed by both KSFO and Melanie Morgan herself, that Melanie Morgan no longer works for KSFO in San Francisco.

Upon research, the reason why she was let go becomes clear. KSFO's owners are a company called Citadel Broadcasting, who bought the former ABC/Disney owned and operated radio networks and stations, except for Radio Disney and ESPN Radio, last year. And in 2007, they made a huge loss, over $1 billion, $1.5 billion before income tax. This is a serious amount of money to be losing and about 65% of that loss occured in the last quarter of 2007.

Make no mistake, Citadel cannot afford to be losing that kind of money for any length of time, no company could. Citadel own 243 radio stations, over 60 on AM, including many of the old ABC talk stations. It needs to make cutbacks, quite obviously. Melanie Morgan may not be the first cutback, but she is one of the biggest names to have faced the chop so far. Who else has to fear the axe? I imagine we'll soon find out.

Perhaps this means that not all conservative talk radio is popular in the US. Sure, Rush Limbaugh's show is the most listened to show in America. Thankfully for the realms of sanity, second and third place go to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered respectively. Perhaps the era of dominance for conservative talk radio is over or at least, on its way out. Which does beg the question, if it is on the way out, what will replace it programming wise? Don't get me wrong, conservative talk show hosts will continue to exist on the radio schedules, but hopefully as part of a more balanced schedule of programming, rather than dominating talk radio schedules 24/7/365.