Welcome to the inaugural post of Silver State Blues, your one-stop shop for Northern Nevada politics from a liberal point of view. I've only lived in the fine city of Reno for the past 9 months or so, and I love it here. However, I've been following national politics for the better part of a decade, and I feel that there is not enough of the progressive voice in a town that I feel has a very strong, yet underrepresented, liberal undercurrent.
For example, compare the amount of time dedicated to local political talk on two radio stations: KOH 780 AM, and KJFK 1230 AM. KOH is a 50,000 watt right-wing station (source) with a local talk show hosted by Bill Manders that lasts from 3 to 6 pm daily. Being a high-profile station, they have major media presence in the area, from contests and on-location broadcasts to connections to local TV stations and online radio streaming. KJFK, on the other hand, is an 820 watt small-time station (source) carrying the Air America family of programming (along with Jones Radio Network staples Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz) with a local talk show that lasts only from 3 to 4pm, 2 hours less than Manders' rant-fest. In addition, KJFK's website has been under construction for almost two years, meaning that there is no chance for people outside of the tiny broadcast radius to listen to this station on-line.
But despite what Bill Manders may say about "Airhead America," KJFK happens to be doing quite well considering its small size. It has a 2.1 share in the ratings for this past fall, and though it is down from the 2.3 share in Spring 2006, it is an overall increase from a year ago. This makes it second among all Reno talk stations behind KOH's 11.7 share, a 557% difference (source). For those of you not in the radio business, a share represents the percentage of radios tuned to that station in a market. On the aforementioned "source" site, Reno's 12+ population is 384,900. So, assuming that the share is proportional to the population, KOH has 45,033 listeners and KJFK has 8,083 listeners, once again, a 557% difference. But KJFK has a higher listener-to-wattage ratio; KJFK has 9.86 listeners per watt, while KOH has 0.9 listeners per watt. This means, that for the wattage that they have, KJFK is better utilizing its signal, and if it were the size of KOH, it would have 10 times as many listeners.
Clearly the right-wingers would dismiss this as fuzzy math and not proving anything. But this shows that if KJFK had the market presence and wattage that KOH has, it would be the dominant radio station in town. But the station (rather, Americom Broadcasting, its parent company) isn't doing anything to promote the station. As I have mentioned, they don't have a website, they don't have streaming audio, and they have only an hour-long local political show. There are also no events promoting the station, or promotional materials, for that matter. I called up Reno Radio Representatives (Americom's Reno presence) asking for a bumper sticker to put on my car, and to my surprise, they don't make them! They also had no plans to create a website. I should've offered to build it for them. It shows that RRR has no plans to vault the station higher than it is now, despite clearly having the audience and the potential for growth.
That's where I come in.
I want to increase the liberal media presence because the actual liberal media won't do it. They won't add wattage, they won't promote the station, they just won't do anything. It is my goal, nay, my mission, to educate people and give them the facts on local and national issues that affect all of us.
I have enabled commenting for anyone on this site; you don't even have to be a Blogger member. You also don't have to be a liberal. At this point in time, your comments will go largely unfiltered, unless you make things like hate speech, reveal personal information that is not your own, or make threats of violence against myself or any American political leaders. So that means that you conservatives have a chance to respond to my ramblings. And to show I'm not a faceless machine, my e-mail address is silverstateblues@gmail.com. The same rules for commenting apply.
Also, if you've stumbled upon this blog and agree with the views, please tell your friends about it. Reader comments make me happy.
Finally, I am offering an open invitation for Northern Nevada bloggers that have a better grasp on local politics than I do to post on this blog as a contributor. If you're a liberal and feel that you have what it takes to join Team Reno, send me one of your lefty rants to the e-mail above. Amateurs and fellow bloggers only at this point in time; I like fresh faces and want to get people in on the action.
So that's it for my really long inaugural post. More will be coming soon, and remember, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
~ Deep Blue
Edit: I added sources on the wattage information for each station. Also, compare the coverage maps for KOH and KJFK. KOH's coverage envelops the central California valley, while KJFK's local coverage area stops short of Carson.
