Even Windbags Have First Amendment Rights

While working out in the wee hours of the morning today, I heard this interesting story on MSNBC. Some South Florida Democrat with a lack of Constitutional knowledge wants to revoke a radio station's access to vital hurricane information because it airs Rush Limbaugh. The story can be found on The Miami Herald's website, but I could not find it on any of the big 3 cable networks' websites.

Apparently, Broward County (remember that from 2000?) Commissioner Stacy Ritter refused to designate Miami radio station WIOD 610 AM as the region's emergency hurricane information broadcaster solely because Rush Limbaugh is on it. She said,

We want to cancel this contract here because we don't want to have our hurricane information on the station that Rush Limbaugh is broadcast on, and Sean Hannity. (source)

Rush, ever the inappropriate comedian, called Ritter "a babe" after he saw her photo in the Herald. He also commented on their shenanigans, saying:

...[L]iberals in the face of utter disaster will not tune to the station to get information because my show is on it. So who is stupid here? This is politicizing a nonpartisan issue. Hurricane emergency information is nonpartisan. (same source as above)

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with El Rushbo. Any type of emergency information supersedes political ideology, and any attempt to revoke that based on ideology by the government is suppression of free speech. WIOD has a large reach, and therefore can reach a lot of people, so it's the logical choice for emergency information.

I look at it this way: let's say the tables were turned, and a Republican county commissioner decided to decline giving emergency information to a progressive station, even though it had the furthest reach. I would be up in arms at this obvious subversion of the First Amendment. Therefore, I have to support Rush in this battle, similar to how the ACLU supported him during his OxyContin troubles.

I have a couple of gripes, though. First of all, why can't the Broward County commissioners give every station emergency hurricane information? It's called a broadcast for a reason, and limiting the information to one station, regardless of reach, means that it will not reach as many people as it could if it were given to multiple stations. I'm sure that every county, city, or state has similar deals in place, but that's not the way it should be.

Second, in spite of his obvious disagreement with Ritter's statement, he still doesn't like that his show can be pre-empted by these emergency warnings, or even preparedness warnings (which are as important, in my opinion). Reading another Herald story on-air, he said:

"On the air Wednesday, Limbaugh joked that under the deal, the county would have the power to preempt his midday broadcast." They quoted me accurately here. I said, "All these idiots on the Broward County Commission have to do is schedule their press conferences from noon to 3," and by the terms of the deal, if they want to do a three-hour press conference, they can preempt my show that day. In fact, they could do it today. They could schedule a press conference, not emergency information, but preparedness and things you could do. These people are just blooming idiots. (same source as above)

So, Rush despises using politics with emergency information, and then plays politics with emergency information. Do you honestly think that the rest of those commissioners have it out for you bad enough to want to pre-empt only your show to broadcast "preparedness and things you could do" without just cause, just because they're all Democrats?

Dream on. The other commissioners said that they don't listen to you and don't really care about you. They want to ensure that the right information reaches the right people, their constituency, expediently. If it happens to be from 12 to 3, so what? It could be all day for all I care. Alleging that Broward County officials (save Ritter) want to prevent people from listening to you by using this designation to their advantage is baseless.

Rush finished off with this gem:

I'll tell you what's going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, there will be a press conference or a little statement that will go out, a sunshine emergency declared in Broward County, press conference at noon, drought emergency press conference at one. (Laughing.) How to protect your skin. (same source as above)

There you go again, Rush. Thinking your views are relevant. But then again, you have the right to say them, and I have to defend it. That's what true patriots do — protect speech they don't like too.

By the way, WIOD will likely get to keep their emergency broadcasts.

~Deep Blue

Inaugural Post

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.