Mainstream radio hosts are mostly not your friends. With an exception here or there, many of the most powerful voices on radio dial seem to have no interest in telling two sides of the story.

 

On the plus side, Chaz and AJ stepped it up this week with their operatta about Jim Calhoun, the loser of the week, and actually gave me 20 minutes of air time this morning on WPLR in New Haven. And on Monday, too. Uninterrupted - a miracle for these guys.

 

Monday and Tuesday, I appeared on a flurry of sports talk radio shows in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Hartford (with Jason Page), Boston, Miami, San Antonio and nationally on ESPN with Brian Kenny and Chris Russo's satellite station, the B Team with Bruce Murray and Bill Pidto.

 

And as the week wore on, the media that continued to broadcast my story tended to be liberal, like today Joe Dupnik, on Storrs' own WHUS, gave me almost 45 minutes on his show Festive Intoxications. Tonday Cenk Uygur with the Young Turks and Dave Zirin on the Edge of Sports, both satellite and internet venues, offered me an opportunity to speak.

 

It seems Calhoun has more friends in radioland, though. For example, Brad Davis has been trouncing me all week. So has Dan Lovallo. Has either bothered to call me for comment? No. I called the Brad Davis show this morning, and the gruff man who answered said I needed to talk to the producer. I left a message, and have yet to hear back. I doubt I will.

 

Mike and Mike in the Morning, ESPN's nationally syndicated show, has been beating me up all week. Did they bother to call me? No. I contacted their producer today, because I feel like I should have an opportunity for fair comment. He said he would get back to me.

 

Mike Francesa on WFAN has been pounding on me this week too. Afternoon sports radio fan Mike Francesa gave Calhoun free run of WFAN 50,000 watts Friday afternoon. Francesa didn't call me for comment - yet I'm not a journalist and Francesa is?

 

According to the Courant, Calhoun had an afternoon media day. He said to Francesa in particular:

"I would have liked to have had maybe a statement come out of our athletic department at a particular point in time," he said. "And I think the earlier the better, simply saying that 'Coach may have been a little too harsh on the individual, yet he's our guy.'

 

Link to more from Calhoun and his friends...

 

Hartford City Councilors Matt Ritter and Luis Cotto have agreed to sponsor a resolution calling for Congress to pass the Local Community Radio Act. The resolution will be heard before the Planning and Economic Development Committee, chaired by Ritter, Tuesday, March 3 at 6 p.m.

 

I asked Councilors Ritter and Cotto to raise this resolution as a citizen. I hope to attend and testify. If I cannot, I would like to submit the following column as written testimony on the importance of Low Power FM radio stations.

 

Low Power FM is part of the radio spectrum reform movement. Right now, corporate interests dominate the Federal Communications Commission, and thus for-profit interests dominate the airwaves.

 

LPFM seeks to loosen FCC restrictions on airwave regulations so as to allow small community organizations to operate local radio stations. Imagine if Real Art Ways or the Artists Collective or OPP or the Hispanic Health Council could have a radio station.

 

What kinds of voices would be on the air, accessible to community members? How would this invigorate democratic discourse? I think it would be a positive step.

 

Right now, though, this is not possible because currently media corporations, most of them out-of-state, dominate the Hartford airwaves. And the problems of media conglomeration are easy to spot with the repetitive, homogenized programming we hear.

 

Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio corporation, owns six stations in the Hartford media market: WKCI 101.3 FM, WHCN 105.9FM, WURH 104.1 FM, WKSS 95.7, WWYZ 92.5 FM and WPOP 1410AM.

 

CBS Radio, a subsidiary of Viacom, owns four stations: WTIC-96.5 FM, WZMX 93.7 FM, WRCH 100.5 FM and WTIC 1080AM.

 

Cox Radio, another one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, owns WPLR 99.1 FM and WEZN 99.9 FM. Cox also owns three other stations in Southwest Connecticut.

 

Cumulus Media, of Atlanta, Georgia, owns WEBE 107.9 FM. Nationally, WEBE owns 344 stations in 67 markets.

 

Two Connecticut companies compete with the national powerhouses. Buckley Broadcasting of Greenwich owns WDRC 102.9 FM. Marlin Broadcasting of West Hartford, owns WCCC 106.9 FM and WCCC 1290 AM.

 

While Marlin’s AM station bucks the trend as a classical music only station, CCC, while independently owned, competes in the commercial format represented by the rest of the stations.

 

The commercial station formats generates profit, and is focus group tested and targeted at various audience segments to churn out dollars. The same tired songs and endless national entertainment gossip pass for programming in any markets.

 

Because of this national ownership, what you hear in Denver is what you hear in Hartford is what you hear in Orlando is what you hear in Seattle. Community identity becomes lost in the march towards money.

Link...

Not often will I be counted as a fan of either Gov. M. Jodi Rell or Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz. I disagree wholeheartedly with many of the decisions that these constitutional officials have made.

 

Once in a while, they deserve a kudos - Bysiewicz, a Democrat and a Yale-educated attorney, has written a biography of Gov. Ella Grasso, and Rell, a Republican, has taken on Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez before (a slight accomplishment, at best).

 

However much I dislike their skills of governance, I know that they deserve respect, even begrudging respect. Both are long-time survivors in a political system that destroys people, and by nature of their public positions, we want discourse that encourages people to participate in the political system.

 

So it is was to my great dismay this morning that flipping through the FM dial, I chanced upon Chaz and AJ and their monkey house interviewing Bysiewicz, who has recently thrown her hat in the ring for the 2010 gubernatorial race.

 

The vanilla questions coming from Chaz and AJ and their listeners elicited standard claptrap from Bysiewicz.

Caller: How are you going to lower spending to cut my taxes?

Bysiewicz: We need to do an efficiency study of all departments in the government to determine where we can have cost savings.

AJ: You hear that DMV?

That discussion led to how dumbfounded Bysiewicz is that Gov. Rell has proposed cutting the insurance advocate position, one that is funded by the insurance industry, and not state tax dollars.

 

While I would like to hear Bysiewicz roll into a monologue about why we need single payer healthcare, as opposed to some band-aid reform that won't work, she maintained an air of dignity, and electability.

 

Then it all went wrong: Chaz and AJ suggested that Bysiewicz and Rell engage in a wrestling match to determine the future leader of Connecticut. Bysiewicz remained silent during this two minute long adolescent fantasy. As they took us back to neanderthal days before elections, when might made right, when raw violence determined political supremacy, the Secretary of the State let them have their fun.

 

Again, I wanted her to show some chutzpah and knock down these two morning deejerks. Yet she played the whole thing like a politician: let the boys run wild because you never want to piss off egotistical media gatekeepers who control access to an audience of tens of thousands of voters.

Chaz and AJ's dialogue gets worse ...

 

It's only taken a bit more than five years, but Gov. M. Jodi Rell called John Dankosky this morning and appeared on WNPR's "Where We Live" for 20 minutes.

 

This victory doesn't mean that the Governor actually fielded calls on the call-in show, and Dankosky wasn't as aggressive as I wanted him to be, but I understand he has to build a relationship, and trust.

 

I phoned in, hoping beyond hope that she would spend the full hour talking with citizens. But alas, the Bushian executive ethic still prevails. At least she's not Blagojevich, selling Senate seats or anything. She only hides Mustangs in her garage.

 

Dankosky aired my call. I congratulated him on landing the big fish, and said that it looks like journalism works. New Haven Advocate Managing Editor Andy Bromage has been putting pressure on her, and she appears. Second, Gov., if you're listening, next time, we'd love to have you stick around and answer some questions.

 

Dankosky told me I wasn't helping his case. Oh well.

 

I continued undeterred. Gov., show some real green leadership and move to Hartford for the remainder of your term and bicycle or walk to work. Dankosky prompted me for a thought on mass transit. Sure.

 

We have a track from New Haven to Hartford that serves Amtrak. Why the heck don't we use it for five or six commuter trains a day?

 

Guest Tom Condon of the Hartford Courant's Place section and Heather Brandon of the Urban Compass blog responded. They talked mass transit and being visionary about infrastructure. And they noted well before I got on the air that Gov. Rell only talked about highways, bridges and dams, and Dankosky had to ask her about mass transit.

 

Listen to the show, because it is good morning radio. And Dankosky never gets enough credit. Day in, day out, he's usually got winning fare on the air.

 

On the web, a quick tour gives us Andy Bromage again reporting from the Clean Election Campaigns trial down in New Haven. He's done daily work for both the first and second days of the two-day bench trial. The judge for my case, Stephan Underhill, presided, and I like the way he works from the bench, reading this.

 

Back to studying.

 

Link...

 

Fish links. With Annie's Goddess dressing, instead of tartar sauce.

 

The story about the DA in Texas who indicted Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez just is plain wierd. The DA throws down criminal indictments against the shadow government for its work in perpetuating injustice in a private prison. Then he disappears. The Texas Rangers find him in Mexico, and then a judge removes him from mor than half the work he did. From the Raymondsville Chronicle:

After being AWOL from the job and violating sections of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct - Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel "Johnny Guerra" has been replaced in five (5) of the nine (9) criminal cases he convinced a grand jury to file against Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...more here

FISA save me...A writer from Colors magazine called me from Italy today to talk about the story they are doing on my absurd interaction with Johnny Law back on Jan. 3, 2007. And later in the evening as I was thinking of the call, I wondered if the NSA listened to us discussing how much freedom we have lost. What's the line? "Those who seek to eliminate dissent soon find themselves eliminating dissenters."

 

From a lawyer friend in New Haven: How Hate Radio works. File this one under Morning Radio Chronicles, Too. My favorite line from Dan Shelly, reformed right wing radio producer:

This brings us to perhaps the most ironic thing about most talk show hosts. Though they may savage politicians and others they oppose, they fear criticism or critiques of any kind. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

Then there's the constant stream of informative drug policy reform stories from Mapinc via Cliff Thornton, this one talking about Vancouver's safe-injection rooms saving more than $14 million over 10 years.

Vancouver's safe-injection site will save the health-care system at least $14-million and prevent more than 1,000 HIV infections over a 10-year period, according to a new study about the controversial program.

The study, published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, is the latest piece of research to suggest the potential social benefit of Insite in helping curb substance abuse, and reducing the spread of hepatitis C, HIV and other infectious diseases.

"We were a bit surprised. The model really suggests that there are very considerable benefits," said Ahmed Bayoumi, lead author and scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health in Toronto.

This summer in Montreal, I saw Insite advertised on bus stop walls, and I am glad to see it working. Earth to Hartford? Are you listening?

 

Yes, because there is a new Hartford Blog: Weliveinhartfordandyoushouldtoo

 

More Link-fish...

 

C onsider this an unabashed moment of self-promotion:

 

Thursday, October 16 at 8:20 am, I am booked for a segment on WPLR to discuss the presidential debate/conversation set for tonite in Long Island.

 

McCain has promised to whip Obama, a kind of startling use of language - how often do we allow a white politician to intimate the use of a whip on a black politician. Racial wounds run deep in this country, and McCain knows each and every word he says will be parsed.

 

Obama is ready for the Bill Ayers connection. One hopes that Obama brings up McCain's connection to the Keating Five, but after two debates full of non-moments, I'm imagining Obama might bring up McCain's messy first divorce sooner than he'll mention McCain's near indictment in the late 1980s.

 

The slick Obama campaign has released a memo it calls Obama's pre-debate strategy. After reading it, it seems more liekly that they wrote wonky press release and gave it a new label so as to make it seem like we are getting an inside look at the workings of the campaign.

 

Perhaps I am being cynical, but McCain and Obama won't even release the contract they formed that set the parameters to the "debates."

 

Any strategy memo would likely have more depth, and one hopes that if McCain is prepared to bring up the Weather Underground, then Obama better bring up Sarah Palin's connections to the right wing militia/separatist movement, something well documented.

 

Will the kid gloves come off? Will we hear anything other than platitudes? I ain't holding my breath. I'll need it to dissect the equivocating on the radio tomorrow morning. Tune in then.

 

Link...

 

A regular installment in the Continuing Saga of Morning Radio in America's 28th or so largest media market - New Haven/Hartford.

 

So it's October, but I gotta relate what happened Monday, September 15 when I heard Jesse Ventura's voice on WPLR's Chaz and AJ's morning show.

 

Mind you, since I heard the former Minnesota Governor and pro wrestler hawking his book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, Chaz and AJ have done thoughtful interviews with Congressman Joe Courtney and Ralph Nader (which in full disclosure, I helped set-up).

 

Chaz and AJ took free speech a step further this week, as Monday, Sept. 29, they spent 12 or so minutes cancelled with Harold Burbank, the Green Party candidate from the Fifth Congressional district. Burbank still awaits his interview.

 

Burbank, an experienced human rights attorney, has been shut out of League of Women Voters debates between incumbent Democrat Chris Murphy and Republican with a mobster problem challenger David Cappiello. The League shut down Independent Party candidate Tom Winn, too. Susan B. Anthony would not be proud of the incorrigible suppression of free speech.

 

League president Jara Burnett and I don't see eye to eye on this. After I read her some history on the League's insistence on open debates from three decades ago, she hung up the phone on me today.

 

While Chaz and AJ have done that to me as well, the PLR morning show treated Courtney, Nader and Ventura with ultimate respect. I missed the Burbank interview, but the bits I heard with Courtney, Nader and Venture they were intelligent conversations about pressing issues.

Link...

 

A regular installment in the Continuing Saga of Morning Radio in America's 28th or so largest media market - New Haven/Hartford.

 

So, in our last adventure, Chaz and AJ put a halt to my fledgling career as a progressive morning radio commentator.

 

But I didn't stop listening to PLR - I have it programmed onto button 3 in my car. 99.1 is mid-spectrum on the FM dial, not around many other listenable stations. So it has a spot on my rotation.

 

Once in while they play a good tune that still has some listenability, some life and spark left in it, otherwise, I'm comfortably numb from hearing comfortably numb. The Wall contains a dozen other great songs, like Nobody's Home: "I got a little black book with my poems in it, a bag with a suitcase and a comb, when I'm a good dog they sometimes throw me a bone."

 

Whatever, I'm done beating PLR's dead horse playlist.

 

This one August morning, Tuesday, August 19, I took off from work to head down the beach with friends, get in a good day at the beach before school started. I'm sitting a drug store parking lot waiting for a friend who ran in for something, flipping stations, and I hear Gov. M. Jodi Rell's voice.

 

Gov. Rell deigns to grace them with her presence regularly. They don't ask hard questions, and she's a morning show maven. Check out Andy Bromage's reporting in the Advocate about how Grandma Rell studiously (if anything she does can be considered studious) avoids WNPR's John Dankoski and his hour-long interview-call in format, Where We Live.

Link...

 

A regular installment in the Continuing Saga of Morning Radio in America's 28th or so largest media market - New Haven/Hartford.

 

Way back, a few months ago, before law school kicked in, before my time disappeared into text books, I hammered out a deal with Chaz and AJ, the morning crew on WPLR 99.1FM, Connecticut's so-called number one morning show.

 

Chaz and AJ granted me a pre-recorded minute every Monday morning for four weeks, to be aired at 6 a.m.

 

They set out some sacred cows, like that I couldn't go after their advertisers. PLR, a classic rock monster in Milford, is owned by Cox Communications.

 

I disagreed with limits on editorial content, and the next week, giving them credit for accepting alternate points of view, I went to work.

Week 1 - July 21
Good morning. This is Ken Krayeske with the40yearplan.com checking in with 60 seconds worth of not normally heard-on-the-radio news and views.

On Thursday last week, President-elect Al Gore challenged Americans to transition all electrical power supplies in this country away from fossil fuels and go to renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal. And he wants us to do this in the next ten years.

A debate has ensued whether or not this will be included in the Democratic party platform for the 2008 presidential election. What is odd about this is not that I called Gore the President-elect, but that the Apollo Project, the 10-year plan to energy independence, was pushed by Gore's opponent Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election.

My notes for week one are in a notebook, and I don't have a sign off. I'm sure I did one. I'm not sure the response, because my alarm didn't wake me up. But one of my oldest friends in the world, Pete the Pole, called me up afterwards and said that I didn't sound good.

I vowed to improve. I wrote and rewrote and practiced and recited the words for week two.

Read What Happened in Weeks Two, Three and Four...

 

Chaz and AJ of WPLR proved today that they are the state's best morning radio show. They confronted a critic head on, and while they haven't won me over, they did the next best thing - they offered me four one-minute spots over the next four weeks to discuss pressing issues that they fail to cover.

 

What Luck! And now, I am trying to figure out how to use that time. I need your help to determine the best ideas for it.

 

But first, let's review how I got there, what I said and how listeners responded, and try to craft 240 seconds worth of message that resonates and potentially grows into something larger.

 

Twice since May, I've written posts critical of Chaz and AJ and their kid-gloves handling of elected officials. They've let the likes of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain talk without answering a difficult question.

 

This morning, they gave me ten minutes of rebuttal time, after reading on the air some of my complaints about them. They found my posts on Myleftnutmeg.com and at the40yearplan.com, and they mentioned both websites prominently. Big up for MLN!

 

Then they asked me what I thought. I had a lot I wanted to say in 10 minutes, but basically, I said that the airwaves are public property, that Chaz and AJ are lucky to be doing the job they do, and that they have a responsibility to represent all points of view equally.

 

Link- and email your ideas for a minute a week on FM...

 

It appears that Chaz and AJ, Connecticut's self-proclaimed number one morning show, are open to criticism.

 

Tomorrow morning, July 16, the morning show at 99.1 FM WPLR has invited me to appear on their show for 10 minutes to talk about alternative news and views. It's not much, but hey, they're trying.

 

I'll be sure to blog about it when it's all over.

Link...

 

Have WPLR Morning Show hosts Chaz and AJ learned nothing from Scott McLellan, the former Bush/Cheney press secretary?

 

McLellan just wrote a book, undertitled at What Happened. You helped unleash the dogs of war is what happened, Scotty. When we finally prosecute the Iraq War Crimes Tribunal, McLellan will get less prison time for his mea maxima culpa.

 

After admitting to lying to the press and manipulating the media to march to the pro-war beat, McLellan in his book criticized complacent reporters for kowtowing to the Bush/Cheney putsch.

 

So what do Chaz and AJ - the all-star members of Connecticut’s number one morning radio show on WPLR 99.1 FM - do when they land the show of a lifetime, thanks to the vice-presidential ambitions of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman?

 

Chaz and AJ bowed before the masters of war Thursday morning.

 

For more than an hour, live from Lieberman’s DC office, Chaz and AJ played starstruck stenographers for the likes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, Vice President Dick Cheney, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R).

Read the thrilling conclusion...

 

Mass media personalities have a responsibility to hold people in positions of power accountable. WPLR morning show hosts Chaz and AJ continue to land great interview subjects, yet they continue to grant deferential treatment to these public officials.

 

And the big picture - particularly on transit - flies right by. Let me say that I think Chaz and AJ have the best morning show in the state. But they still don’t meet the standards that our democracy should demand on its airwaves.

 

Consider this critique of their 50,000 watt press releases not just in the interest of deflating hot air bags, but in the interest of improving what is already good to become better.

 

For example, Tuesday morning, Chaz and AJ gave outgoing Speaker of the House Jim Amann at least 30 minutes of air time, where he answered live listener calls.

 

Compare that to the time they gave my attorney, Norman A. Pattis, last week. Not only is Norm funnier than any politician I have ever met, but he actually attempted to discuss a potential ethical lapse of a state cop who landed his fiancé by getting her phone number in exchange for not giving her a speeding ticket.

Link...

 

You can send a check to the Charter Oak chapter of the Red Cross, said the Governor to morning deejay today, urging citizens to contribute to the relief fund for the home fire that knocked 150 people out of 120 apartments in Norwich this weekend.

 

Can't somebody do something about this traffic, gasped the Congressman trapped on the Merritt Parkway to the morning jock about the price of gas and the situation on the highways.

 

Ain't nothing we can't handle, said the man pushing the broom to his friend as they stood under the grocery store awning, under the raining gray sky.

 

Of all the conversations I heard today, I like the man pushing the broom the best.

 

I was ready to pull out my hair by the time I was done listening to Chaz and AJ and Billy and Megan Dahl hang out with Governor M. Jodi Rell and Congressman Chris Murphy this morning on WPLR.

 

And that was after I missed the beginning of their conversation while channel surfing down I-91, on my way to a property law exam from Hartford to Hamden, by car, of course.

 

What little I heard, though, at first sounded like Governor Rell being extremely gracious and patient to the seventh graders at PLR's PeeWee's playhouse. As she seriously tried to tell the listening audience how to help those made homeless by the fire, Chaz and AJ made bad jokes.

Link...