If you’re a talk show junkie like TMV who listens to various shows on both sides of the raging political war divide this item in Raw Story is BIG news:
Two radio executives who made Clear Channel and Rush Limbaugh household are to announce today they have purchased The Ed Schultz show, America’s fastest-growing talk show in the country, RAW STORY has learned.
Veteran radio execs Randy Michaels and Stu Krane purchased the show from Democracy Radio, a non-profit which helps seed progressive talk radio hosts. Michaels’ and Krane’s new company, P1 will now carry the show. The protracted sale has been in the works since March.
If you haven’t sampled Schultz, he’s worth sampling, no matter what your political views. If you’re quickly switching the dial and get him you’d almost swear at first that you have Rush Limbaugh because there are some similarities in voice tone and speech pattern, but the accents — and the ideas — are quite different.
One Schultz’s main strengths is that he’s willing to talk to virtually any caller, even (you might say especially) those with whom he disagrees. And disagree he certainly will, usually respectfully, thoughtfully and strongly. Schultz recently took a blast of heat from listeners by opening up both barrels on Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean for Dean’s controversial remarks about Republicans — he argued that they were counterproductive (as this site has repeatedly argued) — and for not doing better to match GOP funds.
Schultz also made clear when he talked to Dean about his ire over Dean not returning his calls and not going on his show earlier. Schultz was accused by some callers (and on some weblogs) of not being a true liberal. Actually, Schultz is a liberal but he’s a pragmatic one who runs his radio show the way you can see he would like to see the Democratic party be run: by getting the ear of and making his case to centrists and some Republicans versus simply preaching to the same, already-convinced group of people over and over again.
Due to his professionalism, his show’s large number of topics, his penchant for live-on-the-road broadcasts, the ideological diversity of callers, and the way his program is adding stations, Schultz more than Air America’s hosts seems poised to be the liberal talk show host to watch in the early 21st century. And, now, with his show’s purchase by two industry pros who already helped make Rush an institution, the man who calls himself “Big Ed” seems poised to make the national quantum leap — just as Dr. Laura Schlesinger did some years ago when her show went from KFI 640 in L.A. to a national audience to her signing a monster contract.
On his website, a listener writes of the announcement of the show’s sale:
I was in audience in Seattle Monday when Ed announced the sale of the program. You should of seen him when he came out on stage before the show. The crowd roared. We were psyched. Ed gets a couple minute standing ovation. He says he has terrific news to share with us and almost tells us but decides to wait until he’s on the air so everyone can hear at the same time.
He’s really excited about it. He looks like a kid just before he can open his Christmas presents. Another thunderous ovation as the show starts. And then he tells us that the show’s been sold to two guys. Suddenly there was absolute…stunned… dead…silence. There may have been 8 people out of the 800 there who had a clue what that meant. We had no idea how to react. Was this good? Had Ed sold out? Were we about to lose what we had just found? Just 792 stunned people. After listening to the interview Tuesday with one of the buyers I’m convinced this is a very good thing…
What all of this means is that a show that was already growing and had started to get some some recognition, but was dwarfed by all the publicity surrounding Air America, is likely to get an even faster and more extensive rollout…nudged along by people who know how to do it on a national scale.
Unlike Air America which is still seemingly tinkering with some of its shows, Shultz already has a solid product with a solidified identity. In some markets (as here in San Diego on KLSD radio) he is on a station that carries Air America but displaces an Air America show. And the fact that he’s not formally part of Air America, may even score him some points with some reluctant would-be listeners.
So far with all the publicity about Air America, Schultz’s show has grown almost under the radar. But we predict he’s the one most likely to offer conservative talk show radio its stiffest long term ratings competition.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.