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Limbaugh, Hannity Face Armed Forces Radio Loss
Handing liberal opponents a sudden victory in their longtime battle over Armed Forces Radio content, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity may soon be removed from broadcast outlets serving American soldiers stationed around the world.With last year's addition of liberal talk shows to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service lineup, how could this happen now?... In this new scenario, ALL political talk shows will be nearly eliminated, including those hosted by liberals Ed Schultz and Al Franken. If Hannity and Limbaugh aren't being singled out for quasi- cancellation, that might seem fair, but the devil is in the details. And it's a particularly ugly devil: upon closer examination, an astounding picture of anti- conservative bias is clearly revealed. Was it intentional? We don't know. In a highly unexpected development, a radio consulting firm hired by the military has strongly recommended dumping these programs from stations that reach the vast majority of troops and others residing overseas. After an extensive study was conducted that included a number of focus groups, Lund Media Research determined that talk radio and country music should be largely eliminated to make room for hip-hop, rap and pop formats, according to Stars and Stripes. Only in rare cases where three military radio frequencies are available in a region would Limbaugh and Hannity survive in any manner. Even then, only about an hour of each show would remain on the schedule of the third station, rather than their entire three- hour broadcasts. Included on the cut list is NPR's programming, generally regarded as liberal, but it would still air for at least three hours daily. While the military must decide whether to act on Lund's advice, if it wasn't intending to take these recommendations seriously, we find it unlikely that AFRTS would pay a significant amount of money and assist in coordinating this research. Until now, station programming decisions have been handled locally, with area brass making the call as to what was suitable for troops stationed in a particular conflict zone or military base. Under the new proposal, that will be centralized... Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-05 |
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