Trump is relying on the giant Republican talk radio buzz machine to sell and excuse his militarism and distractions. Republican radio is a key factor in maintaining a facade of popular support and mobilizing his base to intimidate critics and enable supporters in politics and media.
Americans will be going on the offensive if they include Republican radio in their activism. For the last 30 years those stations have played an essential role in creating the alternate reality that allowed Donald Trump to enter the White House.
If even one of the universities listed below decides to begin looking for alternatives for broadcasting its sports others can be shamed into following.
The stoprush and flushrush efforts have shown many advertisers do not like being publicly associated with Republican talk radio. Some advertisers supporting those stations will not want to continue their associations.
Here’s a message that progressive organizations and student organizations around the country might find useful:
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The 88 universities listed below broadcast sports on 257 of 600 Rush Limbaugh radio stations.
The stations use the school logos, mascots, and community standing to attract advertisers to pay for partisan messaging on public airwaves. Any university supporting Republican talk radio is helping to defund itself and is undermining the interests of its students, faculty, employees, and surrounding communities.
The universities are legitimate places to protest any major issue until they begin looking for apolitical alternatives that are more consistent with principles and goals stated in their mission statements, which usually stress fairness, diversity, respect, honesty, justice, responsibility, and truth.
Urging these universities to broadcast their sports on apolitical alternatives represents a direct challenge to the Republican Party in those states. A community discussion of the issue will encourage advertisers to rethink their support.
The schools receive very little licensing revenue from radio compared with TV broadcasts but the associations are vital for the stations and the GOP. Most stations average 75 hours/week of partisan Republican talk (15 hrs/day x 5 days). If the GOP paid $1000/hour for that radio infomercial/advertising time each station is worth $75,000/week. 1200 Republican radio stations across the country are worth $18MIL/day or $5BIL/year FREE to broadcast Republican messaging.
That messaging is worth $Trillions in global warming denial, war, deregulation, tax breaks, swiftboating of Democrats, and passing extremist supreme court judges.
257 stations would be worth $19MIL/week, or more than $1BIL/year, and all that is being endorsed by the universities below.
Except for occasional innocuous programming they operate exclusively for the benefit of the Republican Party. They are coordinated nationally and locally with the GOP and their allied think tanks and are now being used to excuse Trump’s actions, attack his critics, and divert attention from Trump/GOP problems.
Protests at state capitols and other locations are often ignored by media and politicians because Republican radio stations can yell over them for weeks after protestors have gone home. Talk show hosts attack and mischaracterize protestors, their tactics, and their objectives. They also encourage local officials and police to break protests up and excuse violence directed at protestors. They will repeat fabricated stories of protestor violence, looting, etc.
The universities don’t owe the stations anything. Most of those university-radio relationships began when the stations broadcast music and general non-partisan programming. Their programming became partisan after 1987 when Ronald Reagan ‘killed’ the Fairness Doctrine and Republicans began buying up radio stations to create and protect a talk radio monopoly. Today there are more options for viewing and listening to sports.
Usually a licensing company like Learfield Sports pays the university for the broadcasting rights and either resells them to the radio station or pays the radio station to broadcast the games, such as with the University of New Mexico. In some cases there is no bidding process.
If a talk radio station wants to keep broadcasting university sports there is no reason they can’t convert to music or sports talk. In many areas a loud station might be replaced with multiple smaller stations. There are many sports talk stations around the country that want to broadcast those sports events and would be more appropriate. They talk sports all day and sell sports and sports merchandise, not politics.
If loss of licensing revenue is an objection, can donors be found to make up the difference? If there is a loss, how does it compare with the harm it is doing to its own students and community, or the damage from defunding public education? Is there an opportunity for an alternative licensing company that can find apolitical alternatives to reach similar or larger audiences?
Republican radio stations sometimes influence elections of university regents and selection of administration, including presidents and chancellors. Is there a conflict of interest?
Limbaugh stations that broadcast sports are among the loudest in the country. They are licensed to operate in the public interest but they all:
- deny global warming — this issue alone requires action
- work to defund and privatize public education, demean teachers and lower their salaries, attack their unions, push voucher solutions and standardized testing, and obstruct efforts to lower student debt
- sensationalize and excuse militarism — they sold the Iraq ‘war’, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, and they will sell the next war
- use public airwaves to sell voter suppression legislation with lies and exaggeration about voter fraud, millions of “illegal aliens” and dead people voting for Democrats, etc.
- oppose environmental regulation and support fossil fuel solutions over renewables
- oppose health care reform and have lied about single payer systems for 3 decades
- undermine free speech: they have sold “money is speech” and “corporations are people” memes for decades, arguing for media deregulation, defunding of public programming like PBS and NPR, and an end to net neutrality
- oppose campaign finance reform
- use and excuse racism, misogyny, homophobia, and hate to divide communities and push voter suppression and other anti-democratic Republican legislation
- work to deny reproductive rights for women and access to contraception, defund Planned Parenthood and other services, and excuse misogyny
- oppose efforts to increase minimum wage, and advocate eliminating it
- undermine the economic and environmental interests of their communities
- sell privatization of prisons
- use public airways to repeat propaganda that is demonstrably false and continue to lie after being corrected, use call screeners to exclude dissenting opinions
- coordinate with and provide free publicity for Republican politicians and think tanks when needed for elections, passing legislation, and attacking critics and opponents
- use monopoly power to avoid direct competition while pretending to represent an expression of free speech
- while railing against “political correctness”, they loudly demand regressive conformity
Here is the list of universities with the number of Limbaugh stations for each school and the total for each state. The list is incomplete. It does not include stations that do not headline Limbaugh. For instance, the University of Wisconsin broadcasts on 5 Limbaugh stations but also on 2 stations that headline Sean Hannity. Some universities may have made changes recently.
From www.republicanradio.org:
ALABAMA 8 Auburn 3, Alabama 2, Southern Alabama 2, Troy 1
ARIZONA 2 Arizona St. 1, Arizona 1
ARKANSAS 3 Arkansas 3
CALIFORNIA 5 San Jose State 2, USC 2, Fresno St. 1
COLORADO 4 Air Force 2, Colorado 1, Colorado State 1
CONNECTICUT 1 Connecticut 1
FLORIDA 20 Florida 10, Florida St. 4 Miami 2, South Florida 2, Central Florida 2
GEORGIA 14 Georgia 7, Georgia Tech 5, Georgia Southern 2
IDAHO 7 Boise St. 4, Idaho 3
ILLINOIS 7 Illinois 7
INDIANA 11 Notre Dame 6, Purdue 4, Indiana 1
IOWA 5 Iowa 4, Iowa St. 1
KANSAS 4 Kansas St. 2, Kansas 1, Wichita St. 1
KENTUCKY 3 Louisville 2, Kentucky 1
LOUSIANA 3 LSU 2, La.-Monroe 1
MARYLAND 2 Maryland 2
MASSACHUSETTS 1 Boston College 1
MICHIGAN 19 Michigan St. 11, Michigan 7, Western Michigan 1
MINNESOTA 4 Minnesota 4
MISSISSIPPI 6 Mississippi St. 3, Mississippi 2, Southern Miss 1
MISSOURI 6 Missouri 6
NEBRASKA 6 Nebraska 6
NEVADA 1 Nevada 1
NEW JERSEY 2 Rutgers 1, Seton Hall 1
NEW MEXICO 3 New Mexico 2, New Mexico St. 1
NEW YORK 7 Syracuse 6, Army 1
NORTH CAROLINA 16 North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 3, Duke 3, East Carolina 2
OHIO 10 Ohio St. 6, Toledo 1, Dayton 1, Bowling Green 1, Xavier 1
OKLAHOMA 5 Oklahoma St. 3, Oklahoma 1, Oral Roberts 1
OREGON 12 Oregon St. 7, Oregon 5
PENNSYLVANIA 14 Penn St. 11, Pittsburgh 2, Temple 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 South Carolina 2, Clemson 2
TENNESSEE 7 Tennessee 4, Memphis 3
TEXAS 16 Texas A&M 9, Texas Tech 4, Texas 1, Texas Christian 1, Baylor 1
UTAH 1 Utah St. 1
VIRGINIA 6 Virginia Tech 5, Virginia 1
WASHINGTON 6 Washington 5, Washington St. 1
WEST VIRGINIA 2 West Virginia 1, Marshall 1
WISCONSIN 5 Wisconsin
These 88 universities are Trump allies. Students and scientists can protest right on campus.
Be offensive. Students can amplify protests at state capitols and town halls w/out leaving campus.
Trump guy analyzed 1000s of hrs of RW radio & reported to Trump. To coordinate with Russian ops?