Radio talk show host evades the truth on WTAX

WTAX - Jim Bohannon was interviewing author David Bacon of the book "Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants"

The author stated that the main cause for illegal immigration from Mexico was that corporations such as Cargill glutted the Mexican market with corn, driving the prices down so much that it became impossible for local farmers to make a profit. Consequently they lost their land and had no recourse but to migrate to the U.S. to find work.

The problem, Jim Bohannon said, was that it was against the law, and that was his focus during the entire interview. Every time the author mentioned the corporate foreign policy of destroying foreign economies, Jimbo would continuously repeat "But these people shouldn't come over the border because it's against the law.

Remember Farm-Aid? Right here in the U.S. http://www.farmaid.org was started because the same practice was going on right here in the U.S. Giant Agribusiness corporations were glutting the local market with grain and beef to drive family farms out of business so they could buy up the land at cheap prices.

As a direct consequence, people had to migrate to the cities to get work. Now they are getting laid off. They have no land as a fall-back position.

David Bacon discovered the real cause of why we are having illegal immigration, but Jim Bohannon would have none of it. He just kept looking away. This is why the Republicans fail. They refuse to see the un-sustainability of what they allege to be a “Free Market Economy.”

Still wondering about the future.

I still like to read the State Journal Register because they have career journalists on hand who work full time to get their stories and photos. For a while I even had the notion of applying for work there. But the tide is going out for good on the old media, thanks to the Internet.

I wonder how many generations it will take before subscriptions to actual hard-copy newspapers fall into the red zone of being cost-prohibitive? Would online advertising be sufficient to support the structure that remains after the printing presses have ceased forever?

Remember radio? Radio is still a good hands-free form of entertainment, but AM is dominated by right-wing conservatism, a philosophy which proved its worth over the last eight years in the political spotlight, and evidenced by the presidential election of 2008. Unpopular.

As for FM radio, it depends on the artist and not the genre.

Genre radio is old hat. The Internet has exposed us to the reality of music. That there are really good songs, not really good types of songs. We as an audience can no longer accept being pigeonholed into arbitrary categories of Rock, Pop, Country, Jazz, Lite-Jazz, Classical, Heavy Metal, Blues or Big Band.

I occasionally listen to Amy Winehouse, Bjork, Tom Waits, Dethklok, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger, Ozzie, Tchaikovsky, Sly and the Family Stone, etc. No radio station will be able to keep me as an audience for very long.

Local Broadcast television is not doing too well either. The local news anchors most of the time are repeating the national news when they can't find local stories. Most of the remote news crews were once Union and are now gone.

During the time slot used by local news broadcasts I'm watching PBS. I'm already searching blogs and YouTube for local video on my computer instead of watching television. The Internet provides weather reports too. I don't know what the local broadcasters have left to hold up against the Internet. I think they are in worse shape than newspapers. Popular shows can be watched at Hulu.com

Barack Obama said change is here. This change is bigger than just politics. We are about to usher in a whole new cultural structure, the likes of which we can't yet imagine. Biggest of the changes is perhaps that there may be no such thing as mass communication anymore. Sub-cultures will re-arrange under totally different flags.

Philosophies will shatter and pieces from different ideologies will combine into never before seen colors.

People will be different in unheard of ways, because they will have their own custom-designed preferences thanks to the Internet. Everyone will be a stranger to everyone else, so we will simply have to shed fear.

Methemphadvertising and the decline of the main-stream media.

Pew Internet research finds further evidence of main-stream media decline.

More people are now able to see media spin when they go online and watch political speeches from start to finish at YouTube, then share the video clips with their friends at MySpace and Facebook.

The “main-stream” media are paper publications, radio and television, all of which are limited by time and space. Because of these limitations, the main-stream media must only select portions of political speeches or news stories they deem “newsworthy.”

Consequently, they choose portions of information that serves their own agendas.

The main-stream media agenda is simply to survive in a competitive environment. They did that at first by trying to make friends with the largest portion of its audience.

Unfortunately, when you try to please as many people as possible, you wind up on the wrong side of all of them, because people more easily remember negative things that positive things. It’s just human behavior.

So the main-stream media chose to make friends with only audience members that could best help them survive, advertisers.

The main-stream became dependent on advertisers like Heroine ever since the late nineteenth century when newspapers could not longer just depend on their own sales revenue.

Cable television began as a non-advertising television medium. It was supposed to be the biggest threat to the broadcast networks in the late 1970’s and Ted Turner almost had ABC, CBS, and NBC completely over a barrel when he launched CNN. Cable was standing on only subscription revenues.

And cable television had no commercials, do you remember that? But low and behold, satellite television came along and cable had to become publicly traded on the stock market, and shareholders demanded growth and more money, so cable television buckled and started running television commercials. CNN, Fox News and other cable news networks are now no different than any of the broadcast networks because they too are addicted to Methemphadvertising.

The advertisers are of course, the drug dealers who make the networks do their bidding, or they hold back the “stuff” (advertising).

Now, Pew Internet Research has reported "A record-breaking 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others."

The broadcast, cable, radio, and print media are suffering from the addiction of advertising dollars as their only source of survival, and people are walking away because they are all tired of little sound bites and slogans.

There is no withdrawal from Methemphadvertising, only death.


PEW RESEARCH: The Internet and the 2008 Election

Springfield under siege of disinformation

Big Radio gets Big Jab from Feds

What do I mean by Big radio? There are four companies that own the most radio stations in the United States. Clear Channel, CBS Radio, and Citadel. For years, these companies have been giving exclusive air time to record production companies that pay them cash under the counter. This is called Payola.

Because record companies paid for extra air-time, what you have been listening to is not actually popular. It’s artificially popular. Most people think it is popular because of the mere fact that it plays on the radio so often. This is one example of how your choices have been manipulated. This is called Cultural Engineering.

You think you have choices, but do you really? Most people think that the United States political system has only Democrats and Republicans, but there are also the Libertarians, Greens, Communists, and any number of political parties in the U.S. It’s the American way. But the news media has avoided covering independent presidential candidates. Who is the current Green Party Candidate for President?

The Federal Communication Commission is going to settle with Clear Channel, CBS Radio and Citadel for a $12.5 million dollar fine and a requirement that these companies allow smaller record labels to air their music. But the damage is already done. There are countless artists out there who have struggled and faded into oblivion like smoldering ash floating up from a campfire, never having had a chance to be heard by a wider audience.

Now comes to juicy part. Who really owns our local radio stations?

Click here See the table with links and contact information

Notice that Clear Channel, Saga, and Midwest Family Broadcasting own the majority of radio stations that are the most commercially popular. Popular by mandate.

So, Springfield has 3 major corporations that own 14 commercial radio stations. Who’s your favorite band? What side of the political spectrum do you hear from most on talk radio?

Whose version of life are you living?

Local Talk Radio is Dead

I don't listen to commercial talk radio. I only listen to NPR. You can listen to BBC broadcasts if you go to bed around 8:00 and wake up at 2:00 a.m.


Forget about AM. And now that XM and Surius Satellite Radio networks are in the process of merging, Commercial FM will also fall into the abyss. So Support your local public broadcasting networks, including NPR.