Someone has touchy feelings:
In a radio interview last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) made some disparaging comments about pro-life conservatives, stating they had “no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
Those remarks drew the ire of conservative talk show host Sean Hannity, who on his Monday radio program declared he had enough and was abandoning his home state, where he hosts his widely syndicated radio show and his high-rated Fox News Channel television program.
Sean Hannity can take his staff and their votes and move south. He will not be missed.
Link is broken. Directs you back to the homepage here.
thanks. the link is fixed now.
It’s a time-honored wingnut publicity stunt. Limbaugh did it a couple of years ago, not that anyone gave a fuck.
Hey, there’s plenty of empty slots on the AM dial in Outer Dumbfuckistan, so Hannity will be welcome.
Of course, it all depends on what variety of random meaningless static you prefer to listen to.
YAY!!!
Good riddance to really bad, stupid, ignorant, bigoted, rubbish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know…ridding NY of Insannity could make Cuomo governor for life.
Glenn Beck and Rush used to broadcast from NYC too. No more.
NY seems exactly same.
Except it is likely they have a better mayor now. 😉
Speaking of others leaving outlets/platforms:
Ezra Klein Is Leaving The Washington Post
So who is left? Kliff, Sargent and Gellman? You’re right, this paper is dead.
I’m looking forward to what he does next. He wants to start a new media source of his own. Drilling down a couple of links and this shows up:
To me that sounds like news with a little more educational aspect. ( eg. Instead of reporting only “A said this/B said that” it might include info about how government is structured, where it is broken and how it works. )
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ezra-klein-leaving-washington-post-new-website
I also found Ezra to be more liberal in his earlier days. Not sure if it was the DC Bubble Culture, WaPo editors, or both, but I’m hoping his independence allows for more outspoken liberalism in the future as well.
Is anyone surprised the Post wouldn’t go for a proposal like that? Providing context, running factually based content, and practicing investigative journalism goes against pretty much everything the paper now stands for.
Cuomo’s rant started off as an attack on the lovers of assault weapons and wandered somewhere he clearly didn’t intend to go; he’s issued a clarification. Meanwhile, he’s also planning a $2 billion tax cut for Hannity and his friends, along with a $2 billion bond issue to outfit all our Excellent schools, including ever more charters no doubt, with laptops or something. Hannity might as well just go back to bashing liberals.
I’m sure there’s a reason that doesn’t have to do with IOKIYAR (because we know that Republicans are above reproach and always operate from the purest, noblest and most American of motives), but I seem to recall various statements over the years from elected officials in South Carolina, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi (probably others) that certain kinds of folks might not be welcome in those states.
I’m not sure what the difference is between what Cuomo said and what, say, Jesse Helms had to say some years ago, but those paragons of even-handedness at Fox will no doubt proffer their unassailable wisdom on the subject.
The nation waits with bated breath.
Does Hannity really believe New York will miss him? That his departure will be a blow to the state? He does, doesn’t he? Weird.
Except a chunk of the nation blames everything on ny and Yankee liberals. This will validate their world view and ignore the education system (at great expense) that produced Sean and the concentration of entrepreneuriial talent that enabled his riches
Sean Hannity is an asshole. But then, so is Andrew Cuomo. He shouldn’t have made such a comment.
In the radio industry, Hannity is a dead man walking, and he knows it. His ratings are down dramatically – so are those of Beck and Limbaugh, the other two huge contracts in the wingnut radio world, but Hannity has lost more audience than the other two by about a factor of two.
As with Beck and Limbaugh, Hannity snagged a huge contract a couple of years ago. His is with Cumulus, the nation’s second largest station owner after Clear Channel (which owns Limbaugh’s rights). Cumulus has about 500 stations now, a number of which are AM talk. In the process of getting those stations, Cumulus (which bought Citadel, which bought ABC radio) took on an enormous debt that it cannot possibly repay and that is going to come due. (That, too, is second only to Clear Channel, which is desperately trying to renegotiate a something like $120 billion debt that comes due in 2016 and is saddled with Limbaugh’s $20 million/year or so contract.)
Meanwhile, thanks to Sandra Fluke and efforts like StopRush, major advertisers are fleeing not only Limbaugh but all talk radio in droves, so as to avoid being associated with controversial content. Plus, the talk radio audience demographic is not only shrinking, it’s dying and aging out of the 25-54 male demographic that’s considered prime in advertising. That’s why you’re seeing operators like Clear Channel moving Limbaugh to weaker signals in markets like Los Angeles, and that’s why Hannity and other lesser hosts now have very few outlets other than the corporate-owned stations (eg Cumulus) that insist their local stations air the program. They sell the shows nationally now based on market clearances (mostly for their own stations), not ratings. And with impossible balloon payments on their debts coming up – the big, publicly traded radio companies are all essentially owned now by vulture capitalists like Bain and it’s every bit the Ponzi scheme that real estate was circa 2007 = Cumulus is going to do their best to try to get out of their contract with Hannity and dump him – at which point he’d nave very few stations left.
Beck is in the same bind, which is why you saw him set up his own distribution and go into online media when Fox dropped him. Limbaugh’s made his billions and doesn’t care – he’s 63 and can retire whenever he wants to. Hannity is stupider and more arrogant – he hasn’t prepared for any of this, and what I hear from radio insiders who know him is that he’s absolutely panicked about his future. And I’m sure he’s aware that he can save a lot of money moving his studios to Bumfuck Florida or Texas. (Someplace warm and cheap.) He’ll need the extra money. I doubt this has anything to o with Cuomo, and for the sake of publicity he’s using Cuomo’s comments to announce something he was already planning. His career is in deep trouble.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Thus ends your radio industry tutorial for today. 🙂
Thank you.