87 universities support 260 Republican radio stations that deny global warming
If fossil fuel interests would pay $1000 for a one hour radio infomercial denying global warming and supporting a political party that obstructs climate action, those 260 stations would be worth $1BIL/YEAR FREE, paid for by radio advertisers and endorsed by the universities listed below, most of which are publicly funded.
The urgency of climate change makes it imperative for those schools to take their mission statements seriously and find apolitical alternatives for broadcasting sports.
The 260 radio stations counted below headlined Rush Limbaugh. Many other state funded schools broadcast sports on other Republican radio stations.
For 30 years Republican talk radio has played a significant part in enabling denial by politicians and delaying US action to reduce carbon emissions. Limbaugh and other talkers had a major role in selling the 2009 East Anglia email hoax called ‘Climategate’, that climate scientist Michael Mann says delayed climate action for years.
In exchange for small licensing fees the radio stations use the school logos and reputation to improve their community credibility and attract advertisers.
Radio licensing revenue is a minor part of overall sports licensing revenues. In 2013/14, a radio station would pay $1500 to Westwood One/Dial Global for a championship NCAA basketball game. How much of that goes to the university? Details of licensing agreements between state funded schools and licensing companies are usually kept confidential, even from school administration.
Our schools need to rework their licensing contracts. If there is a penalty, perhaps donors can be found to make up the difference.
If the Klu Klux Klan bought the radio station your state university broadcasts sports on would it continue to support that station?
Below are 88 universities/colleges that help 260 ex-Limbaugh stations attack public education and teachers while spreading global warming denial, racism, misogyny, and lies.
BY STATE:
LIST OF UNIVERSITIES AND THE NUMBER OF RADIO STATIONS THAT FEATURED RUSH LIMBAUGH THAT THEY ENDORSE AND SUPPORT
ALABAMA 8 Auburn 3, Alabama 2, Southern Alabama 2, Troy 1
ARIZONA 1 Arizona St. 1
ARKANSAS 3 Arkansas 3
CALIFORNIA 5 San Jose State 2, USC 2, Fresno St. 1
COLORADO 3 Air Force 2, 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 3 Wisconsin 3
87 UNIVERSITIES BY NAME
Air Force 2
Alabama 2
Arizona St. 1
Arizona 1
Arkansas 3
Army 1
Auburn 3
Baylor 1
Boise St. 4
Boston College 1
Bowling Green 1
Central Florida 1
Clemson 2
Colorado State 1
Connecticut 1
Dayton 1
Duke 3
East Carolina 2
Florida 10
Florida St. 4
Fresno St.
Georgia 7
Georgia Southern 2
Georgia Tech 5
Idaho 3
Illinois 7
Indiana 1
Iowa 4
Iowa St. 1
Kansas 1
Kansas St. 2
Kentucky 1
La.-Monroe 1
Louisville 2
LSU 2
Marshall 1
Maryland 2
Memphis 3
Miami 2
Michigan 7
Michigan St. 11
Minnesota 4
Mississippi 2
Mississippi St. 3
Missouri 6
Nebraska 6
Nevada 1
New Mexico 2
New Mexico St. 1
North Carolina 8
North Carolina State 3
Notre Dame 6
Ohio St. 6
Oklahoma 1
Oklahoma St. 3
Oral Roberts
Oregon 5
Oregon St. 7
Penn St. 11
Pittsburgh 2
Purdue 4
Rutgers 1
San Jose State 2
Seton Hall 1
South Carolina 2
South Florida 2
Southern Miss 1
Southern Alabama 2
Syracuse 6
TCU 1
Temple 1
Tennessee 4
Texas 1
Texas A&M 9
Texas Tech 4
Toledo 1
Troy 1
UCF 2
USC 2
Utah St. 1
Virginia 1
Virginia Tech 5
West Virginia 1
Western Michigan 1
Washington 5
Washington St. 1
Wichita St. 1
Wisconsin 3
Xavier 1
Republican talk radio is worth $4.6 Billion FREE to the GOP paid for by national and local advertisers
If the GOP would pay $1000 for a 1 hour radio advertisement:
x 15 hours/day = $15,000/station/day
x 5 days = $75,000/station/week
x 52 weeks =$3.9MIL/station/year
x 1200 stations = $18MIL/DAY
x 5 days/week = $90MIL/WEEK
x 52 weeks = $4.68BIL/YEAR
How does that compare with "Money in Politics?"
WHAT REPUBLICAN RADIO STATIONS DO:
WHY REPUBLICAN TALK RADIO IS SO EFFECTIVE FOR SELLING LIES AND PROPAGANDA
IT IS A MONOPOLY: 95% of political talk radio is Republican. In most parts of the country there are no free alternatives for politics while driving or working. The monopoly actively reduces the radio stations available to liberal and moderate talk show hosts. There is no significant talk radio competition to challenge its messaging dominance. The loudest advocates for free market capitalism hide behind and work for a monopoly.
IT IS LOUD AND EVERYWHERE: More than 1000 radio stations, an average of 20 per state, reach 50 million Americans every week. Talk radio stations may be the only sources for local news, traffic, weather, and sports in an area. They may be the loudest stations in national emergencies.
IT IS COORDINATED: On important issues at critical times, all Republican radio stations will pump out the same talking points. National and local GOP and related think tanks supply material, topics, and guests coordinated for national and local political objectives. Republican radio’s more visible little brother, Fox ‘News’, also helps coordination.
IT SHORT-CIRCUITS DEMOCRACY WITH ALTERNATE REALITIES: Republican think tanks monitor local and national events and sentiment and combine their radio advantage with PR campaigns to short circuit the fact-based discussions that a democracy depends on for solutions and reform. Long term unchallenged repetition on a national level has distorted important issues and makes fact-based dialogue on climate change, health care, racism, immigration, and gun control practically impossible.
IT CONSTRUCTS AND DIRECTS MADE-TO-ORDER CONSTITUENCIES: Well-timed messaging is used to motivate public outrage, fear, and ‘concern’, largely based on exaggeration, distortion and disinformation. Timing and coordination and volume allow minority Republican radio constituencies to be represented as ‘popular opinion’ (eg. Tea Party). They are used to enable or intimidate politicians and media and push legislation. Republican radio is the loudest political correctness cop and censor-by-threat in the US.
Rush Limbaugh and other major talkers set the national tone but can also focus considerable attention to a local level when they name names and places and repeat them a few times.
The local talker’s job depends on following the party line and that of national talkers like Limbaugh. They and their callers reinforce previous messaging from national talkers and can play a significant part in local politics. On a major station, staff and talkers may have close connections to Republican elected officials, like WIS governor Scott Walker and Milwaukee talker Charlie Sykes, as demonstrated in the Reindfleisch emails.
IT DOMINATES MESSAGING IN THE US: There is no louder buzz machine on the planet. A Democratic president only has the bully pulpit when he’s on it. When 400 talkers reinforce each other with the same talking points and memes from 1000 radio stations they can drown out truth and common sense. And they can keep it going as long as necessary.
IT ENABLES AND PUSHES CORPORATE MEDIA TO PORTRAY THE INTERESTS OF A SMALL MINORITY AS MAINSTREAM: It excuses racism, misogyny, homophobia, and ignorance to make them ‘acceptable’. It enables vast amounts of denial and hypocrisy. Republican radio provides the groundwork repetition for everything Republican.
IT‘S TALKERS ARE UNCHALLENGED: While liberal talkers encourage opposing vieszpoints, Republican talkers seldom take callers that will contradict them. They’re paired with call screeners for protection and use specialized software to prioritize preferred callers, including paid callers. Since they can’t be challenged in real time they’re always right, and lies sell better when delivered with unchallenged certitude.
PAID CALLERS are sometimes used to inject rumors, reinforce propaganda, and praise the hosts. And why wouldn’t foreign governments try to call those talk shows too?
IT’S PRACTICALLY FREE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: Advertisers pay station operating costs and donor-supported think tanks supply much of the propaganda and coordination. The Republican political money advantage in TV advertising is overvalued when compared with their radio advantage.
IT IS ENDORSED BY HUNDREDS OF PUBLICLY FUNDED SCHOOLS: Many Republican radio stations broadcast professional, college, and high school sports. The association brings them commmunity credibility and advertising dollars while they attack teachers and public education, and spread global warming denial, racism, and misogyny.
IT IS USUALLY REPUBLICAN FRIENDLY: The Republican Party and its politicians and organizations expect support and cooperation from Republican radio talkers. Republican politicians expect major corruption and incompetence to be ignored or excused while Democrats should expect minor mistakes to be distorted and exaggerated.
IT BEATS TV, INTERNET, AND OTHER MEDIA FOR SELLING LIES: Other media leave a record that can be examined and challenged and have to at least pretend to present other vieszpoints. You can easily turn the channel or the page to find other sources for politics. Corporate media is more significant for what it leaves out, and the internet is still fairly democratic, with many choices. Republican radio is easier than TV to control at a local level.
IT’S ALEC’S BEST FRIEND: The success of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) in electing candidates and passing and stopping legislation on the local level corresponds directly with the rise of Republican radio. So does the record historic rise in political partisanship and gridlock.
IT’S INVISIBLE TO DEMOCRATS AND LIBERALS – THEY DON’T LISTEN TO IT: The Democratic Party as well as liberal/progressive/democratic organizations and their supporters are regularly caught by surprise because they evaluate their strategies and the failings of their representatives as if Republican radio doesn’t exist. Most concerned citizens and activists are unaware of how much one radio station can trash their candidates, distort their values, negate their activism, and minimize their protests.
THERE IS NO WRITTEN RECORD OF REPUBLICAN RADIO: Until now there was no way to search, read, and analyze what Republican radio pumps out (see RECORD AND TRANSCRIBE TALK RADIO). Republican politicians and candidates make regular appearances on Republican radio and can say just about anything without fear of fact-checking.
Automated recording, transcription, and analysis of billions of words of political talk radio is possible
In 2019 MIT Media Lab researchers developed a prototype for large scale automated recording, transcription, and analysis of talk radio (2.8 billion words of automatically transcribed speech from 284,000 hours of talk radio). RadioTalk: a large-scale corpus of talk radio transcripts.
Artificial intelligence now makes digitizing and analyzing large samples of political talk radio much easier.
TOOLS FOR MONITORING TALK RADIO, IDENTIFYING ADVERTISERS:
1) Record
There are a number of recording apps that enable recording of radio streams. Some allow recording of multiple streams at the same time, as well as pre scheduling and editing.
2) Transcribe
MIT developed a prototype using artificial intelligence to record, transcribe, and analyze large amounts of talk radio that can be adapted. For targeted analysis of what local radio stations are saying there are various transcription services available. Otter.ai offers some free transcription.
3) Text Analysis
Various software and websites, some free, can be found to analyze transcriptions, such as for word and phrase frequency. Online-Utility.org is one example.
4) Search for “DOT” to identify advertisers
Live recordings of radio streams include advertisements and most announce web sites and contact emails transcribed as “so-and-so-company dot com”. Most advertisers can be found by searching for the word “dot”.
5) Contact
Most websites provide phone numbers and email addresses specifically for contact by potential customers. Complaint emails may get further than a phone call and leaves a lasting written record for employees to pass around. It may also be easier for sympathetic staff to pass on a comment to a boss in email form than personally.
DON'T LET REPUBLICAN RADIO LIE ABOUT YOUR CANDIDATES AND ISSUES
As elections approach, friendly interviews with Republican candidates, their aides, and think tank-sponsored guests become more common on Republican radio. They can say just about anything they want because Democrats and liberals don’t listen.
Talk radio is free advertising for the Republican Party and they feel comfortable saying things they wouldn’t on other media. Their radio appearances will provide more examples of global warming denial, bigotry, and lies, which can be useful in advertising, letters to the editor, and debates.
Applications are available which allow you to schedule your computer to simultaneously record multiple radio streams.
Improvements in transcription software and reduction in prices of transcription services ($5 – $10/hr) make it possible to get a good idea of what they’re saying and how often they’re saying it, without the pain of actually listening to it.
With a basic text application the transcriptions can be searched for points of interest. When the name of a Democratic candidate appears it is likely that she is being lied about and attacked with direction from local or national GOP-friendly think tanks
Original recordings can be used for verification.
WHAT ARE THEY SAYING ABOUT:
Your representatives and candidates?
Global warming?
Health care?
War?
Energy policy?
Environmental regulation?
Racism?
Sexism?
Wall street regulation?
Net neutrality?
Censorship?
Immigration?
Abortion?
Supreme court candidates?
Drug policy?
Media reform?
Election reform?
Voter suppression?
Gun control?
Public education?
Unions?
Teachers?
You?
TALK RADIO MYTH 1
"Republican radio’s primary purpose is to sell product for advertisers."
Wrong.
Republican radio spreads disinformation and outrage to convince Americans to hate other Americans and to act and vote against their own best interests.
Republican radio’s main purpose is to sell and excuse:
war
global warming denial
deregulation- wall street, banking, environmental, media, etc.
tax breaks for the 1%
privatization of the commons and the public sector
excuses, rationalizations, distortions, diversions
Republican politicians
unqualified Republican judges
lies and distortions used to swiftboat Democrats and liberals, short circuit democracy, and obstruct reforms
TALK RADIO MYTH 2
"Republican radio’s popularity and success reflects American demand for it. Liberal radio fails because no one listens to it and it can’t compete."
Wrong.
When Ronald Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Republicans bought up hundreds of radio stations and subsidizied talkers like Rush Limbaugh. The Fairness Doctrine would have prevented the levels of unchallenged lying and distortion used so successfully today to create alternative realities and made-to-order constituencies.
One of Republican radio’s early successes was the media deregulation that allowed consolidation of Republican radio ownership to fewer companies/owners.
Liberal radio talkers have shown they can compete on an even playing field and even beat the main Republican talkers. That is why the Republican radio monopoly controls most of the loudest radio stations and works hard to limit direct competition by liberal talkers. Repulican hosts use call screeners to protect them from challenges to their lies. Republican radio can’t handle the truth.
The argument that 95% of the people who would listen to talk radio prefer the hate and disinformation that the Republican radio monopoly is using to destroy American democracy is an insult to Americans.
With a 20-1 monopoly, expecting liberal talk radio to compete with conservative talk radio is like expecting the local ‘mom and pop’ to compete with WallMart.
THE US ARMY WOULD CALL IT PSYOPS
Here is what the US Army Psyops Manual says about using radio for propaganda (Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures 12/2003 – available online):
Repetition is necessary for oral learning: therefore, key themes, phrases, or slogans should be repeated to ensure the TA (target audience) gets the desired message.
(Talk radio is much better than TV, print, and internet for doing just that.)
According to the PSYOPS manual, advantages of radio include:
Emotional Power: A skilled radio announcer can exert tremendous influence on the listener simply with pitch, resonance, inflection, or timing. and The emotional tone conveyed by the voice may influence the listener more than the logic of arguments
(Or, as one famous host would call it, “talent on loan from god”.)
Wide coverage: Radio programs can reach members of large and varied audiences simultaneously. and Since radio can reach mass TAs quickly, radio is useful for all types of PSYOPs.
Speed: Radio programs can be quickly prepared for broadcast. Speed is important when attempting to capitalize on targets of opportunity.
(Perfect for spinning and distorting breaking news.)
Ease of perception: Radio requires little or no effort to visualize the radio message. Illiteracy does not prevent the listener from forming his individual image as he listens.
87 UNIVERSITIES BY STATE AND HOW MUCH THEY'RE WORTH TO STATE GOP
EACH WEEK!
The number after the state is the number of ex-Limbaugh radio stations in those states endorsed by the listed universities.
The $ figure after the state is the value of Republican propaganda those universities endorse every week at $1000/hr x 15 hrs/day x 5 days = $75,000/WEEK/station
Total 260 x $75,000 = $19,125,000/WEEK x 52 = $1BIL/ YEAR of Republican messaging endorsed by these 87 universities.
ALABAMA 8 $600,000
ARIZONA 1 $75,000
ARKANSAS 3 $225,000
CALIFORNIA 5 $375,000
COLORADO 3 $225,000
CONNECTICUT 1 $75,000
FLORIDA 20 $1,500,000
GEORGIA 14 $1,050,000
IDAHO 7 $525,000
ILLINOIS 7 $525,000
INDIANA 11 $825,000
IOWA 5 $375,000
KANSAS 4 $300,000
KENTUCKY 3 $225,000
LOUSIANA 3 $225,000
MARYLAND 2 $150,000
MASSACHUSETTS 1 $75,000
MICHIGAN 19 $1,425,000
MINNESOTA 4 $300,000
MISSISSIPPI 6 $450,000
MISSOURI 6 $450,000
NEBRASKA 6 $450,000
NEVADA 1 $75,000
NEW JERSEY 2 $150,000
NEW MEXICO 3 $225,000
NEW YORK 7 $525,000
NORTH CAROLINA 16 $1,200,000
OHIO 10 $750,000
OKLAHOMA 5 $375,000
OREGON 12 $900,000
PENNSYLVANIA 14 $1,050,000
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 $300,000
TENNESSEE 7 $525,000
TEXAS 16 $1,200,000
UTAH 1 $75,000
VIRGINIA 6 $450,000
WASHINGTON 6 $450,000
WEST VIRGINIA 2 $150,000
WISCONSIN 3 $225,000
Contact: badradios @ gmail.com