Sad state of affairs on Boston radio. The only political talk stations on AM, in other words those where older listeners gravitate, poison the airwaves with far right wing nonsense.
Anyone under 50 years old may not even know that AM still exists! Once-powerful WRKO ‘boasts’ inflammatory nonsense daily from Jeff Kuhner and Howie Carr, both who love degrading women and various ethnic groups while and scaring the low-information types with stories about ISIS, liberal brainwashing of public education, etc.
They both refer to Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” and often play sound effects of whooping Native Americans. No surprise that Trump has recently been trumpeting the “Pocahontas” reference; he has appeared as a guest on both shows as the hosts swooned over every utterance while practically stating “Vote for Trump or they’ll take away your guns.” Carr even sells T-shirts in the Boston Herald that poke fun at Warren’s Native American roots.
I am certainly a defender of our First Amendment rights, but other local and national talk hosts have lost much in terms of money and career for having spoken similarly racist remarks. I can cite Don Imus, Opie and Anthony, and Jay Severin. My hope is that Kuhner’s and Carr’s approach will continue to fall on dying and deaf ears.
A once-great and popular talk station, with intelligent, balanced hosts like David Brudnoy, Gene Burns and Jerry Williams, WRKO has to fill much airtime with brokered paid for programming and has sunk to a 2.0 audience share, 20th place in the Boston market and miles behind sports talk. Even public radio, country music and classical music have more listeners!
One brief breath of fresh air is a weekly oldies program on WRKO that brings back memories of the days when AM actually was pleasant and didn’t pollute the airwaves.
ROBERT DE MASSE
Groton