roundtable: ABC Cancels Jim Hightower

roundtable: ABC Cancels Jim Hightower

ABC Cancels Jim Hightower

Rick Crawford (crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu)
Tue, 26 Sep 1995 13:55:04 -0700 

Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 13:55:04 -0700
From: crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu (Rick Crawford)
Message-Id: <9509262055.AA13130@ivy.cs.ucdavis.edu>
To: cemnet@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu, roundtable@cni.org
Subject: ABC Cancels Jim Hightower


From: gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu (Gary Chapman)


The 21st Century Project
LBJ School of Public Affairs
University of Texas at Austin
September 26, 1995

Hightower Radio Silenced

The Populist Voice of America Off the Air

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The ABC Radio network has cancelled Jim Hightower's weekend radio talk
show, effective immediately, according to Hightower Radio. Hightower,
former editor of The Texas Observer and two-term Texas Agriculture
Commissioner, has acquired a national reputation as a progressive
populist who criticizes corporations and pillories plutocrats in both
parties. Although the show was contracted to run at least through
November, Hightower Radio found out September 25 that ABC had taken
Hightower off the air, effective immediately.

As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon wrote in their Media Beat column the
week of September 21, Hightower had built a following on 150 stations
during the past 16 months but was hobbled by a lack of marketing from
the ABC network and undermined by right-wing management at ABC
mega-stations in New York and Los Angeles.

"Listeners like the Hightower show," respected radio consultant Jon
Sinton, who helped launch the program, was quoted in the column. "But it
makes big companies nervous."

Efforts were underway to get Hightower's talk show picked up by another
network or syndicate, perhaps Westwood One, CBS or Sony Worldwide.
(Meanwhile, his two-minute radio commentaries are heard daily on 70
stations.)

"The Hightower termination contradicts talk radio's claim of being
America's 'national town hall,'" Cohen and Solomon wrote. "Something's
wrong with a medium that can find so much room for Rush Limbaugh and
dozens of Limbaugh clones and wannabees -- but no space for the
one-of-a- kind Jim Hightower."

If you are a Hightower fan, the most important thing you can do is to
contact your local station, listed below, that carried Hightower. Urge
them to either pick up Hightower's show if it becomes syndicated or at
least run his two-minute commentaries. You can also contact the
president of ABC Radio Networks, which made the decision to end the
Hightower talk show.

Write to Robert Callahan, President, ABC Radio Networks
125 West End Ave
New York, NY 10023
fax: 212-456-5705
ph: 212-456-5100
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You might also write letters to the editor and take other action to
publicize this effort to mute one of the few progressive voices in
mainstream radio.

(Hightower's column will be carried in the Progressive Populist
newspaper, which will debut in November.) For a list of stations that
carried Hightower Radio, check the Progressive Populist Home Page at
http:www.eden.com/~reporter.

Contact Hightower at Jhightower@aol.com.

To get a free sample of the Progressive Populist, contact
reporter@eden.com.
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THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST
Jim Cullen, Editor
P.O. Box 43509
Austin, TX 78745
512-447-8201

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