Rush Move To FM Reported

Rush Limbaugh is moving back to FM in Philly where he lived through most of the ’90s  if reports are accurate

It has been confirmed that Premiere Media, which syndicates Rush, will be pulling him off WPHT at 1210AM, which carried him since 1999 when he left WWDB on 96.5 FM, which is now the hip-hop station WRDW.
The reports say that Rush will be moving to 106.9 FM, which had been the local Family Radio station, a network that has fallen on hard times since its owner predicted that the world would end last May 21, and has since been acquired by Merlin Media.
A move to FM means no more annoying static from cell towers while motoring and no more pre-emption from Phillies games.
Michael Smerconish is slated to replace Rush on WPHT, which is a bit of demotion as he will no longer be the station’s evening drive-time guy. 
The reports say that 106.9 will also be carrying former WPHT stars Glen Beck and Sean Hannity.
It sounds like the end of WPHT as we know it.
I think Rush feels fine.

End Of The Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News purchased for $562 million in 2006 was announced sold yesterday, April 2, to the Democrat boss of New Jersey for $55 million.

So, in another six years will the sale price be $5.3 million?

Frankly, one doubts it. One expects it to be killed shortly after Nov. 6 as the only the rationale for that outlay of money is as a sneaky campaign contribution to Barack Obama and the local Democrat parties.
And one doubts that even the Philadelphia and New Jersey unions have that much dough to throw down that rat hole for much time beyond the election.
The new owners, headed by George Norcross — who has been described as the most powerful Democrat in New Jersey — are solely trying to influence the senior citizens who still get the paper to do the crossword puzzle and the sudoku.
They are not going to try to expand its readership by even pretending to be fair. Today’s web headlines, for instance, include “89,000 poor Pa. kids slashed from Medicaid” and “Secret reports on priests’ perversions”.
The only thing more blatant would be to hire the now out-of-work Keith Olbermann.
In the words of Dr. McCoy, “he’s dead, Jim.”
And Norcross is going to find that he has wasted his money even if his intent is to use the broadsheet as a suicide fire ship. Parody makes for bad propaganda.
The paper was purchased for $130 million in 2010 by a hedge fund which scavenged what it could and has now dumped the hulk.
End Of The Inquirer
End Of The Inquirer

Olbermann Out Again

Keith Olbermann, the one-time MSNBC answer to Rush Limbaugh, has been dismissed from his anchor post at Current TV, the progressive, unwatched media company founded by Al Gore, according to the New York Times.

He held the post for less than a year. What next? A news broadcast from his basement on the local cable community channel? Random postings on YouTube?
Meanwhile, the Sandra Fluke controversy has sent Rush Limbaugh’s ratings through the roof.
Olbermann Out Again

New York Times Finally Agrees Rush Is Right

New York Times Finally Agrees Rush Is Right — Sunday’s, March 18, The New York Times Magazine carried the article “Why Some Countries Go Bust” by Adam Davidson which concluded that societies only become rich when the residents get strong property rights.

 
It was almost as though Davidson was channelling Rush Limbaugh’s The True Story of Thanksgiving that Limbaugh tells annually.
 
Maybe there is hope.
 
 
 
New York Times Finally Agrees Rush Is Right
New York Times Finally Agrees Rush Is Right

Bristol Wants To Know When O Will Call Her

Bristol Wants To Know — Bristol Palin is asking when Obama is going to call her out of solidarity and support as he did Sandra Fluke.

 
She wrote on her blog:
 


Dear President Obama,

 
You don’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next.  You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha.  After all, you didn’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:
 
“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said.  “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”
 
And I totally agree your kids should be able to speak their minds and engage the culture.  I look forward to seeing what good things Malia and Sasha end up doing with their lives.
 
But here’s why I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung.  Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family.  He’s made fun of my brother because of his Down’s Syndrome. He’s said I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.”  (In a classy move, he did this while his producers put up the cover of my book, which tells about the forgiveness and redemption I’ve found in God after my past – very public — mistakes.)
 
If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you’d return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you.
 
She has some other things to say and they can be found here.
 
 
Bristol Wants To Know When O Will Call Her
Bristol Wants To Know -- Bristol Palin is asking when Obama is going to call her out of solidarity and support as he did Sandra Fluke.

Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke And True Misogyny

Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke And True Misogyny — Sandra Fluke is a 30-year-old activist who testified before Congress that the Catholic Church should be made to pay for the birth control of the women of Georgetown — which believe it or not is a Catholic school. She said this commodity costs the poor women of Georgetown $1,000 a year.

 
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been innocently wondering what kind of a woman would need $1,000 a year for birth control.
 
This has outraged — the word should probably be all caps but for aesthetic reasons I’ll leave it lower case — the usual suspects who have demanded in their tolerant open-minded fashion that Limbaugh be silenced forever.
 
Now ladies, before you start throwing around words like “misogyny” think real hard about this: 
 
Larry Flynt and Al Goldstein are pornographers who have influenced our society far greater than most can imagine. Their publications have featured the vilest and most degrading images of the female sex. They have horribly abused the women in their personal lives, which in Flynt’s case includes his daughter.
 
Whose side would they take in this debate? Limbaugh’s or Ms. Fluke’s?
 
Whose side would Bill “Better Put Some Ice On That” Clinton take? 
 
Do you really want to be on the same side with this type of men?
Rush Limbaugh, Sandra Fluke And True Misogyny

Rick Hits Big Time: NY Times In Total Slime Mode

Rick Hits Big Time — Rick Hits Big TimeReader Tom C reports that today’s New York Times, that dying dinosaur soon to be owned by the Mexicans (Todas las noticias de que está en condiciones de imprimir. Viva Carlos Slim, Si) is carrying four pieces today, Feb. 18, savaging Rick Santorum — including two on the op-ed page.

Wow, it’s almost like he was Ronald Reagan or something.

Go Rick.

A Pennsylvanian for president.

Ed Rendell Media Mogul Has Problem

Ed Rendell Media Mogul Has Problem

By Chris Freind

Famed political strategist James Carville once referred to Pennsylvania as two major cities with Alabama in between. What an insult to Alabama.

The folks in the nation’s fifth-largest state – all of them – are the backwards ones, the sad result of refusing to hold their leaders accountable for broken campaign promises and abject failures. All the while, their neighboring states – AKA “the competition” – continue to make gains at Pennsylvania’s expense.

Ohio and West Virginia are successfully courting natural
gas and oil companies, which are beginning to exit Pennsylvania.
Indiana is thriving after enacting comprehensive statewide school choice
and becoming a Right To Work state, where compulsory unionism is no
required as a condition of employment.

New Jersey (yes, Jersey!)
can woo companies across the river because of faith that a real leader,
Chris Christie, is righting the ship. Everyone else on the planet can
buy liquor easier and cheaper than Pennsylvanians. And corruption, both
criminal and institutionalized, remains rampant, killing optimism and
trampling the hope that you can beat City Hall.

From Ed Rendell
to Tom Corbett (is there a difference?), a lack of leadership has left
Pennsylvania on the precipice, its citizens staring into the abyss of
permanent mediocrity, paralyzed by fear to take the risks necessary to
forge ahead. Such a malaise is anathema to employers looking for
economic stability, a less hostile atmosphere and a better educational
system.

While that lack of leadership is inexcusable, there is
another, even more important factor as to why the state finds itself in
such a precarious situation: a media that has sold its soul, forsaking
its most basic mission of holding everyone accountable, with a “no
sacred cows” approach. For far too long, stories that needed to be told
were relegated to the dustbin. And unsavory politicians and business
leaders counted on that. Without an aggressive press, it was, and
remains, the Wild West where bad guys operate with impunity.

There is no better example of the media’s fall from grace than that of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Once a paper of national significance that took a bulldog approach to
its reporting, it has since become a shell of its former self, an
also-ran full of AP feeds and local fluff stories of virtually no
interest.

The Inky really jumped the tracks  when it was “led”
by Brian Tierney, who, along with investors, paid over half a billion
for the paper (and the Daily News) in 2006.

Mired in debt,
Tierney did the unthinkable – he approached then-Gov. Rendell for a
taxpayer-funded bailout to keep the papers afloat in 2009, a story that
Freindly Fire broke ( http://freindlyfirezone.com/home/item/43-possible-inquirer-bailout-draws-ire
) and was picked up by the Wall Street Journal in its harshly-worded
editorial “Bad News In Philadelphia – The Worst Bailout Idea So Far:
Newspapers.”

WSJ Link

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353263226537457.html

Predictably,
Rendell was ready and willing to lend that helping hand. But as
negative fallout for the bailout plan grew, the deal fell apart and the
papers filed for bankruptcy.

Despite what common sense
unquestionably tells us – that a taxpayer-funded newspaper would in fact
be an “adjunct of the state,” as the WSJ so adroitly described it – the
players in that ill-fated bailout attempt saw nothing wrong with their
actions.

Thankfully, Tierney is out of the picture, having lost
the papers to an investor group who held much of the original debt. But
incomprehensibly, the situation has come full circle. Now the current
owners want out, and it has been reported that none other than Ed
Rendell has been approached to put together an investor group to
possibly buy the papers.

Really? Ed Rendell? How is that even remotely possible?

Where
is the journalistic integrity in working with the very man who stood
cocked, ready to unleash millions in taxpayer funds to bail out an
“independent” media entity? It’s no secret that it has become
increasingly difficult for papers to make a profit in the age of The New
Media, but having Rendell as your “Go-To” man underscores just how
desperate the situation has become.

Taking marching orders from elected officials destroys the very essence of being a journalist and jeopardizes the unique constitutional protections afforded to media members. Sure, Ed Rendell is a private citizen now, but his mentality – how he sees the role of the government working hand-in-hand with the media – has undoubtedly not changed.

The last thing the region
needs is an investor group led by political insiders and
ideologically-supercharged individuals with aggressive personal agendas.
As painful as it would be for the thousands of hard-working folks at
the those newspapers, it would be better for the entire entity to close
its doors than be associated with folks who may, at any given time, make
a pitch for public financing.

And while past performance is not indicative of future results, it’s a damn good bet.

Better
to have no paper at all than one that prostrates itself at the feet of
the very people it purports to objectively cover. And since the
Philadelphia newspapers have been anything but a watchdog over the last
six years, churning out less than a handful of quality investigations,
the bad guys would see virtually no difference, since they’re not
exactly sweating investigative reporters knocking on their doors.

But the behavior of the Inquirer’s
ownership should come as no surprise, given that it recently accepted a
$2.9 million loan from the City of Philadelphia to assist the company
move to a new headquarters. Yes, the same city, the same Mayor and the
same City Council that the newspapers are supposed to be objectively
covering. Is nothing scared anymore?

Where The Media Went Wrong

The
sad reality is that The Fourth Estate has abdicated its sacred
responsibility of keeping American institutions honest and true. No
longer respected as the entity which holds feet to the fire and follows
investigations wherever they may lead, the American media has instead
become part and parcel of the Establishment. Too many journalists play
the “go-along, get-along” game – some because it’s easy, others because
they want to be liked, still others who are afraid they will lose
“access” if they ask the tough questions.

These people have
forgotten that their profession does not lend itself to having
“friends,” since nothing and no one should ever be off the table. The
result of these close alliances is blatant conflicts of interest, both
personal and professional. Once that line is crossed, it is nearly
impossible to return.

No medium is immune from this malady. Those
in television, radio, newspaper and internet are all complicit. As an
entity, the media has fallen down on its most basic journalistic
responsibilities, losing its integrity, and ultimately its credibility,
along the way.

Consequently, the public’s view of the media is at
an historic low. And while complaints abound that the media is biased,
which to a certain extent it is, this is but a symptom of a much greater
illness. A slant towards liberalism or conservatism is wrong, to be
sure, but inherent laziness and, by extension, incompetence, are the
first problems that must be rectified. Competence and vision will trump
bias every time.

Resurrecting the media’s image is a Herculean
task. And when the free press reaches the point where it is no longer
believed, it stands on the edge of becoming completely irrelevant.

Whether
it is nauseating nonstop coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral
procession or feel-good fluff stories in our nation’s pre-eminent
newspapers, the lack of hard-hitting investigative reporting and
aggressive interviews with top national and international leaders is
appalling. Producers and editors are constantly looking over their
shoulders at the competition, choosing to push out content to be like
“every other station,” passing on golden opportunities to be different,
to be journalists – to be leaders.

These people spend more time trying to keep their jobs than actually doing them.

There
is a certain irony here. If media executives produced the quality work
that the American people expect, their ratings would skyrocket, and
advertisers would pay a premium. The biggest myth being propagated about
the bankruptcy of media companies is that they are victims of the
economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

They are victims of their own ineptitude.

Americans
still have an unquenchable thirst for the news, but they are
increasingly tuning out the mainstream media because the content is
utterly lacking of substance.

The solution is simple – it’s just
not easy. Nothing and no one should be off the table. Not politicians,
government officials, businessmen, media personalities, sports stars,
nor celebrities. With no agenda except the truth, the media should
pursue stories with no boundaries and no restrictions.

Americans
don’t gravitate to question marks, but exclamation points. It’s time to
put the exclamation point back in the American press, not through new
technologies and gimmicks, but by pursuing the only thing that matters:
the truth.

As the voice in the classic baseball movie Field Of
Dreams commanded, “Build it and they will come.” In the same way, if the
media gets off its duff and starts producing content worthy of the
world’s best press, readers and viewers will come – in unprecedented
numbers.

Unfortunately, if Ed Rendell takes over Philadelphia’s newspapers, the ballpark will be empty before the new game even begins.

 

Ed Rendell Media Mogul Has Problem

Rendell Inquirer Rescue Attempt

Rendell Inquirer Rescue Attempt — The denizens of the Philadelphia Inquirer are wishin’ and hopin’ and, well not prayin’ of course, that their sinking ship is purchased by a group of city business leaders organized by famous Philadelphia sports fan Ed Rendell who one-time chaired the Democrat National Committee and was once our governor.

Well, I’m praying for their success! Democrat money should be thrown down Democrat rat holes!

Of course, one kind of wonders why Ed Snider is allegedly a party to this. Maybe it’s a Francisco Anconia-type of ploy.

Rendell Inquirer Rescue Attempt

Old Media Up To The Neck In The Tarpit

The old media has been slowly sinking in the tarpit and it appears that point has arrived at which the sticky stuff is to their neck.

In the case of the New York Times, it might that about the only thing above surface is its piggish nostrils.

The Gray Lady lost $39.7 million in 2011 compared with a $107.7 million profit from the previous year.

I have mixed feelings about the demise of the dinosaurs. While the print media has not had true dissenters of any significance from the philosophy of the country club elites as reflected by the Democrat Party, there are many, many reporters — and editors — with integrity and a sense of fair play and who took their vocations very seriously. I feel for them along with the working stiffs in the press rooms and in front of composing screens and behind the wheels of delivery vehicles.

But the ugly truth is that while inky newsprint may have been the most efficient means of disseminating timely information for the last 200 years or so, it is no longer by far.

And so the wheel must turn.

In related news, Procter & Gamble — which is described as the “world’s largest marketeer” — is laying off 1,600 staffers because it has determined that Facebook and Google can do better than traditional advertising media.