Live and local

Adam Reilly reports on Paul La Camera’s ongoing campaign to transform WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) into more of a local news force.

One of the initiatives Reilly mentions — a newsmagazine show to be called “Radio Boston,” hosted by former WCVB-TV (Channel 5) reporter David Boeri — won’t debut for another couple of months, but it already has an online presence. It’s supposed to be a “weekly show about the life of the city, its suburbs, and its people.” Well, that does cover just about everything.

The old argument against doing a show like “Radio Boston” was that there’s no such thing as appointment listening on the radio — if the program were scheduled for, say, Saturdays at 3 p.m., and you’re never in your car at that hour, then you’d never hear it. Far better to do local coverage in chunks and drop it into “Morning Edition.”

Now, though, WBUR can easily offer “Radio Boston” as a podcast so that you can listen to it whenever you like. Which I’m looking forward to doing.

By the way, I looked at La Camera’s efforts to take WBUR in a more local direction last year in CommonWealth Magazine.

Bailey shoots back

Globe columnist Steve Bailey goes after “the loony gun lobby,” which has worked itself into a lather because a squishy gun deal he wrote about a few years ago — and talked about on the radio recently — turns out to have been charged to his Globe expense account. According to Bailey, authorities have now confiscated the gun. He writes:

This is how it works. Intimidation is the stock in trade of the National Rifle Association and all the NRA knock-offs out there. Dare to say we need fewer, not more guns in this country, dare to say we need a uniform system for monitoring gun sales in this country and you become a target to be hunted down. Democrats and Republicans have allowed themselves to be cowed by this one-issue bloc for too long.

Of course, in this case Bailey is referring to an NRA knock-off — the Second Amendment Foundation, whose leader, Alan Gottlieb, Bailey reports, has had some problems with the Tax Man that were serious enough to strip him of his own right to pack heat, at least temporarily.

More: I want to address the idiotic notion that Bailey was involved in an illegal “straw purchase,” which at least one Media Nation commenter has fallen for. What straw purchase? Bailey gave money to Walter Belair, a former prison guard, in order to buy a gun. Belair didn’t buy the gun for Bailey; he bought it for himself, and, indeed, kept it until it was confiscated by the feds.

The last I checked, you’re still allowed to give people money. Bailey had no responsibility for what Belair chose to do with the money unless he had advance knowledge that Belair was going to use it to break the law. In fact, Belair’s purchase was entirely legal — that was the point of Bailey’s 2005 column. It strikes me as a virtual certainty that the feds will soon be returning Belair’s property to him.

Targeting the Globe

Visit the Web site of the Second Amendment Foundation — a pro-gun lobbying group — and here’s what you’ll find:

  • “SAF Files Ohio Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Sues Library System …”
  • “SAF Files Texas Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Files Amici Curiae Brief …”
  • “SAF Sues To Overturn …”

Keep that in mind as you read this Herald story about the foundation’s efforts to have Globe columnist Steve Bailey fired over an allegedly illegal 2005 gun purchase he was involved in while researching a piece on lax gun laws. (Why now? Bailey talked about it on Tom Finneran’s WRKO program recently.)

As former prosecutor Randy Chapman, who heads the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, tells the Herald, “I don’t see a criminal intent there. I just see someone facilitating a news story.” The Herald also notes that the SAF has gone after Sam Donaldson, too.

Here is the SAF press release on Bailey, in which the Globe is helpfully identified as being “owned by the anti-gun New York Times.” And here is Bailey’s 2005 column.

I hope the lawyers don’t tell Bailey he can’t write about this. It’s ridiculous, and the Globe ought to stand up to the Second Amendment Foundation, which makes the National Rifle Association look reasonable by comparison.

Creative Commons update

If you click on the Creative Commons logo now, you’ll see that it takes you to a customized page that says (among other things), “You must attribute this work to Media Nation (with link).”

The coding that makes that happen was provided to me by John Guilfoil, a former student of mine and the founder and editor-in-chief of Blast Magazine, which recently embraced the Creative Commons model.

Thanks, John.

Progressive talk and WRKO

AlanF has posted an entertaining account at the Daily Kos about the recent FCC hearing on localism that was held in Portland, Maine. Alan is with Save Boston’s Progressive Talk, formed last year after Clear Channel dumped syndicated liberal talk shows from two weak-signaled stations and replaced them with Latino programming. He writes:

Although progressive talk attracted a loyal following among those who managed to discover it, Clear Channel switched it off abruptly in 2006, replacing it with a Latino music format (“Rumba”). Despite the fact that Clear Channel suddenly managed to find local staff for Rumba, Rumba has done worse in the ratings than progressive talk. This pattern that has been repeated across the country.

You’d think someone would take a chance on liberal talk in Boston, wouldn’t you? I continue to think that ratings-challenged WRKO (AM 680) ought to give it a try, now that afternoon host Howie Carr is jumping to WTKK (96.9 FM) this fall. Let me play WRKO consultant for a moment and try this out on you:

  • Steal Jim Braude and Margery Eagan from WTKK and put them on in the morning against Carr, who’s slotted to be the ‘TKK morning guy. Braude is the only liberal radio host in Boston; Eagan is a moderate. They’ve also got a breezy style that’s better suited to the morning drive than Howie’s sneering putdowns.
  • Move Tom Finneran from morning to afternoon drive and pair him with a liberal co-host. Instead of competing with the lazy but talented Carr, he’d be competing with the foul-mouthed libertarian Jay Severin. I don’t know who’d win that one, but my guess is that Finneran and company, by focusing on local issues, would at least hold their own.
  • Develop a new local show for the 10 a.m.-to-noon slot to go up against whatever ‘TKK is running. I’m guessing that’s where Michael Graham will land once Howie arrives, and if you can’t compete with Graham’s yipping, upper-octave rants about illegal immigrants, you can’t compete.
  • Now, here’s a tricky one. I’d definitely put syndicated liberal host Ed Schultz in the noon-to-3 p.m. segment. But Schultz works best as a counterweight to Rush Limbaugh, whom ‘RKO would be replacing. I say go with Schultz and hope ‘TKK management is stupid enough to pick up Limbaugh, a ratings monster nationwide but not here.
  • From 7 p.m. on, it doesn’t matter all that much, especially since WRKO carries the Red Sox. I guess I’d run Stephanie Miller‘s syndicated show from 7 to 10 p.m. on nights when the Sox aren’t playing. She’d be up against Bill O’Reilly — not a problem in this market.

Now look at that. I’ve solved all of WRKO’s problems, and it only took me 20 minutes. What do you think, Brian? Next?

Deregulatory blues

I’m almost 51 years old. I don’t smoke. My weight’s OK, although it could be better. I run, badly. I’ll give myself a B or a B-plus in the personal-health department. So why should I have to pay higher medical-insurance rates to cover people too lazy to get off their rear ends or too undisciplined to quit smoking?

Because the whole point of insurance is to spread the risk so that those who need less will help pay for those who need more. Which is why I predict that Gov. Deval Patrick’s experiment in auto-insurance competition will end badly, just as it did 30 years ago when Michael Dukakis tried it.

The Outraged Liberal says he’s “tired of subsidizing bad drivers.” Well, he’s going to develop chronic fatigue syndrome once he has to start subsidizing bad drivers who are now unemployed because they can’t afford auto insurance and can no longer get to work.

The ideal insurance system would reward good drivers while at the same time not penalizing the bad ones so excessively that they’re forced off the roads — or forced to drive without insurance as a matter of economic survival. Guess what? The system we have today looks an awful lot like that ideal.

A Globe editorial today puts it well:

In Massachusetts, about 80 percent of drivers pay a little more so that 20 percent of drivers can pay a lot less. That subsidy is a significant reason that Massachusetts has the second-lowest rate of uninsured motorists in the nation. It would be a shame, and a potentially costly one for all insured motorists, to see that rate rise.

I’ll admit that I’ve got two self-interested reasons for wanting to keep things the way they are. First, I’m not such a great driver, although I’m better than I used to be — the last surcharge, for a speeding ticket I incurred in New Hampshire six years ago, is scheduled to come off my insurance in August. Second, I’ve got two kids, and insurance for teenage drivers — already excessive — will likely go through the roof when this “reform” takes hold.

I realize that Massachusetts is the only state that regulates auto insurance so tightly. But rates are affordable, and they’ve been going down. Deregulation is a non-solution in search of a problem.

Media Nation in the news

A couple of items for those of you who are interested:

  • I expand on my thoughts regarding the Whole Foods merger meltdown in a piece that’s been posted on the Guardian’s “Comment Is Free” section. This is the first time I’ve written anything for the Guardian, but I’m hoping it’s not the last. We’ll see.
  • I’ll be on WUML Radio (91.5 FM) tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. to talk about Natalie Jacobson’s departure from the anchor desk at WCVB-TV (Channel 5) and Rupert Murdoch’s attempted takeover of the Wall Street Journal.