MSNBC host Ed Schultz sometimes makes it clear that he shoots his mouth off before he reads what he’s talking about. Take his Monday rant on “The Ed Show” about a Politico article by Mackenzie Weinger about “5 ways to rescue liberal talk radio.”
The funniest part of this little “Ask Ed” segment is that Schultz claims the Politico article was loaded with "right-wing consultants," when none of the consultants quoted have anything conservative to say on their Twitter feeds. He claimed he wasn't interviewed "because I've probably been too successful for them." But the article is LOADED with quotes from other liberal talkers. People Ed Schultz knows...
Weinger isn't prone to "right-wing" radio analysis. She wrote this puff piece about Bill Press, for example, without a single right-winger quoted.
Nowhere in the Politico article (or the Schultz mini-rant) was an acknowledgment of the gorilla in the room of nationwide liberal radio, even in talk radio: NPR. Let’s guess Big Ed tuned out at Rescue Recommendation Number One:
1. Don’t be a shill for the Democratic party
If progressive radio really wants to get on the map, its hosts would do well to remember that one of the reasons the liberal talk radio network Air America flopped was that they “forgot they were in the radio business, not in the get my candidate elected business,” said Al Peterson, publisher and editor of talk radio trade NTS MediaOnline Today.
“They failed because they failed to understand they were in the radio business — not the politics business,” he added.
But that formula is the MSNBC "Lean Forward" formula! Here’s the “Ask Ed” segment transcript:
SCHULTZ: Welcome back to the Ed Show. Love hearing from our viewer here in our Ask Ed segment and our first question comes from Cordell Garrett. He wants to know "Can we get our liberal billionaires to start buying up some media outlets. So we can compete with the right wing hate machine?"
I don't know if this question stems Cordell from an article you may have read as I did in Politico over the holiday about the demise of liberal talk radio and the five things that will save it, and then they had a bunch of right-wing consultants that were quoted in the thing. I, of course, was not quoted, nor was I interviewed for it because I've probably been too successful for them.
But anyway, look, ownership has its privileges. I'm giving full disclosure tonight that if I own the 600 radio stations, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, they wouldn't be on any of them!
So, I guess that`s what you mean, you want billionaires to go up and buy up media outlets. Well, they'd have to be ideologically bent to deliver the kind of equality that we see over on right-wing radio. And all this talk about how it's about entertainment. No it's not, it's about ownership.
Translation: Liberal talk radio needs a Obama-lovin' sugar daddy like Comcast!
