CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Don't touch that dial, says a politician with 45 years of radio broadcasting experience in Ohio under his belt. Hamilton County Auditor Dusty Rhodes pans the push for progressive talk radio by some members of the Democratic Party -- his party -- as
the classic socialist response that demands new levels of government intervention and regulation.
As deejays used to say in the 1960s, when Dusty perfected his patter for the mics, talk radio just finished an on-air round of make-it-or-break-it. The format was smashed like a dud 45-rpm acrylic single because nobody could dance to its tune.
Rhodes' segue into the conversation appears this morning on the Op-Ed page of the morning metropolitan daily in Cincinnati. He contends the reason progressive talk radio flopped was simple: Nobody tuned in and listened. He says Jerry Springer's show should have been a hit in Cincinnati of all places, but that it tanked despite a huge advertising and promotional campaign in Springer's adopted hometown.
Dusty has never been a member of the Dems most liberal wing -- he's a throwback to the era of working class, neighborhood, centrist party leaders who weren't afraid to speak their minds and say whoa! to ultra-left orthodoxy.
