List of Sinclair stations by market and location is interesting. Click on the links to expand.

[flying_wahini]

[link:https://rabbitears.info//search.php?request=owner_search&owner=Sinclair&sort=state|

[bobbieinok]

1. That's an incredible number of stations. Small towns and large cities. Every state open to them

[a kennedy]

2. Holy crap that is a HUGE number of stations......is that even allowed???

[TheDebbieDee]

3. Sinclair might as well be another major network...

The over-the-air, free television version of Fox News!

[Maraya1969]

4. How can we combat their influence? This is a serious question.

[DBoon]

5. Break them up

Don't allow a single entity to own that many stations.

Build up alternative media in rural and small town areas. What are we doing to support public broadcasting in these areas?

Reinstate the Fairness doctrine for broadcast media. They want to air that inflammatory RW BS, then they have to invite an opposing viewpoint.

[mahina]

6. Consider the excellent suggestions from DUer Certainot on how to deal with this and also hate radio.

I think it's really brilliant and definitely doable.

certainot (4,443 posts)
"13. suggestion: record an hour of her show, get it transcribed for $5/hr, get LOCAL advertisers

record the closest radio station she’s on using a free trial from ‘apowersoft mac audio recorder’ for instance, or using any of the many recording programs

then drag the mp3 or other sound file to the 'box' sonix.ai to get it transcribed for $5/hr (plus monthly fee $15 - 1st 1/2 free). it doesn’t take long and they send you an email when it's done. they use AI and it's much faster, accurate and cheaper than anything else available 1 year ago.

then you’ll have a list of LOCAL advertisers with their contact info and you’ll be able to associate what she says with what the advertisers are sponsoring, in print, and send it to them in an email that prob has a good chance to reach the owner/boss.

similar can be done for ALL the RW hosts - local and national - all are attacking the kids when not excusing trump. and if you search the transcript for ‘hogg’, which is a very common name all over the country on rw radio, or "guns" NRA, AR-15, "second amendment" "parkland", etc there will be a lot of ammo....

and there’s about a 1/5 chance or better that that station also depends on a local/state university to keep broadcasting sports on it to help attract the advertisers, most who won’t know shit about ingraham’s show until someone puts in in print in an email along with the ads

other benefits here:
Artificial intelligence can amp up the boycotts, democratize talk radio, doom the GOP.
http//:www.republiconradio.org It's kicking liberal butt. How to record and transcribe it. Don't let your universities endorse it."

and on Certainot's DU journal:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210313820

certainot (4,443 posts)

"Artificial intelligence has recently made it much easier and cheaper to digitize hate radio.

Talk radio is the ONLY major medium with no political counterpart to challenge it. Unfortunately 25% of Americans say they often get news from radio.

For as little as $5/hr or less (eg. sonix.ai), talk radio can now be read and searched — no listening required. There are two major implications for American politics.

It can no longer be ignored.

25% of Americans say they often get their news from radio yet it is seldom if ever included in political analysis. It might as well be invisible.

For the first time in 30 years talk radio can be analyzed for patterns, repetition, content — without listening to it. What 1500 think tank-coordinated radio stations are blasting across the country can finally be factored into politics and media, as opposed to getting a limited and sanitized summary on Fox ‘News’.

The Republican talk radio monopoly will fall apart.

Thousands of businesses as well as hundreds of university and professional sports teams that talk radio depends on can be directly associated with what those stations are saying, IN PRINT.

How many businesses will continue to advertise on those radio stations when they are notified that they are sponsoring NRA attacks on the Parkland student activists? How many universities will continue to broadcast sports on radio stations that deny global warming, work to defund public education, and fight efforts to lower student debt?

The myth that the 95% right wing monopoly in talk radio is a reflection of American demand for lies, hate, and ignorance will become clear.

Cost of monitoring talk radio vs $90MIL/day in hate radio messaging

If Trump, Putin, the Kochs, and the NRA paid $1000/hr for radio time that would be worth $1000 x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations = $18M/DAY or $90M/WEEK or $3.24BIL until the election.

Repetition is key for selling the alternate reality and there is huge overlap in Republican radio content. With few exceptions and some local variation they usually say the same thing in different ways so not all stations or talkers need to be transcribed.

Some talkers offer access to their previous shows as podcasts so they could be monitored retroactively.

NATIONALLY

Most major talk stations are anchored by 2 or 3 national talk shows lasting 3 hours each. Those talkers, led by Limbaugh, are the political correctness cops of talk radio. When it comes to emergencies and national issues they determine the direction and flavor of 1200 or so talk radio stations. They generally follow the same line and local talkers cannot significantly contradict them on topics like global warming or gun control or they will lose their jobs. That is a big reason why the Republican base repeats the same talking points, whether they’re called Tea Partiers or Trumpers. That is why the Kremlin social media trolling has been be so effective in the US.

Monitoring 10 national talkers x 3 hrs x 5 days = 150 hrs x $5 = $750 / week.

That’s $27,000 until the elections (36 weeks x $750) to monitor 10 major talkers.

What possible excuse does the Democratic Party and it’s allied organizations have for continuing to ignore talk radio?

LOCALLY

A lot of major stations give 5 or 6 hours to local talkers who reinforce national talking points and memes but also apply them to local politics when needed. Some stations have a weekend show or two. Some stations have more local/state programming. The national shows are generally always political while local talkers might use an hour once in a while to yuk it up and review the best local pizza when a major Republican scandal is breaking and they can’t blame it on liberals.

5 hours of local talkers x 5 days/week = 25 hours/week x $5 = $125/week/station.

That’s $125 x 4 x 9 months = $4500 per station until the election.

Some states are dominated by a few major stations and prominent talkers connected with the GOP and allied think tanks. A few local talkers can have a huge effect on local issues and elections. The Democratic Party and progressive groups will benefit from knowing when local stations are attacking and lying about their candidates and issues. It may only be necessary to monitor a few stations in most states to know what most of them are saying.

A few of the benefits of converting hate radio into text

If Republican radio can be searched for content, patterns, and repetition……

A regular sampling of major national talkers like Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, and Beck will go a long way to understanding and discrediting Trump’s alternate reality.

It will be easier to understand what happened to the Republican Party and how people like G W Bush, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump could even get close to the White house.

Democrats can start winning ‘messaging’ battles. It will be possible to see how Republican think tanks coordinate their radio stations to yell over Democratic messaging on the national and local level.

It will be easier to show the Kremlin coordinating with talk radio. Knowing what the talk radio buzz is will help identify and point out Russian trolling. Who told Trump to study talk radio in 2014 to prepare for the elections?

It will be easier to develop boycott lists of advertisers supporting hate radio. Advertisers and advertising companies will become more selective even if they are not subjected to boycotts. Many advertisers will quit hate radio when they realize the global warming denial, racism, sexism, and lies they are associating their brands with can be read and quantified. Dedicated radio advertisers may demand talk stations provide political balance. That will help democratize the well-protected talk radio monopoly, which enjoys an artificially inflated ‘market demand’.

Politicians and media will be less able to repeat Republican lies and talking points as if they represent popular opinion. When they lie they can be answered with “Well, that’s what Limbaugh says but….”

Political campaigns can monitor disinformation and attacks at the national and local level and respond in real time instead of playing catch up. The Democratic Party can monitor radio stations and provide Democratic candidates and their allies with analysis and alerts. Progressive groups or activists can monitor hate radio as it generates opposition or support to counter their interests.

Republican politicians, candidates, and think tank propagandists are regular guests on GOP-friendly radio stations and say things they wouldn’t in more public forums. What they say can now be provided to media and used as ammunition for debates and campaign ads.

Americans will be able to determine if the outrage, wherever or whoever it is aimed at, is legitimate popular reaction, or illegitimate — generated by a few think tank-coordinated blowhards with big megaphones hiding behind call screeners and getting talking points from Republican think tanks.

Republicans will be less able to attack, mischaracterize, and minimize protests. Media and politicians will be less able to ignore protestors just because a few carnival barkers with giant megaphones can yell over them.

Trump and Putin will be less able to spin national emergencies their way and will feel less confident they can get away with creating their own.

Republicans will be less able to generate support for illegal wars or anti-democratic legislation. Knowing how often a few hundred talkers on1500 stations were repeating “weapons of mass destruction”, “deregulation will lower cable prices”, “unions donate as much as corporations”, “millions of illegal aliens are voting for Democrats”, “death panels”, “net neutrality raises internet costs”, and “electronic voting machines will save money”, would have been helpful.

And maybe these 77 universities will finally start honoring their mission statements and start looking for alternatives to broadcast sports on.

Discrediting the talk radio gods will help moderate Republicans resist extremism and perhaps help with rational fact-based problem solving. It is not a coincidence that record setting partisanship exploded in the early 90’s after Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine (‘87) and Republicans built and subsidized their talk radio monopoly. That’s also when ALEC finally began seeing significant success.

As the RW radio monopoly begins to break down more stations will open up for liberal talkers.

Opportunity for software developers
There is an opportunity for software developers to create an application to automate some of the steps involved. It will be useful for political candidates and organizations, media monitoring organizations, etc., to be able to plug in a few radio streams and search transcriptions at the end of the week with minimal human interaction.

And there are other countries where talk radio may be influential and where the Kremlin may also be using it."

[yonder]

7. bookmarked, thanks