First of all, I wish you and yours a solemn Labor Day.

In this series of newsletters, I haven't yet talked about the ample work Chicago Media Action has done with regards to radio. I address that here and now. The authoritative source of CMA's history on this score is the CMA Radio Efforts Portal, but there is also ample historical content on the CMA podcast, a fair amount of which was originally broadcast on the radio.

Despite the increasing role that the internet would play in America's media diet, CMA never wavered in working on radio matters. Quite the contrary, as we'll see in a moment.

One can group CMA's radio-related efforts into two categories: work on policy, and work on improving content on extant radio stations. I'll divide the content of this essay along these lines.

Policy fights regarding radio

The media ownership uprising of 2003, in which CMA played a role and which I have talked about previously in this newsletter, had radio among its main concerns. That was mainly due to the 900-pound-gorilla of media consolidation run amok, the former Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia), which at its peak owned or co-owned the legal maximum eight Chicago-area radio stations.

When we won the uprising and blocked the FCC in 2003 from its media ownership designs, that engendered a reported dispute between then FCC chair Michael Powell and the commercial radio lobby. Powell (somehow) felt that the lobby was insufficiently supportive, and in apparent retaliation opened the door to further low-power FM radio licenses that would expand community radio and diffuse the lobby's power.

However, most of those radio stations were in rural areas, far fewer than were hoped for in urban areas like Chicago. So then that became the focus of radio activists: to push for more low-power FM radio stations. (As a side note, there was a related serious push during the same time for high-power FM radio stations in areas where they were available, and one of the biggest activists on this scene lived -- and still lives -- in Chicago, Gabriel Piemonte.)

Former WLUW (Loyola University radio) Shawn Campbell founded the venerable online radio station CHIRP Radio, and CHIRP joined in with longtime organizers of community radio the Prometheus Radio Project, who rallied in this fight, as did CMA who wrote about and talked about the efforts. That helped break the back of the commercial lobby (particularly the National Association of Bastards Broadcasters). The result was that in 2010 the Obama administration signed into law the policy -- the Local Community Radio Act -- that led to the formation of hundreds of urban low-power radio stations.

For Chicago, two notable community radio stations took to Chicago's radio waves in the wake of this expansion. One is CHIRP Radio on Chicago's north side, which broadcasts on 107.1 FM; another is Lumpen Radio on Chicago's south side, which broadcasts on 105.5 FM. A decade-and-a-half after I helped advocate for and win at the policy front, I was able to benefit from the tangible impacts of those policies as I joined Lumpen Radio's coverage of the 2024 Democratic National Convention last month (August 2024), which you can hear here, here, here, and here. Moral: The positive fights you take on today can have lasting impacts into the future.

Improving content on extant radio stations

Chicago Media Action was founded in late 2002 and early 2003, and one of the first tasks we assigned ourselves was to get the radio and TV news program ~Democracy Now!~ on Chicago broadcast. Luckily, we had an in on that score: one of our longtime members, Dale Lehman, was also part of the staff at WZRD 88.3FM, the radio station at Northeastern Illinois University. Dale, to his and our eternal credit, ensured that Democracy Now! aired on WZRD by going to the station himself every morning to put the show on the air. Thank you, Dale!

WZRD, however, had an over-the-air broadcast strength of just 100 watts and didn't reach out of Chicago's north side. Thus, we continued to push for Democracy Now! to air on other stations. The biggest effort was to get WBEZ, Chicago's largest NPR affiliate with a broadcast footprint spanning the city and suburbs, to air Democracy Now!. On this front unfortunately, WBEZ simply didn't budge; they did throw a bone when WBEZ and WLUW (Loyola's radio station) had a three-year-long joint operating agreement and WLUW (which also has a broadcast strength of 100 watts) started airing Democracy Now!. (A case can be made that we did succeed in get WBEZ's head Torey Malatia out.) Radio Arte! (WRTE), a radio station run by the National Museum of Mexican Art on Chicago's south side, did air Democracy Now! among other progressive programming.

During the time around CMA's founding, the threat of going to war with Iraq loomed. Many Americans rightly blamed America's media for ginning up support for a dubious and widely-protested war, and there was a palpable need for media to counter the right-wing media echo-chamber. The Air America radio network was an attempt for just that; Air America launched with the funding support of two Chicagoans -- Sheldon and Anita Drobny. CMA gave the network and station some attention and coverage, despite its commercial orientation. And after Air America ended after a six-year run, Chicago's Air America affiliate, WCPT, continued to broadcast and in 2013 became the station which gave Democracy Now! the Chicago-wide broadcast footprint we and so many had long sought for.

We continued to support other progressive-mided radio programs. One locus of attention was radio host Tavis Smiley -- both with his own show, and with the Smiley and West show he co-hosted with Cornel West. In the same do-it-yourself vein of Dale Lehman, I produced my own progressive-minded radio shows, both on the south side (The Ministry of Truth ran on WHPK, the University of Chicago's radio station, for eleven years) and on the north side (From The Trenches, the radio show of the Chicago Independent Media Center, stayed on the air, on WLUW, five years longer than it would have otherwise).

Then there's the case of This Is Hell -- a radical left talk-interview radio show hosted by Chuck Mertz which aired and still airs on WNUR, Northwestern University's radio station. This Is Hell began in 1996, long predating CMA and most of the current Chicago left progressive media scene. CMA gave This Is Hell coverage and support and shout-outs. Chuck reciprotated in kind -- most of the time -- giving CMA mentions and plugs and quoting of our newsletter and, to his credit, Chuck was not shy about critiquing CMA when such critique was warranted. Even so, Chuck and CMA are and have been on very good terms.

As to a postscipt:

• WZRD still airs Democracy Now!, at 8AM Chicago time each weekday morning.

• WLUW ceased broadcasting Democracy Now!, much to the dismay of its listener base, and in 2015 changed to a strictly-student-only orientation and cancelled all of its non-student programming, including From The Trenches and a host of other locally-produced community radio shows (e.g., Labor Express).

• WRTE was sold by the National Museum of Mexican Art to Chicago Public Media, the organizational parent of WBEZ.

• This Is Hell continues as a three-times-a-week podcast and is still broadcast on WNUR.

• WCPT is still on the air as a liberal-minded talk radio station, and still broadcasts Democracy Now! each weeknight at 10PM Chicago time.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action as an organization.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.