WOOD Radio drops local show, adds racist Glenn Beck to their far right programming

Friday it was reported that WOOD AM Radio discontinued one of the few locally produced programs in order to make room for the syndicated show of Glenn Beck.

The show Mouth 2 Mouth aired 9am til noon on Monday through Friday every week in the West Michigan media market. The largest radio conglomerate in the country Clear Channel owns WOOD Radio, which has seven stations in this area.

It was reported yesterday in the Grand Rapids Press that the Glenn Beck show began airing on WOOD Radio on Monday and that has fans of the Mouth 2 Mouth show upset. The Press reported that people have started a Facebook group, called Mad at WOOD. The Facebook page says, “Are you angry at Wood Radio 1300 for “letting go” Scott Winters and Michelle McCormick, our beloved hosts of Mouth to Mouth? Show it by joining!” There isn’t any concrete call to action, although some of the comments on this page are suggesting that people flood station manager Tim Feagan with E-mails demanding that the local show be reinstated.

People on the Facebook page are arguing that Mouth 2 Mouth was one of the few information/news-based shows that was locally produced, where the public could call in to add their comments to the topics of the day. It is true that there is limited local program in the West Michigan market this is overwhelmingly the case for WOOD Radio.

Station manager Tim Feagan said that the decision had nothing to do with the content of Mouth 2 Mouth, rather it was purely a “business decision.” The decision was no doubt good for business since advertisers will want to tap into Beck’s popularity. However, adding Glen Beck to their line up has other implications for WOOD Radion.

A quick look at WOOD Radio’s weekday program should tell us something about the kind of programming content they have decided upon. Not only are all the shows (except 5am – 9am) nationally syndicated shows, many of them are notorious for making false claims and engaging is racist hate speech, as has been well documented by Rory O’Connor in the book Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio.

09:00am – 12:00pm – The Glenn Beck Program – LIVE

12:00pm – 03:00pm – The Rush Limbaugh Show – LIVE

03:00pm – 06:00pm – The Sean Hannity Show – LIVE

06:00pm – 09:00pm – The Dave Ramsey Show

09:00pm – 12:00pm – The Michael Savage Show

12:00am – 05:00am – Coast To Coast AM with George Noory – LIVE

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has been documenting fallacious comments by Limbaugh for years, including racists comments. Michael Savage has an even worse track record of on air racist comments, which has led to efforts to get him off the air in various markets through a campaign called No Savage. Savage has advocated for an outright ban on Muslim immigration to the US and the construction of Mosques.

Glenn Beck has also engaged in demonizing Muslims and immigrants on his talk show, but the comment that resulted in a campaign against him was when he called President Obama a racist in 2009.

This comment resulted in the group Color of Change organizing a campaign to pressure Fox News to pull Beck from their programming. The campaign has not been able to get Beck off the air, but it has resulted in numerous national advertisers pulling their ads from the network.

In addition to these kinds of campaigns, some organizations have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the link between on air hate speech and hate crimes in the US. So far the FCC has not made any decisions on this matter, but it does show that people are organized to challenge the kind of racist and xenophobic language that is part of radio programming across the country and on WOOD Radio.