This is Taft's second term. He's not allowed
to run again (term limits). I expect that the fight
over Governor to come down to Jim Petro and
Ken Blackwell. Petro's more moderate, but is
in the same mold as Taft. Blackwell's more
conservative, but may be too much of a lightning
rod for the last election. Ken has also fought
with the senior party leadership over the tax
increases the past couple of years.

Should be an interesting primary.

--Mike L.


"BDK" wrote in message
...
In article ,
mtl@[REMOVE-TO-
REPLY]fuse.net says...
Jerry's rehabbing his image so he can run for governor.

True story: at the end of the riots in 2001, a bunch of
protestors showed up at City Hall to basically raise hell
during a council session. While they were protesting,
one of them spotted Jerry Springer, who happened to
be visiting an old friend of his who was on City Council
at the time. After a "hey, it's Jerry Springer!", the protestors
dropped their protests to go get Jerry's autograph. The
protest was forgotten. This was caught by news cameras,
and aired that night.

Methinks Jerry has a long way to go to rehab his image
to avoid a political opponent using that against him.

--Mike L.


"dxAce" wrote in message
...


David wrote:

Wow! 44 stations. Now that's real liberal progress!

dxAce
Michigan
USA

Clear Channel rolls out more liberal talk radio
Wed Jan 19, 2005 07:01 PM ET
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Clear Channel Communications
Inc.
(CCU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday said it
converted
three
stations to a liberal talk format and this year could double
to 44
the
number of stations carrying such programming.

After offering mostly conservative-leaning talk for the past
decade,
Clear Channel and other broadcasters are now embracing
"progressive"
talk to woo a listener base that is growing increasingly
fragmented
due to satellite, Internet radio and devices like iPods.

The nation's biggest radio operator said it switched
underperforming
stations in Washington, D.C., Detroit and Cincinnati carrying
nostalgic or sports programming with talkers like Jerry
Springer,
Ed
Schultz, Lionel, Phil Hendrie, Randi Rhodes and Al Franken.

Clear Channel has over 1,200 stations, with 175 focused on
news or
talk.

"The election cycle last year gave rise to dissenting voices,
which
gave rise to a new format in talk radio. When the public says
it
wants
more of this, we provide it," said Gabe Hobbs, vice president
of
programming for news/talk/sports for Clear Channel Radio.

"Prior to 1988, talk radio was very liberal, but then Rush
Limbaugh
was an overnight sensation and the genre of talk radio became
somewhat
conservative," he said, noting that progressive talk is one of
the
fastest growing formats in radio.

In other efforts to reinvent itself, Clear Channel is cutting
down
on
commercials and is converting 1,000 stations to
high-definition
digital broadcasting in the next three years.

HD radio will enable radio broadcasts to achieve "near-CD"
quality
and
allow two or even three digital audio streams to be broadcast
using a
single carrier frequency.

Hobbs said HD Radio will encourage the development of more
formats.
"We can get into even more niche types of formats, like home
fixing,
real estate, health and whatever the imagination can conjure
up,"
he
said.

Clear Channel is the biggest affiliate of Air America, the
nation's
first liberal talk show network that launched in March 2004
only
to
nearly collapse five months later.

Venture capitalist Sheldon Drobny sold Air America in November
2003
and took it over again in May 2004 with other investors.

Air America is now in 44 markets. Drobny describes its success
as
a
by-product of radio's consolidation with the
Telecommunications
Act of
1996, which lifted ownership limits.

"At first the Telecom Act made it difficult to enter the
market
but
now we're seeing the other side. They're (big radio companies)
taking
underperforming stations and giving them to us. We're saving a
lot
of
dead stations," Drobny told Reuters.






I would have easily taken him over our present governor, "My last
name
is Taft, and so vote for me, even though I'm really not worth a
damn, my
great grandfather (I think) was President a long time ago" . The
name is
the only thing going for the guy, so Jerry already has him beat.. on
pure entertainment value alone..

BDK