The John and Ken Effect

Love 'em or hate 'em, the John and Ken Show on KFI is a tour de force on talk radio in the afternoons. Albeit bombastic, steady offerings of barbed language and an in-your-face-style, they are anything but boring and never seem to violate the 1st Rule of Radio: Be Entertaining.

Today, the Los Angeles Times opines on the famous shock jocks in the context of the trial of Orange County's ex-sheriff Mike Carona. I suppose it is a badge of honor for them and I'll have to tune in Monday to see what they have to say about it.

At issue: a series of readings by the hosts, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, from transcripts of Carona conversations that were secretly recorded by federal investigators. When Carona's legal team objected to the pretrial publicity, Kobylt and Chiampou rose to the challenge, dubbing this segment of the show "Taint the Carona Jury Pool" and advising fans called for jury duty to lie if asked about their radio listening habits. Daring stuff -- and stupid too -- but the purpose of a venue change is to ensure that the accused gets a fair trial, not to address media buzz.

Considering the size of the Burbank-based show's listenership (about 1 million a month), the widely dispersed audience in L.A. and Orange counties and the vagaries of listeners' habits, the probability that a substantial number of jury pool members have even tuned into "John & Ken's" Carona coverage seems vanishingly small.

Read the full editorial.

Liberals Want to Outlaw Conservative Talk

Well sort of.

Unable to achieve success in talkradio via the free market, liberals now plan to use government intervention to achieve their goals of more "liberal voices" on the air. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer want to bring back the so-called "fairness doctrine" and other regulations to "balance" programming. Its not just the liberals who are after talkradio but Republicans such as Trent Lott upset that their "free ride" on many conservative programs is over.

As reported by The National Review, longtime Clinton crony John Podesta has authored a treatise on what has to be done about the "problem" of conservative talkradio.

What's next? Are they going to outlaw blogs?

See the problem for you liberals is you might be able to try to outlaw the speech you don't like. However, the dangerous precedent you set will eventually come back to harm you when your opponents are in charge.

If it were up to some of the members of the City Council and the Mayor, laws might be passed that would impose government control on radio programs such as that of Doug McIntyre (pictured above) or blogs like this.

And even if the liberals get their laws, its likely they won't have the intended goals. Should stations be able to air unfettered and wildly profitable conservative talkradio programs, they will drop the format and political coverage altogether in favor of talk programming similar to Howard Stern or Tom Leykis or even other formats such as sports, music or foreign language broadcasts. And even if the government mandates certain types of programming be covered (such as they once did with community affairs programming) the broadcasters will find ways around those rules, such as airing the programs at 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday (as many still do voluntarily).

The best bet is to let everyone express their views and then let them be judged in the marketplace of ideas. But do liberals get that? I imagine some do but their numbers are shrinking everyday.

Too Bad for Us Guys She's a Lesbian

But hopefully good for her as center-right leaning Tammy Bruce has been quite successful in bucking the usual gay and lesbian Democratic hegemony. I can't think of a single issue I disagree with her on. She's a chick with a microphone and gun and trained well on the use of both.

Tammy is brilliant, funny, tough as nails, right on the money and a hottie to boot. You can check out her blog at http://tammybruce.com/ and listen to her radio show on KABC on Saturday nights from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. and daily on the internet from 9:00 a.m. to Noon.