On the first weekend in March, in about six weeks, the Northern Alliance Radio Network will celebrate its’ eighth anniversary on the air.<\/p>\n
Not to be un-Scandinavian-ly immodest, but we’ve built quite a franchise; we dominate Twin Cities weekend talk radio ratings against much bigger stations with much stronger signals, we have become appointment radio for regional conservatives, and if there’s a local Twin Cities talk show with a bigger national footprint, I’m darned if I can think of who it is. \u00a0There’s a reason Salem Twin Cities keeps us on the air, and it’s not just because they’re nice guys.<\/p>\n
Now, the NARN has always been run by conservative bloggers. \u00a0And if there’s anything conservative bloggers have in common, it’s the fact that we come \u00a0to mock, taunt, often clobber and, at least rhetorically, bury the mainstream media. \u00a0 Not, as a rule, to praise it, much less seek their recognition or approval. \u00a0Most of us would rather be approved of by used car salespeople – and, indeed, having run a dozen or so remote broadcasts from Paul Ruben’s White Bear Lake Superstore<\/a>, that is emphatically, literally true for us on the NARN.<\/p>\n So it’s not like we expect the NARN, no matter how successful we get, to ever break the wall at most regional mainstream media; the MSM’s policy has always been to ignore the alt-media until they need<\/em> to attack it. \u00a0And, true to form, the few mentions we’ve gotten have usually been for cases where one or another of us has broken with GOP or conservative orthodoxy in a way that someone or other in the MSM thinks, I suspect, will weaken the conservative coalition, which certainly doesn’t happen often.<\/p>\n So I think we are, as a rule, perfectly happy to work in the Twin Cities media’s shadows, reaching our audience, kicking butt. \u00a0We fight way above our weight; we’ve interviewed \u00a0Presidential\u00a0candidates\u00a0Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, Governors Pawlenty and Walker, Senator Coleman and Grams, Representatives Gutknecht, Kline, Ramstad, Paulsen, Bachmann (also a prez candidate), Mayor Rybak, and too many Senate, Congressional, State Office, legislative and local candidates to even mention, to say nothing of a dizzying array of authors, cultural figures and others, ranging from Ann Coulter to MST3K’s Mike Nelson.<\/p>\n Just saying – we do pretty well without any fawning media coverage.<\/p>\n Which is good, because the regional media has to save all that obsessive fawning for coverage any time an establishment\/liberal media figure burps after eating a burrito.<\/p>\n Case in point: \u00a0Does anyone remember Jack Rice? \u00a0I do, sorta – he was on WCCO for \u00a0a while.<\/p>\n Anyone remember WCCO? \u00a0I do – sorta.<\/p>\n Rice used to do a show on WCCO. \u00a0He was sort of a symbol of how far the station had fallen, about ten years ago. \u00a0Beyond that, I don’t know much, because not being 75 and with the Twins and Vikes having long moved elsewhere, I haven’t \u00a0spun my dial to 830 for anything but Mischke in a good five years, now.<\/p>\n