Jay Weber Show transcript 4-4-25
Months into the DOGE cutting and reforming-
It really is remarkable how both ‘the government classes and the members of their elite, accomplice media genuinely believe federal workers are a ‘protected class’s that should never have to be subject to hardship, or accountability, or even the ‘occasional ups and downs of life.
We’ve known this forever, but it’s something else to have it play out in front of is-as president trump and doge efforts lead to some downsizings, reassignments, and changes to their employee status.
For example: one of this week’s sob stories- as detailed in the New York Times-
Is that- if congress finally follows thru on a decades-long threat and cuts federal funding for national public radio…as many as 180 ‘NPR member’ stations could go off the air.
Aaawwww. So sad.
Folks-you probably couldn’t find a person -’in radio’ - to shed a tear over this.
Not after what all the rest of us have gone through in this industry over the past three decades. It’s kind of a shock that ‘radio jobs even exist, anymore. It really is.
You’d be shocked at ‘how few people it takes to run hundreds of radio stations in this company-and others- compared to what it used to take.
And the ‘economics of the industry have led to downsizing, after downsizing, after downsizing, after downsizing, after downsizing, after downsizing, after downsizing over the years.
We joke about ‘who can possibly be fired, anymore’ ...when the next round of downsizing occurs. Which- by the way- just happened in Milwaukee again-at a different radio cluster.
We’ve got FM jocks who voice track 10 or 20 shows-or more- every day. That means they tape their little blurbs of chatter between the songs and then plug that into a music clock that’s already been set up to run automatically. There’s nothing to ‘DJ’ anymore. No record to spin. No cd to queue up. No human needs to be there to do fades between songs.
This industry has dramatically, drastically changed over the last 30 years.
But not NPR stations.
They’ve always had the best equipment and the biggest staff levels because they’re government funded- on to of the ad revenue they bring in.
But-’Washington DC’ is still talking about what a disaster the testimony of NPR’s CEO was last week.
There was a hearing on the hill- asking NPR and pbs leaders to justify their continued government funding- and NPR’s CEO, Katherine Maher, as just a train wreck. She wanted to claim that NPR provides quote…an essential role in delivering unbiased, non-partisan, fact-based reporting…
But it doesn’t. And everyone in the room knew it wasn’t. NPR always leaned left-but in the modern era-has genuinely become leftist propaganda. And Maher’s personal social media posts revealed that she’s virtually an ‘antifa’ style left wing fascism…in her political beliefs….and she couldn’t defend any of NPR’s leftist coverage-
Including why her newsrooms were banned from covering the hunter Biden laptop story, the covid lab leak theory, and other recent news stories that the democrats wanted silenced or spun a certain way.
And so-this week- we got the shocking news that 180 NPR stations are already ‘barely getting by’ and might have to shutter if govt funding is cut.
Well-
Welcome to the modern-day economics of ‘radio’. Finally.
Do you know how many thousands and thousands of radio stations have been either shut down or sold…or had to completely reinvent themselves over the past three decades…as this industry ‘right sized’?
Thousands. And do you know how many radio staffers were fired to ‘remake’ the industry for the more modern, competitive era?
Tens of thousands.
In fact- i bet if you did a survey of America today, you’d find more people who ‘used to work in radio’ than currently work in radio.
And I don’t even ‘think’ that would be the case. That would be the case: America has far more ‘former radio employees than current radio employees.
So why is NPR sacrosanct? The New York Times uses words like ‘bleak’
NPR has an ‘app’ like everyone else does…and they could just listen to a different NPR station.
Just for comparison, folks, we at iHeart are the biggest private sector radio company in America with over 800 radio stations. Massive company.
But NPR has over 1000 stations?
That’s ridiculous and completely unnecessary- if taxpayers are helping to pay for it.
And for the record- I still don’t think congress will eliminate their funding. Even with today’s group of more mavericky lawmakers in the mix- we will still have republican squishes and ninnies who still step in to protect npr and pbs funding and keep these temples of leftism operating on the taxpayer dime. Just watch.
I will be shocked if- even now- in the era of Trump and DOGE- we can finally end this federal funding farce for NPR and PBS.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > A cut in funding may cause some NPR radio stations to be shut down