Now that WBAI is airing Thom Hartmann, we've become more sensitive to his presence on New York radio. Not only does his weekday show that now airs on WBAI at 5pm cause an interesting overlap with his weekday show on WWRL that airs from 3 to 6pm, but last weekend we heard him on WWRL on both Saturday and Sunday! Was he always on this often? Perhaps we're just becoming more Thom Hartmann-aware. WBAI boasts that their Thom Hartmann is the only one on FM in New York City. Maybe so, but so what? We can hear him just as well on AM.
I personally fail to see the reason behind this decision. Thom Hartmann is essentially a mainstream liberal democrat whose program airs in a commercial format (like Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Rachael Maddow, and sooooo many others broadcasting in various media markets right now). But, even leaving that aside for a moment, the fact remains that, Thom Hartmann's program airs in it's entirety (all 3 hours) on WWRL, an am station that also covers the metropolitian (i.e., NY, NJ, CT, etc.) area. On WBAI, it's highly edited, diluted, and watered down to just 1 hour--which, as has been mentioned in the article above, overlaps with it's airing on WWRL. I can't help but to wonder; why would anyone listen to the 1 hour version that airs on WBAI as oppossed to the entire version that airs on WWRL? I mean it's like watching your favorite film, or tv series in it's original, uncensored, form on dvd, in the movie theater, or on cable--then watching it on broadcast television in a diluted, highly censored, watered down version where the content has been so drastically altered that the show loses all coherence (you can stop laughing now, I readily admit I'm somewhat of a geek, and I make comparisons like that sometimes. *LOL*)
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