Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - May 9, 2009 -- Jeremy Lansman - Part III

The late Walt Crowley, one of Seattle's venerable underground figures from the 60s, and longtime chronicler of alternative media, wrote a sketch of the atmosphere in which Jeremy Lansman got his radio broadcasting start. Early in Crowley's book, rites of passage - A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle, the author quotes Lansman's mentor, Lorenzo Milam, as Milam sought to describe what Milam, Lansman and others were doing with their programming at KRAB Radio:

"Your scurrilous words are flooding the countryside, bouncing off hills and trees, ramming headlong into cows....filtering into that radio, into that tiny coil of heat....red, deep, mysterious."

Change the described animal to a moose, and you might get an idea of what Jeremy is up to 47 years later, with KWMD, and his current efforts to revive local programming in Southcentral Alaska, after KUDO-AM threw it overboard two weeks ago.

This past week, on Monday and on Friday, Jeremy, with a lot of help from Cary Carrigan, put Camille Conte back on the air. For two hours on Monday, three hours on Friday.

Between Monday's experimental show and Friday's beta version, Lansman fixed the signal at KWMD's 92.5 MHz Eagle River transmitter. Between the awkward beginning and decently finished end of Friday's program, the live talk studio seemed to get a lot better. The call-in set-up has a long way to go yet, but I'm sure Jeremy is dealing with the solution already.

People did call in, though, from as far away as the Mat-Su Valley in the north, and from a cabin near Kenai in the south.

The last hour of CC's show Friday featured Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate, Bob Poe. Bob has been on a number of Anchorage stations since his mid-winter declaration of candidacy. Both CC and Carrigan featured him on KUDO, before the late April 2009 programming cuts. CC's Friday interview with Poe was the best I've yet heard on the air.

(By far, the best article on Bob Poe the candidate so far, is by Brendan Joel Kelley, at the Anchorage Press.)

During the program, CC asked Alaska Democratic Party chair Patti Higgins about speculation that former Alaska House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz will be filing soon for the governor's race. Higgins certainly didn't say "no," but did say Ethan will be waiting for later in the year to make any announcement for a candidacy. Higgins went on to observe that the FBI investigations into corrupt Alaska politicians isn't over, and that people are waiting to see if Rep. Don Young is trolled up, before making a final decision on what race he or she might enter.

Alaska progressive bloggers have been helping get the word out on the positive changes underway at KWMD. Linda Kellen live blogged part of yesterday's show for Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis. Last Monday, Steve Aufrecht, from WhatdoIKnow? covered the premiere live call-in program.

Monday, the studio - actually Carrigan's garage - was called "Two Bay" studio. Friday, it was "Two Space" studio. I called in, getting a echo-laden feedback loop, tempting me to call the set-up the "Too spaced" studio.

Alaska's progressive bloggers covered the early May Hayes Research Group poll showing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's popularity continuing to slip. It is now at 54%, her lowest since being elected in 2006.

Shannyn Moore, from Just A Girl from Homer wrote the first local article on the polls. Her Huffington Post version of the article, titled Palin Popularity Plunging, now has 1,334 comments. Her Thursday afternoon appearance on Keith Olbermann's Countdown program has been copied and embedded at scores of progressive sites around the country, including the high-traffic blog, Crooks and Liars. Supposedly, Moore, along with APRN's Johanna Eurich, have won an award from a prestigious communications professionals group for their APRN production of Forget-me-nots.

Moore's local AM radio talk program on KBYR airs again this evening from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Tonight Moore will talk about the Federal decisions that came out last week limiting how Polar bears are dealt with in terms of their threatened status. She also hopes to interview the mayor of Sitka. (Sitka will be the site of the 2010 Alaska Democratic Party Convention).

Moore's KBYR program is followed by another progressive segment that is called The Madness of Method with Mike Method. Tonight's guest will be Ethan Berkowitz. I believe Ethan will be talking about renewable energy and some new ides he has on helping rural Alaska. That will be this evening, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Alaska's progressive bloggers united this past week in helping get constituents to call Sen. Mark Begich about the hate crimes legislation now before congress.

And, as I wrote about last week, Media Matters for America co-founder Eric Boehlert will be coming out with a book next week that devotes a chapter to our Alaska progressive bloggers' role in the 2006 and 2008 national campaigns.

More on Jeremy Lansman.

images - top - Jeremy Lansman at radio conference in Maryland; bottom - the scene at the KWMD studio last Friday (Celtic Diva)