A funny thing happened this past week during my visit to Chicago, and it's something I've seen and heard (or not heard) elsewhere. Are Christian radio stations intentionally securing frequencies as close as possible to National Public Radio and, in the process, making NPR signals hard to hear?
When I picked up my rental car at O'Hare on Wednesday, the local NPR affiliate came in loud and clear on the car radio, all the way west to Aurora. But in my Aurora motel room, the NPR signal was nowhere to be heard and several Christian stations were coming in strong near the same frequency. (A college station was doing its best to chime in nearby, too, and I had the satisfying experience of some Christian guy defending Bush right next to a tinny broadcast of the Psychedelic Furs' "President Gas," a song that resonates even better today than it did during the Reagan years.)
Finally, I saw an Aurora city bus advertising WCPT 850 AM - Chicago's Progressive Talk, "Our Kind of Talk for Our Kind of Town" - so I listened to that. It's a low-power station, but it came in strong on the car radio and weak, but better than NPR, in my motel.
A few years ago, Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association made news by trying to jam out NPR in some Southern markets. Here's one link and another telling the tale. But none of Wildmon's stations seem to be in the Chicago area, so there may be other players involved by now. Piece by piece, radical fundamentalists appear eager to remake the United States into a theocracy - all the more reason to support the truly fair-and-balanced NPR. (Yeah, the spring pledge drive is probably done, but you can pledge anytime of year.)
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