January 23, 2012 07:02 PM UTC

I wish KOA had continued to allow Caldara to waste his time on the radio

• 11 Comments
• by: Jason Salzman

(Well, there’s one – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I’ve always thought Jon Caldara was wasting his time, in terms of advancing his political agenda, by spending three hours a day, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., doing his KOA talk radio show.

You’d think he could find a better way to advance evil for three hours every do, wouldn’t you?

Now Caldara, who’s the President of the libertarian Independence Institute, will have those three hours back, since KOA terminated his radio talk show, in favor of a faceless national feed.

I asked Caldara if he thought the radio show was the best use of his time. (He’s said it didn’t pay much.)

“Talk radio is complementary to what I do as an activist,” he said. “There’s a synergy.”

I asked for specifics on the synergy, but he couldn’t define it, except to say, “I learn more on talk radio than most things.”

I asked Caldara how big his audience was.

“The average size was about 230-250 pounds,” he said. “There’s a lot of fat asses listening to AM radio. What was great was the coverage, because it blasted around the western United States.”

As such, Caldara’s show amped up the right-wing buzz machine sometimes, and being a talk-show host might have shined up Caldara’s image a bit, making him part of the “media.” Maybe this impresses right-donors, but not sane people and progressives. They know aimlessly blasting radio waves doesn’t help you win very often, which might be part of the reason the GOP likes to form circular firing squads, as Caldara likes to say.

I don’t mean to trash Caldara as a talk-show host. He was funny and pretty well informed without getting lost in the mud below the weeds. He connected well to his three listeners (four, if I checked in).

Too bad he didn’t have more guests on the radio, because his direct questions can be revealing.

This sounds a bit like I’m writing Caldara’s media obituary, which I’m not. Caldara still has his KBDI show, Devil’s Advocate, which should be interprested as literally “advocating for the devil,” as opposed to taking an opposing view. And Caldara has other media projects too, like Complete Colorado and the Colorado News Agency, that he controls at the Independence Institute.

I asked Caldara if  losing his slot on KOA would hurt him politically?

“I don’t think so,” he told me, “because my radio presence isn’t going to go away.” (He’ll be subbing for Rosen, Boyles, and others, and he’ll have a Sunday evening show on KHOW.  Plus he’s “entertaining offers from Playgirl” and “tweeting in his pants right now.”

Asked for the name of the KHOW show, Caldara replied, “Home Gardening Tips with Jon Caldara.”

Had enough? Maybe so if you hate Cadara’s political agenda, but these days, anytime we lose a local voice it’s bad. It’s a shame KOA dumped Caldara.