Utah Radio Station Drops Sean Hannity’s Show After Possible Accusations Of Incivility

by Frances Martel | 2:01 pm, July 3rd, 2010

» 21 comments

A radio station in Utah run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will no longer air the nationally syndicated Sean Hannity Show beginning this October. While the station announced that the decision had to do with the cultivation of local programming, the local ABC affiliate is reporting that questions about the program’s civility were circulating recently before the decision.

KSL Radio, run by a for-profit arm of the LDS church named Deseret Media Companies, announced its decision earlier this week. ABC4 Salt Lake City reports that the announcement came in light of speculation that the program was “not in line with Deseret Media Company’s mission statement that calls for civility and other ethical stances.”

The official announcement, however, said nothing of the sort:

“In a press release, Mark Willes, CEO of KSL Broadcasting Inc. said, ‘We acknowledge the great partnership we’ve had with Sean Hannity and appreciate his contributions to furthering public dialogue,’

‘At the end of the day, we simply feel our future success and competitive advantage reside in creating unique local content, and that is our objective for developing replacement programming,’ said Willes.

While all overt signs point to it being a decision based on the desire for more local content, and the #1 rated Sean Hannity will certainly be fine (he was already picked up by KNRS, which also syndicates Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh), the Salt Lake Tribune stuck with the story that Hannity’s content was a little too hot for KSL to handle: “Hannity got the ax because his mean-spirited banter was out of step with a new mission statement at LDS Church-owned media that demands its programming bring “light” and knowledge to listeners.”

[h/t ThinkProgress]

KNRS, KSL, Salt Lake Tribune, Sean Hannity, Talk Radio, Utah

NORBIT

Wow! If that’s the new standard, what are they gonna do about NPR? – Burn it Down!? lol
http://apostrophejones.com Apostrophe jones

Two words . Ba loney.
ImNotBlue

[h/t ThinkProgress]

Man, Mediaite writers sure do spend a lot of time on those far-left sites. I wonder, could you provide a list of sites you guys read for stories? I’d be interested to know what you consider “good sources.”
MichelleF

For the record, I live in Utah and the SL tribune is not exactly known to be conservative friendly, so I will take this with a BIG grain of salt.
Big_F-ing_Deal

MichelleF said:
For the record, I live in Utah

That explains a lot…
cracker proud

We all know how thin skined Obama is and his band of socialist thugs wants nothing more than to stop the truth from getting out there. They are a bunch of chicken you know what for taking him off. Guess we will all have to start going underground to get the real news if Obama , SEIU have there way!!
drex94

well its about time this right wing hack job was taken off the air…..Utah is a good start. Vannity has been on a witch hunt since Obama was running for President. All his cronies should follow: Windbaugh-Beckerhead-Shitz…and all the other assholes.
youngwayne22

BFD took the words right outta my mouth…
Thomas G Williams

Cracker for sure and not something to be proud of: WHERE DO YOU GET OBAMA AND SEIU IN THIS???????

Stop smoking Crack and posting, how does this stop the LIES from getting out there? HE ‘slimy hackery’ was picked up RIGHTWING AWAY by another station in the same market.

Really your addiction to hill billy heroin or crack is so apparent that your computer needs to go to drug rehab just to detox from your use.

DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE? Did you use a home lobotomy kit you bought from BECK?
puck30

As much as I don’t like nor bother with Pawn Vannity. So What?

KLS drops him and he will just move to another station in a week or two at the most.

BTW Has Pawn talked about his ‘Great American’ friend Joe Liberman and how that snake is trying to push through a bill that will give the President powers to kill the internet for up to four months?

No, just pushing his freedom concerts fronted by ‘(What’s left of) lynyrd skynyrd’.
the real john t

cracker proud said:
We all know how thin skined Obama is and his band of socialist thugs wants nothing more than to stop the truth from getting out there. They are a bunch of chicken you know what for taking him off.

The last I knew Utah was a conservative state.
jrcmi

“They are a bunch of chicken you know what for taking him off.”

The MORMONS are now part of the Great Left Conspiracy!? Lock the doors! Hide the kids! Hide under the bed – no, wait – there’s COMMIES under there! Ee-yah-h-h-h!”

“KLS [sic] drops him and he will just move to another station in a week or two at the most. ”

KSL is a high-power station with a strong signal. Another station in that market may not have the same “reach.” It could very well make a difference in Hammity’s “numbers.”

KSL presents itself as a news station, and may be having second thoughts about airing a partisan right-wing extremist like Sham – unless they intend to replace him with someone even MORE extreme.
NOTcrazylikeFOX

Man, Mediaite writers sure do spend a lot of time on those far-left sites. I wonder, could you provide a list of sites you guys read for stories? I’d be interested to know what you consider “good sources.”

Maybe INB would care to point out why Think Progress is not a good enough source for him. I doubt they would make the same complaint if a far-right blog was the source in a story, but I digress. It doesn’t seem like Think Progress has lied or made any factual errors here, so I’m guessing that’s not the problem, and is more of an ideological issue with INB, as usual. Just saying…
Thomas G Williams

It is always an IDEOLOGICAL issue with BLUE and If this site offered post histories you could see he is 16 inches past head deep in the @$$ of any issue.
MichelleF

It is always an IDEOLOGICAL issue with BLUE

And its not with you tommy?
cracker proud

Incivility………………..Just makes you want to LOL when the liberals say something like that!!! As if they knew what the word even means!!
ImNotBlue

NOTcrazylikeFOX says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:16 am

Maybe INB would care to point out why Think Progress is not a good enough source for him.

Because it is a site with a stated political goal of advocating and advancing a political point of view. Sources like that cannot be trusted to be unbiased or fair, as they are attempting to promote an ideology.

I doubt they would make the same complaint if a far-right blog was the source in a story, but I digress.

False.

It doesn’t seem like Think Progress has lied or made any factual errors here, so I’m guessing that’s not the problem, and is more of an ideological issue with INB, as usual. Just saying…

Well, I didn’t actually claim they did. Only that Mediaite seems to get a lot of their stories from sites like that, as well as a number of other leftwing advocacy sites. As I said, what sites do they deep acceptable, and what sites don’t they? Isn’t that something you’d be interested to know?

Thomas G Williams says:
July 4, 2010 at 8:21 am

It is always an IDEOLOGICAL issue with BLUE and If this site offered post histories you could see he is 16 inches past head deep in the @$$ of any issue.

Wow… you’re an angry person. Why someone like myself, an anonymous poster on a blog, would get you that upset… I can’t figure out. And why you feel lying about me and my intentions is effective, well that’s another question.

Funny how someone like you, who never met a leftwing talking point he didn’t like, or a right-of-center argument that wasn’t “stupid” and worthy of ridicule, accuses me of being “ideological.” I think you need some better self awareness.
jrcmi

“Funny how someone like you, who never met a leftwing talking point he didn’t like”

You just proved his point.

“Mediaite seems to get a lot of their stories from sites like that”

A lot MORE of their stories come from Fox than TP. MSNBC gets featured often because they have stories worthy of covering.

I opened some Mediaite stories at random and copied a link at random (unless it was an internal Mediaite link). This may not be scientific but it’s the best I could do on short notice. You will note a fair variety among the links:

http://public.resource.org/
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://maristpoll.marist.edu
http://nymag.com
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/ (Associated Press)
http://www.politicsdaily.com
http://www.boston.com
http://blog.nielsen.com
http://corner.nationalreview.com
http://www.politico.com

Bias is in the eye of the beholder, and yours is tilted to the “right.”
RTB

TREX, still bent air america folded huh?
Not a hannity guy myself, but i dont see this as too big of a deal…especially it being in utah…no offence michelle…
torgman

Hey, wait a minute…

I was told that the Right never engages in being deliberately uncivil and the Left always does. Could I’ve been mislead? :D
TinaFromTampa

I don’t read this site as often as I should… but it’s not surprising the right-wing nuts here miss the point.
If the Church of Latter Day Saints says they’re intent upon bringing light, not heat, the readers here don’t understand that.
Yes, Sean Hannity generates a lot of revenue for every station that carries his program.
If a group like the LDS actually thinks the reward isn’t aligned with their mission, you have to give them credit for taking the action they did.
Meanwhile, I’mNotBlue continues to think others care what he/she/it “thinks” — although there is essentially no “thinking” involved on his/her/its part.