Three days after the Nov. 3 election, the home of Dennis Prager, Larry Elder and local radio host Eddie Burke suddenly started broadcasting Latin Music 24 hours a day.
Some listeners wondered what happen to KOAN 1080 AM. Why did the station drop all of its leading national conservative voices, and what ever happened to the Eddie Burke Show?
It turns out that station owner Mike Robbins, who is running for mayor of Anchorage, sold the station to a Washington state based Hispanic multi-media group called Iglesia Pentecostal Vispera Del Fin. The new owners immediately switched the station to exclusively Spanish language music.
The group has similar stations in Washington state where it mostly broadcasts Christian music and other programming in Spanish. It’s expected that KOAN will follow this model in the near future. But for now, its classic Latin music all day.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
The old KOAN included mostly syndicated programs with leading conservative voices from across the country. Weekday hosts included Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Todd Schnitt, Alex Jones and Brian Kilmeade. They also had programming on finance, health, home repair, travel, cars and cigars. Other hosts included Rudy Maxa, Ric Edelman, Gary Sullivan and Lee Habeeb. Fox News updates were part of the programming.
The Eddie Burke Show was a local daily talk show featuring interviews with leading conservative voices across Alaska. Burke has been a mainstay in Alaska radio circles for decades. When KOAN switched owners, however, he was instantly out of a job.
He said listeners have called wondering what happened to the show.
“Everyone’s out of a job,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of people contact me – that’s been nice.”
2 Comments
Alaskans will tune it out and the stations ratings will fall so low that it will get sold off again. There isn’t a huge Hispanic population in alaska. I can’t see this station surviving very long.
I actually listened to this radio station for several hours and not a single advertisement was broadcast, so it seems rather obvious that the purchase of this station was nothing more than an effort to de-platform conservative voices.