Walking the talk

Walsh, a Baltimore native who spent many summers at his family’s holiday home in Donegal, is at the helm of a new liberal radio network named Progress Media. He is hoping to throw conservative-dominated talk radio a curve ball distinctly from the left. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the slain presidential candidate, will co-host one of the programs.
“I am excited to be affiliated with Progress Media, which will provide Americans a breath of fresh air and a much-needed alternative to the status-quo,” Kennedy, who’s a New York-based environmental activist attorney, said in a statement.
Walsh has also recently signed outspoken Bush critic and former “Saturday Night Live” comedian and writer Al Franken to host a three-hour talk show that will compete directly with Rush Limbaugh, the popular conservative talk show host. Franken is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot” and the more recent “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: a Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.”
Walsh has also leased a radio station in Chicago and completed the network’s first major market distribution deal. He hopes to begin broadcasting next month.
“Over half of this country voted in the last presidential election for Al Gore, that’s a fact,” he said in an interview. “And we are looking good right now to get a number of those voters to listen to us in many of the top four major radio markets.”
Walsh is a fast-talking, hard-working businessman who closes the deal. While many on Wall Street lament not selling high-tech stocks when there were record-breaking profits to be made, Walsh is one of the young bucks that sold before stocks plummeted.
He worked with AOL in its nascent days and then turned VerticalNet into the first-ever billion dollar dot.com business-to-business operation.
“At first I just wrote the large checks to Terry McAuliffe,” Walsh recounts of his first dabbling in politics with the Democratic National Committee chairman. “But then I decided I wanted to get more involved than just giving money.”
Thus he became the DNC’s first chief technology advisor — and with his accumulated personal business success could afford to work full time pro-bono.
Radio, it turns out, is his family’s business. Remember the ubiquitous child’s voice in advertisements in the late 1960s and ’70s shouting, “More Parks’ sausages Mom — Please!”? That was Walsh’s mother, Ruth Lawson Walsh, who also had a successful chat program on a local Baltimore radio station while Walsh was growing up. And his father, a graduate of Manhattan College, sold radio advertising.
Yet, despite all this family success on the airwaves, Walsh said his uncle Frank Sweeney in Leitrim is really the famous one.
“He won ‘Dairy Farmer of the Year’ I’m told,” he said.
After establishing themselves, his parents bought a holiday home near Donegal’s tallest mountain, Mt. Errigal.
“It is my hope that our radio productions will be just as entertaining as conversations I heard during my summer holidays in Ireland,” Walsh said.
The Irish appreciate that talking is an art form, he added.
“I think this new network will be a success and will allow us to increase the discourse in the nation,” he said.
That discourse is going to be decidedly one-sided, Walsh explained. He said conservatives have for too long had a monopoly on talk radio.
“They put their right-wing badge on and say, ‘We’re right and you’re wrong?’ and by implication indicate the left is dishonest,” Walsh said. “Now that won’t go unanswered because we will have Democratic politicians, Democratic candidates, and those who up front say they have a liberal sensitivity.”
It is not all party politics for Walsh. He’s a moneyman. He thinks that by crafting dialogue as spicy as two punters arguing in the pubs of Bunbeg Harbour or Magheroarty, his venture will appeal to listeners and that those who have invested with him in the network will see a profit in a few years.
“Rush was not an overnight monetary success; it took him years,” Walsh said, referring to Limbaugh.
So, just as candidates are out stumping for one vote at a time, Walsh is on the prowl for radio stations to carry his lineup.
WNTD-AM (950), a Spanish-language station that is in the process of being sold, will carry the new talk radio network in Chicago. Progress Media has an option to buy WNTD.
In addition to Franken and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio has been recruited to host a show that will examine corporations’ influence on the consumer.
Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications, will host a talk show about the news media.
Franken, whose books have taunted Limbaugh and President Bush, said on David Letterman’s show recently that he was looking forward to hosting his new program.
He also reminded the audience that his future radio rival Rush Limbaugh historically called for the imposition of maximum jail sentences for drug abusers.
“I hope his wishes are carried out,” Franken said to the delight of the audience. Limbaugh has been under investigation for illegal drug use and has admitted being hooked on prescription pain medications.
Walsh is hoping to announce additional distribution deals and acquisitions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other major media markets in the next few weeks.
“Fox and Limbaugh show that media with a bias are sustainable and profitable — we’re just going to do it with a different bias and we too will be sustainable and profitable for our investors,” Walsh said.
He said there will be open debate and the shows will not be press releases for the Democratic Party.
After college in Schenectady, Walsh received an MBA from Harvard in 1980 and was also a news anchor at a small television station in West Virginia.
“I know that you can’t be completely one sided and hold onto the audience,” he acknowledged.
Walsh hopes that the network will go live sometime around St. Patrick’s Day.