Happy Birthday Ron Smith

Yesterday former WBAL radio talk show host Ron Smith turned 70 years old. Even if you're not a talk radio kind of person, but you've lived in Baltimore you've probably heard of Ron Smith. Talk Show Man. The Voice of Reason. These are a couple of his monikers.

Ron retired from talk radio last week after a month-long battle with pancreatic cancer. Ron explained that he did not respond well to treatment and is signing off, but he's okay with that.

I have listened to Ron Smith since 1994 when I graduated from college. I can thank my fraternity brother Slopper for getting me into talk radio. In college he made me listen to Rush Limbaugh anytime we went somewhere in his car. I wasn't a huge fan, but it definitely got me thinking. When I returned to Baltimore after college I started listening to Ron Smith. And I got hooked.

David Zurawick wrote a great article in The Sun about Ron Smith. Z writes that despite battling Maryland's liberals for 26 years, there's been a huge outpouring of support for Ron in the last couple of months. He's received calls from Senator Cardin, Senator Mikulski, Attorney General Doug Gansler, Comptroller Peter Franchot, and he even received a note from Martin O'Malley, the Governor who has refused to go on WBAL radio for years after he got into a fight with Chip Franklin.

I missed Ron when he moved from the drive home to the late morning. I really miss him now that he's not on the radio at all. God speed, Talk Show Man.

WBAL and the Ron Smith Show

Have you listened to the Ron Smith show lately? Yeah, neither have I.

Within the past month or so the Ron Smith Show moved to 9am and the Shari Elliker show became the Afternoon News Journal at 3pm.

I can't get an AM signal at work so I can't listen on the radio. I could listen online, but the bandwidth police at work will shut you down after a while. And besides, I have to work. Can't just listen to Ron's show.

And Shari? Sorry. She's just not that interesting. She's not very opinionated. She just wants to hear what you have to say. Her show basically goes like this: "I don't know. What do you think? I guess there are several ways to look at this." She should change her show's name to "Sitting on the Fence". Come on. At least fake a position on the issues.

So, I don't get to listen to Ron Smith anymore, which is a shame because I love that show.

Why did the change happen anyway? I have no idea. I can't think of any reason for the change other than Ron requested it. Think about it - who are they gaining in their audience? People that don't work during the day? They're certainly losing the commuting home crowd, which I would imagine would be larger than the old people and stay-at-home mom's and the unemployed.

What do you think? What are you listening to now that Ron Smith is gone?

Air America Crashed and Burned

Air America, the liberal news radio station, not to be confused with the CIA radio that pours into foreign countries, shut down today. Does anyone feel bad about this?

The station, made familiar, but not popular, with such liberal extremists such as Al Frankin and Rachel Maddow, the verbally violent and volitile lesbian, has to shut down because basically nobody listens to it and they can no longer get advertising dollars to support it.

Created to compete with conservative talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ron Smith (I had to throw that in there), the station struggled from its infancy. Air America saw several management shake-ups and filed for bankruptcy in 2006 with mounting debts.

However, being super liberal and pro-abortion, these folks should not be too upset that they had to kill their baby.

Unfortunately, Al Frankin is now wreacking havoc in Minnesota and Washington, D.C. as a U.S. Senator and Rachel Maddow is spewing her hatred across liberal cable channel MSNBC. But, you know what they say - All bad things must come to an end. Bye-bye Air America!

What Do You Read?

I'm constantly reading. I read the Baltimore Examiner everyday when I get home from work. I also read the local papers - The Eldersburg Eagle, The Advocate, The Gazette. We used to read The Sun, but you know how that is. They don't like anyone who's right of the far left - that includes the 99% of the people in the middle.

I am always reading a book. Right now I am reading P.J. O'Rourke's book - P.J. O'Rourke on A Wealth of Nations. He's a libertarian and he's really funny. Check out some of his other books. I mean, how can a book titled like this not be funny: All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty .

My next book will probably be 1984, at least that was the plan. I'll have the current book read by this weekend. But my 1984 book is 2nd in the queue at the library, so I may have to find another quick book to read. Perhaps something by Hemmingway or Steinbeck. They read fast.

Since I work in technology, I try to stay up on what's new in the IT world. Here are some of my favorite websites:

http://www.eweek.com/
http://www.informationweek.com/
http://www.pcworld.com/

And I'm a news junkie. I cannot live without these sites:

http://www.wbal.com/
http://www.wbaltv.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/
http://www.news.google.com/ - and you can put in your favorite topics

And I have to check out the stories linked by Ron Smith everyday:

http://wbal.com/shows/smith/

For my political fix, I check out these regularly:

http://www.gazette.net/politics/ - read Blair Lee of the Montgomery Gazette. And for kicks, read Barry Roscovar. He's in Martin O'Malley's pocket and thinks our clown governor can do no wrong. It's definitely a good laugh.

Definitely check out Ben Stein. You know the guy from The Wonder Years and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's actually really smart and really funny.

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/archive/yourlife/ben-stein/1

And another favorite is Walter Williams. He hates the NAACP and doesn't seem to care too much for Jesse and Al. Only thing is, Mr. Williams is black, or African-American if you're politically correct.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/archive.shtml