One way you could look at WINA 98.9-FM/1070-AM, “The Flagship Station of Virginia Athletics,” is that Virginia Athletics is helping that station promote the dissemination of far-right propaganda in Charlottesville and Central Virginia.
And yes, I know, almost certainly, this column means, no more invites for me to do guest hits on “Best Seat in the House” to talk UVA Athletics.
Bummer, indeed, but such is life.
Getting that one out of the way, the weekday schedule at WINA is, yes, absolutely, about as one-sided to the far-right as you can imagine.
After the morning news, which plays straight up, you get Hugh Hewitt for three hours, telling you, among other things, that Jill Biden is running Cabinet meetings, and Kamala Harris is using government money to get foreign leaders to campaign for her.
Then it’s on to local right-winger Rob Schilling, giving airtime this week to a Northern Virginia pastor on “how to vote according to biblical values,” and to the father of a “J6 political prisoner” to update listeners on the status of his son’s case.
“Markley, Van Camp and Robbins” includes bits like “Why I am voting for Donald Trump,” ahead of another straight-up local news hour, and Luke Neer’s “Best Seat in the House” covering UVA Athletics.
Following “Best Seat,” then, it’s Mark Levin, author of The Democrat Party Hates America, if you want to know how that three hours each night goes.
The weekday ends with Rich Valdes, whose most recent show at this writing began with a discussion of “more stations for Soros,” poking there at the reliable liberal boogieman on an apparently slow news day.
My favorite on the weekend schedule is Sebastian Gorka, the weekend show being a “Best Of,” so this weekend, maybe we’ll be lucky and get Gorka, the radical Islamophobe ex-Trump White House strategist, chat with infamous “black NAZI” Mark Robinson, the MAGA nominee for governor in North Carolina.
Seriously, they can’t just run dead air in between the actual news and UVA sports?
Maybe try a polka hour every so often?
I’m all in for WINA being free to program its day with as much far-right garbage as the station’s owners want.
I do wonder how it works out for them, given the political leanings of the Charlottesville/Albemarle area, which are decidedly not MAGA.
I assume they know their business better than I would.
I do wonder what their local advertisers know and care about the programming, but that’s for them to decide.
One thing I can do is find out how much UVA Athletics is getting in return for giving the station and its parent company, Charlottesville Radio Group, the “Flagship Station” status.
Yep, I’ve got a FOIA request in to the University.
I’m assuming here, of course, that UVA Athletics is getting money from the Charlottesville Radio Group, and that it’s not the other way around.
Video: Virginia Athletics and WINA
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Chris Graham
