Speech indeed does have costs. The right to speak is not the right to speak while being immune from reaction to that speech. Each of us (advertisers included) can judge for ourselves whether we find someone’s speech “bad”, and we can vote with our pocketbooks accordingly. The Dixie Chicks found that out once, and apparently are finding it out again with the weak results of their movie whining about people’s judgment of their previous speech.

For the most part I think it is fair to say that the big national brands keep away from attaching themselves to material that will alienate half the population and possibly prompt a boycott.

Besides, Air America was a really stupid idea and it’s no surprise it failed (and I’m someone who’s ideologically aligned with them). They entered the market at a time when terrestrial radio (including Limbaugh and Hannity) has been losing listeners left and right. They entered a medium where the only thing shrinking faster than the audience is the ad dollars available for it.

Now – if they’d gone and set up a podcast network and marketed themselves online, odds are they’d be growing right now instead of bankrupt.

So no, I certainly wouldn’t argue that anyone should be forced to associate with anyone.

My post instead is precisely as it is titled: here is the cost of this sort of speech. Of course, one can have different theories about what kind of speech this is (bad vs. controversial).

And this guy’s complaining because advertisers don’t wish to associate with Randi Rhodes’ vitriol and the rest of their shtick? Is he advocating *forced* association…!?

OTOH, sounds like you think advertisers ought to be required to run ads on radio networks that they otherwise don’t want to. To further free speech, of course.