Michael Savage's "Flagship Station" Drops Him

San Francisco Bay Area radio station Talk 910 KNEW has dropped Michael Savage from its airwaves. KNEW was known as Savage's flagship station. It was always amazing that someone as conservative as Michael Savage was on a San Francisco Bay Area station anyway.

Here's what the station said:

"Why did you take Michael Savage off the air?"

Here's your no-spin direct answer; we have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information. The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision.

Interestingly enough, the comments at that blog post were almost universally negative. It shows that Savage had a small but loyal audience. The key word is small.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, much of it is about ratings:

His show ranked 23rd out of 75 in its time slot in the Bay Area market (total audience) in August, according to Arbitron. The No. 1 station last month, all-news KCBS-AM (740 AM) had an estimated 666,700 listeners; Savage had 156,300.

Savage is one of the kings of "hate radio," with the following gems credited to him:

• I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' "

• The U.S. Senate is "more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because women have been injected into" it.

In May 2009, Savage was listed as one of sixteen people banned from entering the United Kingdom.