In the end, the advertisers just didn’t care how many cheerleaders Kansas City radio shock jock Johnny Dare could get to swallow penis-shaped vodka jello shots on air between 6 and 10 a.m. Newly-plated Audacy radio boss George Soros didn’t care, either.
And though the KC-area media tizzy over Dare’s firing on Friday from 98.9 The Rock ignores the point, ‘twas the Hungarian socialist’s recent majority acquisition of bankrupt Audacy that killed the boorish KC biker hag. The question: Dare and his porno monkey morning show are toast, but does Kansas City care why it happened?
The tobacco and wire brush-voiced Dare became the biggest name in Kansas City radio over the past three decades on the same kind of mutton-headed self-flagellation tens of thousands of KC commuters inflict on themselves on their morning commute for the sake of staying awake in those early morning hang-over hours. Dare worked to be the most outrageous thing they’d hear all day – straining daily to make at least one of his junior high-esque Theater Of The Dirty Mind gags the talk of the breakroom. He succeeded – becoming perhaps the highest paid radio personality in the comparatively frail KC radio market, pulling down a reported $400,000 annually at the station’s height in the number 33 market in the nation.
But among that slew of local airwave mediocrity (much of it increasingly produced God-knows-where and piped in on the cheap to Kansas City stations via satellite) Dare was live and local, his vulgarity and obnoxious antics building a legion of loyal fans while showing a legitimate interest in the community with any number of public service initiatives, always steeped with a Jack Daniels and gasoline flavor. He was like your power belching, gas-passing nephew whose yen for vulgarity is equaled only by his willingness to come over and work on your Harley for free.
But alas, like every dinosaur media player in these online times, naked twister radio ain’t what she used to be. KQRC 98.9 The Rock’s owner Audacy, formerly Entercom Broadcasting – bled its way into chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2024 and emerged last September with white knight Soros Fund Management picking up $400 million in its debt to become its lead shareholder. Lots of other KC-area stations were also involved in the transfer, part of the radio contingent of Soros’ plan to expand his’ freshly crafted network of Left-leaning media “news” producers like States Newsrooms, Free Press and others. With their funding paths typically spaghettied together through wads of 501c3 non-profits all aimed at attacking conservative ideology, assailing Republican state legislatures and pushing pro-Left themes like racial division, transgenderism and illegal immigration, the Audacy buy provided a rare above-the-radar view at Soros’ plan to stamp out conservative speech and spread his influence via available media.
Radio’s renown for paltry salaries anyway. A big buck duck like Dare, drawing all that cash for talking dirty for four hours a day…, well, the Mr. Waternoose of world politics simply didn’t see the charm. Dare’s whopper salary could be better employed elsewhere in the mission.
The Left was threatened enough by Donald Trump’s first term to prompt Soros to kick off his media endeavors. The conservative wave in the country that elected Donald Trump2 has forced Soros and his heir apparent progeny Alexander to double down on the plan. Not that Kansas City in general or Dare’s listeners will care much about Soros’ stepping stones to controlling American voters, but the narrower illustration should be pretty clear. Johnny Dare is gone now for a reason, and that reason is mostly being ignored.
While advertisers increasingly thumb their noses at spending money to advertise with real media and instead piddle around trying to build their own audiences with boring content on Facebook and Instagram, Soros et.al. are scooping up struggling media and creating their own outlets to spread an ideology bent on milking and eventually consuming your business and your way of life.
If you think George Soros has your best interests heart, you might as well kick back and have another jello shot.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
