Liberal radio host and content creator David Pakman has announced he is ending his nationally syndicated radio show and subsequent TV simulcast.
Pakman — who had been hosting the program since 2005 — said the juice was no longer worth the squeeze.
“When this show started, it started as a radio show. And it started on community radio stations. It expanded to community television stations. It expanded to satellite TV,” he stated. “Over the years, the importance of those platforms has diminished. The amount of staff time required to service those platforms has not diminished. In fact, it’s probably gone up. And the interference that being on those platforms causes for our online platforms has become more and more significant.”
The longtime host will focus on the digital aspects of his endeavors. Currently, he has nearly 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube. Additionally, Chartable.com ranks The David Pakman Show as the 45th most popular political podcast in its most recent rankings.
He shared that the nature of the program — which was syndicated for just a one-hour timeslot — made producing content more difficult.
“If I got a good 80 or 90 minutes one day because of a great interview, we have to chop the interview up and divide it into two shows, and only put the interview online. We get a lot of complaints about that,” he shared. “In addition to this, we often have to curtail language — bleep things. Sometimes we forget to bleep and then that becomes a problem for affiliate stations.
“There’s a lot of little things … to be honest, there’s also a financial component where we’ve been producing the show for radio and TV at our cost. And it generates essentially zero revenue for us. So this is a business decision as well as a decision about the future of media. I believe the future especially for shows like this is on digital platforms.”
David Pakman shared that there are changes to his digital aspects that he hasn’t been able to announce yet, but is excited for the future of his program.
The David Pakman Show will end “effective at the start of August,” the host shared when making the announcement.
