GOING DOWN IN FLAMES

As corporate icons like General Motors tumble - what will be left of the economy?

This is a bleeding edge show with 3 interviews plus media clips.

In the first half hour: our second interview with Dmitri Orlov, author of "Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects." Our previous interview with Mr. Orlov was picked up by more than 40 radio stations. He predicted rapid economic collapse - and how right he was!

We add in some clips from Karmabanque Radio on the coming financial tsunami. Tip of the hat to Max Keiser and Stacy!

In the second half of the show, we zero in to another type of corporate default: disappearing newspapers. The Christian Science Monitor shocked the news world by dropping their 100 year old print weekday edition, going online instead. The New York Times owes a billion dollars, and they are slashing journalists, as is Gannett, America's largest news chain. One New England paper announced its own demise.

According to Paul Gillin, we'll see newspaper disappear in some major cities over the next five years. Maybe even famous ones, in your own city. Advertising has tanked, due to the economic crisis. Papers depended to a large degree on SUV ads from American car makers. Guess what, those ad budgets are slashed. Ditto the shrinking classifieds as millions of people use EBay and Craig's List instead. The publishers just finished a closed-door conference to see how they can survive.

Paul Gillin was editor-in-chief of the tech journal ComputerWorld for 15 years. Now he's a consultant for new media. Not to mention his blog at newspaperdeathwatch.com. Join us for that interview.

We wrap up with a look at Canada's media conglomerate called Canwest. In my city, they own both the dailies, several free giveaway news dailies, and one TV station. They are the news. Canwest bought out disgraced media baron Conrad Black, and then engineered a take-over of several cable TV channels. That was a controversial deal which saw, guess who, Goldman Sachs putting up most of the money. If revenues are poor, and they are, Goldman Sachs could end up owning more Canadian media channels than the law allows. And the Asper family, which owns Canwest, could lose control, as their stocks plummet from over $20 to just $2. Their empire is billions in debt, and revenues are slumping.

Oh yeah, Canwest owns Network Ten in Australia - and that company is hurting with falling revenues.

Canwest isn't all bad - but they lost me when they continued to print global warming deniers as columnists, over and over again, long after Vancouver Sun editor Kirk LePoint said "we get it" about climate change. The icing on the cake: last August the Sun ran an editorial, expressing the views of the newspaper, that "Coal Is The Future." Really? Well hopefully Canwest is not the future, or we'll lose the planet.

We run a full analysis of Canwest and their money problems by the Redeye Collective from CFRO Radio in Vancouver. They talk with Mark Edge, academic, journalist and author of "Asper Nation" from New Star Books.

PRODUCTION NOTES:
There is a 30 second music bed for your station ID (if you want) at from 29:13 to 29:43. The program then re-introduces itself. If you need more time for announcements, you could cut the closing music clip, intervening at 58:39.

Background music is "Tita" from Cyberzen Sound Engine, and the end clip is "Secrets" by Xavier Rudd. The opening contains clips from CNBC 081110 (financial adviser Martin Hennicke) and a few seconds in a spot from Campaign for America's Future.