I called up reporter Adam Piori last fall and I happened to catch him just as a storm

was slamming his home state of Connecticut.

I wanted to learn more about Salem and Adam, who has written several lengthy articles about

the company is a good guy to ask.

The way that I found out about Salem was I was looking at major campaign donors to both

Democrats and Republicans.

At the time for George Bush, I kept seeing Salem communications.

This was in 2004 when George W. Bush was running for re-election.

This will be the beginning of a new term to make America a safer place, stronger place,

and better place.

I knew who many of the donors were, the major Republican donors, but I never heard of

Salem so I began poking around to see what Salem was.

What Adam found when he was poking around was that Salem, though not the largest radio

network in the country and lacking the name recognition of Fox News or Breitbart, is

nevertheless a powerhouse political influencer.

I'm Katie Thornton and this is the divided dial, a five-part podcast series from On the

Media about how one side of the political spectrum came to dominate talk radio and how

one company is using the airwaves to launch a right-wing media empire.

In this episode, we're going to dig into Salem's 50 year back story from their scrappy

start to where they are today.

It's a history that paralleled the growth of the national religious right and led to

the company's long-standing involvement in a secretive group of powerful evangelical

...