ADC is pleased to report that MSNBC has finally cancelled Michael Savage’s weekly talk show entitled “The Savage Nation.” The show was cancelled following a five-month stint of 15 programs in which Savage continued his pattern of spewing hateful, racist, and discriminatory rhetoric to an audience of over 300,000 people. MSNBC cancelled the program after Savage made extremely homophobic comments on the July 5 episode, denouncing a caller on the show as “a sodomite” and telling him “you should only get AIDS and die, you pig.”
In early February, ADC, along with a coalition of other groups, urged MSNBC to rethink its announcement of a weekly Michael Savage television program, but the show debuted as scheduled in March. In announcing the program, MSNBC president Erik Sorenson described Savage as “brash, passionate and smart,” and promised that he would provide “compelling opinion and analysis with an edge.” Following the cancellation, MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines said, “His comments were extremely inappropriate and the decision was an easy one.”
Over the past five months, ADC activists have written more than 500 hundred individual letters to MSNBC expressing their concerns about Savage’s record of bigotry and hate. Prior to being hired by MSNBC, Savage had also used his San Francisco based radio show and writings to launch defamatory attacks at a vast array of American communities. His radio show still airs on some 300 radio stations across the country.