Today's Daily Schadenfreude: Melanie Morgan and Citadel Broadcasting

Score one for the good guys. One of the most hateful, bilious, deranged voices on right-wing hate radio has been silenced ... at least on the airwaves.

Melanie Morgan — the conservative radio talk show host who chairs Move America Forward, the group which has led efforts to shame and boycott Berkeley for its anti-U.S. Marine Corps recruiting stand — has lost her job at KSFO 560 AM.

Morgan, 51, delivered her final broadcast there today after 14 years at the microphone, she says in a news release. KSFO owner Citadel Broadcasting decided not to renew her contract as part of the company’s announced across-the-board financial cost cutting.

“The ratings were terrific and I got to connect with a lot of passionate conservative casues, and I’m really grateful for that,” Morgan told me just now. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the show, I don’t know what’s going to happen to KSFO.”

If you don't know who Morgan is, check out some of her "greatest hits," as covered here during the one-Vulcan crusade my blogfriend Spocko took on against KSFO a year ago. I won't recount them here, other than to say that over the years, she's recommended the assassination of prominent Democratic and progressive leaders on the air, and she deserves to rot somewhere just for that. Sure, she'll be bailed out by wingnut welfare, but at least she's lost one avenue to spew her vomitous hate.

Meanwhile, Morgan's departure due to "cost cutting" signals another delicious development, as Citadel Broadcasting, which owns KSFO and numerous stations in some 50 U.S. markets (but none in Florida), is tanking financially (PDF). They lost over a billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2007 "related to a continued deterioration in the radio marketplace and to a decline in [Citadel's] stock price during the three months ending December 31, 2007[,]" along with declining revenues in major markets like San Francisco (home of KSFO), Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. There is more analysis here and here, but the bottom line is that it ain't pretty for this purveyor of disgusting right-wing rhetoric.

So, to Melanie Morgan, that vile load of filth, and to Citadel, who burnished their piece-of-shit image a few months ago by bringing back that scumbag Don Imus to the airwaves, congratulations! Today's Blast Off! Daily Schadenfreude is for you!