By Tim Redmond
I showed up Thursday morning of the Clear Channel studios on Townsend Street to appear on KQKE's morning talk show, Keepin' it Real with WIll and Willie, featuring comedian Will Durst and former Mayor Willie Brown, and the producer met me at the door with some sad news: The show had been cancelled, summarily. Two more days on the air. As of Monday morning, the Will and Willie show would be gone.

I'm told the show had a decent (if not stellar) listener base, and was making money. But not enough money -- the way Clear Channel sees things, it's entirely about the bottom line. So the locally produced show that actually took on local issues will be replaced with The Stephanie Miller Show, a syndicated program out of L.A. I'm sure the show is great, and funny and everything else that a lot of Air American programming is -- but it's not about San Francisco. It's not local.

Once upon a time -- and it wasn't really all that long ago -- local radio stations had at least some responsibility to cover local news and issues. Now the Quake, like the rest of the local Clear Channel line up, will have no real local anything, except traffic.

I never thought I'd say this, but we'll miss you, Willie Brown.