Colorado conservatives have dreamt of the day they could kick 9News anchor, and the Imelda Marcos of sport coats, Kyle Clark to the curb. Their day may be coming.

And I must admit, there’s a certain satisfaction imagining Kyle selling his wardrobe at a garage sale. But conservatives will find a national conglomerate owning half the local TV news outlets is worse. We should remember what happened to radio.

Colorado’s channel 9 and their affiliate Channel 20 are being sold, along with some other 62 news stations around the country, to an even larger media giant that already owns Colorado’s channels 2 and 31.

So, four major over-the-airwaves TV news stations here will combine their operations into one to be run by an out-of-state company. And this will help hold politicians accountable?

We’ve seen this type of conglomeration here before, in radio, and it’s served no one well, including, ironically, the companies that did it.

Before 1996, the Federal Communication Commission’s rules usually allowed only two radio stations to be owned by one entity in any one media market, an AM and FM station. It made for the “WKRP in Cincinnati” period of radio — local, often independently owned, stations with a variety of styles and personalities. In other words, lots of choice for listeners.

It also gave birth to the heyday of local talk radio, arguably the most potent force for limited government news and views we’ve ever had. It’s what drew me to work in talk radio for nearly 27 years now.

In Colorado, we had local giants like Mike Rosen and Peter Boyles who would dive into local politics and bring out stories and opinions the newspapers and TV stations wouldn’t touch. They kept the mainstream media honest.

Talk radio was a political force. Those days are gone.

The FCC changed their rules so one company could own up to eight radio stations in any market. It started a buying spree. Companies went into debt to buy as many stations as they could as fast as they could.

The plan was to centralize the operations of the radio stations; thus, saving a lot of money by taking meat cleavers to the local stations.

Why have a newsroom crew serving only one station when you could have that one newsroom serve eight radio stations? Lay off all the other newsrooms’ employees, and there’s your profit.

If you’ve ever heard the same voice on different radio stations report the same news item, it’s because they record the story once and send it out to eight “sister” stations. No option of hearing how up to seven other stations might have covered that story differently.

If you’ve ever heard a radio traffic reporter mispronounce a common Colorado street or city name, it’s because they’re not in Colorado. They’re in another studio in a different state reading off some computer screen; then the guy does the same for the next city.

But the biggest damage done was the death of local news coverage and talk shows. Oh, yes, they’re still around, but they are not nearly the influencers and power brokers they once were.

Why would a conglomerate pay for local talk-show hosts when broadcasting one of their nationally syndicated shows is basically free. Local coverage and conversation makes way for yet more national twaddle.

Oh, and to pay off the massive debt they still owe, they increased the commercial spot load tremendously. That’s why talk radio has more ads for erectile dysfunction treatments than actual talk radio. Should old guys lose their sex drive, all talk radio goes out of business.

As local conservative radio stations lost impact, where did many listeners go for news? Government-funded liberal Colorado Public Radio.

Yes, 9News along with the other local stations have a left-leaning bias. But, when Kyle Clark and crew do occasionally question the state’s progressive overlords, as they did shine a light on the Prop HH tax increase, called Polis out over his TABOR rebate games and questioned tax money for an ugly vanity pedestrian bridge, it changes the whole debate.

When the new owners of channel 9 start shedding costs at all four of their Front Range news stations, it likely won’t result in more coverage of conservative stories, just less coverage of all stories.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.