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Liberal talk radio does succeed. Look who got elected.
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I think ratings wise, liberal shows are less successful. I recall Air America had to be taken out of many markets. The middle part of the country has a majority Republican base anyway - so they get good ratings there. Drive from FL to CA and there are a lot of parts in the mid-country when you get only AM radio and almost all the talk shows are conservative.
National election results thankfully do not seem to be influenced significantly by radio.
cuz talk radio is dumb.
i've watched chris matthews. its just as boring, rhetoric-filled, and meaningless as a lot of right-wing talk shows. blech.
PBS and NPR actually talk not only about what's going on, but WHY and HOW. This is what's really missing from profit-driven media, not leftness or rightness. When a business is run on the basis of selling as much as possible, its of course going to orient towards the most eye/ear-catching events, no matter how trivial or tangent they are to the real, deeper issues.
cuz talk radio is dumb.
i've watched chris matthews. its just as boring, rhetoric-filled, and meaningless as a lot of right-wing talk shows. blech.
PBS and NPR actually talk not only about what's going on, but WHY and HOW. This is what's really missing from profit-driven media, not leftness or rightness. When a business is run on the basis of selling as much as possible, its of course going to orient towards the most eye/ear-catching events, no matter how trivial or tangent they are to the real, deeper issues.
If you are willing to entertain criticism of NPR and PBS, might I suggest that it is the choice of which topics will be explored regarding their WHY-ness and HOW-ness, rather than the bias expressed in such exploration, which constitues the source of unease to those of us who find public media less than ideal?
It would be a rare episode of Frontline, for example, which dealt with Harry Reid's connections with the the gambling interests in Nevade, or Chris Gregoire's quid-pro-quo relationship with the Indian tribes in Washington state, or the history of vote-fixing in traditional Democratic urban areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Chicago...
FRONTLINE: home | PBS
this doesn't look like they're overly investigating any political figure. there's one about hugo chavez, a demon representing people's leftover fears of communism. one about religious rights in china. one about retirement.
its not just about that. lefty propaganda is just as boring.
Why Doesn't Liberal Talk Radio succeed?
I was wondering yesterday why liberal talk radio is never nearly as successful as conservative talk radio. Do liberals prefer other media to the talk radio format, or does NPR suffice for most? I'd love to hear any answers from liberals or conservatives.
Owners of Radio stations are generally conservative. They found a niche called right wing talk radio that appeals to white men over 50 and have devoted about 90% of their talk stations to this format. Very few woman and men under 50 listen to this crap. As we saw with the last election and Obama's popularity -- he has an 85% approval rate --right wing talk radio is essentially irrelevant.
First, I don't think main stream media (MSM) intentionally skews their news to the left in some sort of conspiracy theory like the the conservative talk show hosts would like you to believe. I think its more that MSM reports on things that change in our world. Things that change in our world are inherently progressive and are identifed as liberal and/or from the left.
By definition, conservative views are traditional views, things that don't change and have stayed the same. Not really good fodder for news. Why bother reporting on something that doesn't change?
Therefore, conservative talk radio has had to do something to make their news interesting. They make their news interesting by taking an anti-liberal/anti-progressive stance. If you listen to conservative talk radio it all about how the left wants to change things and why this is a bad thing if you have conservative views. The conservative views themselves aren't the news, the news is that the left wants to changes these views. Its ironic that there would not be conservative talk radio if there wasn't a liberal left to disagree with!
But if you listen to the "liberal view" on radio, it's exactly the opposite. All they do is whine against conservatism. Still, liberal radio can't make it on their own. Why is that the case?
The reason why conservative radio is so popular with most Americans is because a great majority of Americans are in fact religious (all religions). Conservatism isn't what you have said, although it applies to both conservatives and liberals alike regardless of religion. In fact, one changes or moves conservative with time. For example, a great portion of the youth (each generation) has always had liberal views in every aspect of their lives. When one is young one is mostly impulsive. One takes chances, and often gets in trouble. But as one ages, maybe marries and has children, one tends to think more than not before following one's impulses, because now one has to think about others (children, wife, husband, family, even economics, etc.) before following these impulses. Also, if one stays in the same "liberal environment" (neighborhood, city, etc.), more than likely one never changes. It's much like living in a bubble, and only when looking from the outside-in, one can understand.
I agree with others in that the network shows swing to the left where liberalism is prevalent, so conservatism has only the air waves (radio) to lean on. It's the same way in Hollywood, where conservative actors and actresses are a rarity. And even publishing companies tend to be liberal. These even screen the author's words through the publishing "word police" colander. This is sending publishers into a economic spin, since one can very well publish a book from one's home these days, and new (smaller) publishers are emerging. Newspapers too are going down the drain for similar reasons. For example, instead of publishing unbiased news, they always introduce their personal spin to it. Also, it's just too expensive to print. To make matters worst, tree huggers have made paper very expensive
Owners of Radio stations are generally conservative. They found a niche called right wing talk radio that appeals to white men over 50 and have devoted about 90% of their talk stations to this format. Very few woman and men under 50 listen to this crap. As we saw with the last election and Obama's popularity -- he has an 85% approval rate --right wing talk radio is essentially irrelevant.
I see you don't know what you talk about. Plenty women listen to talk shows and it is not just men over 50 either. It would be nice if you knew what you posted about.
I see you don't know what you talk about. Plenty women listen to talk shows and it is not just men over 50 either. It would be nice if you knew what you posted about.
You are right about that. For example, a lot of women as well as men (young and old) listen to Dr. Laura, and to Laura Ingraham.
Liberal (socialist) talk radio doesn't succeed because liberals are bad debaters, they always appeal to emotions and then cut you off. I used to listen to Air America Radio, it was terrible. Being a libertarian I'm about equidistant from both the right and the left, but debating right-wingers is much harder. Liberals are just mis-educated, and need to learn Economics 101. Conservatives need a complicated paradigm shift of how it's wrong to force people to do the right thing, even if it is morally superior.
Another reason is purely financial: right-wingers are less likely to pirate MP3's and tend to have more disposable income to buy whatever the sponsors are selling. They also tend to be older (radio is an old medium), spend more time driving, etc.
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Why Doesn't Liberal Talk Radio succeed?
