Double standards and Randi Rhodes.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@mlees

Maybe the liberal media never found someone who was as skilled at entertaining the listenership.

Who do you think had the most raw talent for entertainment in liberal radio?

I think that liberal radio is inherently un-entertaining (much like conservative humor), so I can’t really answer the question very well.

I guess Al Franken is an entertaining oerson who did liberal radio, but his radio show was one of his least entertaining projects.

Years ago, I used to listen to Alan Colmes’ radio show and he was pretty enterating, but a lot of what made his show work was that he took a the majority of his calls from conservatives. He had a combative relationship with his audience which made it interesting.

[John_Mace]

@Richard Parker

But that’s a very misleading statistic. If a radio show’s listernership was 35% African-American and 65% white, that would show a significant skew toward African-American listeners. Similarly, you have to look at the overall balance of self-identifying liberals and conservatives to make sense of your numbers. Only a tenth of Republicans and less than half of Democrats identify as liberal, while more than half of Republicans and about a quarter of Democrats identify as Conservative (according to Pew). So a 31/29 skew is significant.

I don’t see how that matters, unless you want to apply the same analysis to FoxNews listeners. I don’t have liberal/conservative numbers for Fox, but this data from 2004 shows Fox’s audience to be 21% Democrat, 35% Republican and 22% Independent.

[Richard_Parker]

@John Mace

I don’t see how that matters, unless you want to apply the same analysis to FoxNews listeners. I don’t have liberal/conservative numbers for Fox, but this data from 2004 shows Fox’s audience to be 21% Democrat, 35% Republican and 22% Independent.

You don’t see how the overall population statistics affect whether a particular sample is skewed?

And I would apply the same reasoning to Fox News, of course.

[E-Sabbath]

@BrainGlutton

I don’t mind the content, but her voice makes me want to toss her in a shallow grave on top of Fran Drescher and Maggie Wheeler.

Hey, now. I like Fran Drescher’s voice. (Not Randi’s)

[Bricker]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Not a typical one.

Nor a true Scotsman, I guess.

[E.Thorp]

@John Mace

Well, I’m just wondering what elucidator’s point was. He’s telling us that The Daily Show’s success is some indicator of something. What does it indicate, in terms of this discussion between liberal and conservative media?

The facts have a liberal bias.

[Voyager]

@John Mace

I don’t see how that matters, unless you want to apply the same analysis to FoxNews listeners. I don’t have liberal/conservative numbers for Fox, but this data from 2004 shows Fox’s audience to be 21% Democrat, 35% Republican and 22% Independent.

But see my cite which shows a fairly wide gap between party and ideology.

[elucidator]

But there is something distinctly different, all snark aside (for the moment).

For one thing, there is the sheer number of tighty righty pie holes aflappin’. I can think of at least a dozen, just off the top of my head, from Sean “The Knob” Hannity through Medved, Hewitt, Limbaugh, Reagan, all the way to the sub-arachnids like Beck and the Savage Wiener.

How is that the ecology of reactionary talk radio supports so many? Clearly, it doesn’t reflect the popularity of such views nation wide, or Bush would have been a shoo-in for President for Life. Who pays for the advertising, who targets their demographic?

If, as is claimed, this is all just good business (at which endeavors the poor fuzzy minded moonbats are so woefully retarded), wouldn’t some of them have faded out as the mood of the nation churned? Shouldn’t Sean, or Hugh, or Mike Medfly be standing out by the freeway exit with a sign: “Will Lie For Food”?

But oddly, tighty righty talky-talk is immune to such changes as might otherwise affect an enterprise run strictly on sternly Darwinistic business models. Competition over a shrinking food supply, and the herd doubles in size?

Far more people are sympathetic to Air America’s message than, say, five years ago and it is still on life support. And yet there are several times more righty crap-geysers, and more all the time (Dennis Miller has one, now, I hear. Poor old Dennis…)

So for all the sneering at AA’s fragility, I gotta wonder: are they really playing on a level field?

[Frostillicus]

@John Mace

OK, I get it. The failure of liberal talk radio is proof of its success.

The Rev. Moon has lost $3 billion on the Washington Times, yet still prints it every day. Thus demonstrating the beauty of the free market.

[Starving_Artist]

Well, I got a few theories, luci, and don’tcha want to know what they are?

1. First and foremost, the right-wing radio/television audience is much more monolithic than is the audience for the left. Most conservatives are of a like mind, by and large, as to their values and their resentment over what they’ve seen happen in this country over the last forty to fifty years due to the societal changes wrought by the leftist-driven social upheaval that began in the late sixties.

2. Most of the right-wing audience has felt for decades that the left had powerful allies in the mainstream media and Hollywood, and that they themselves had little voice in the public dialog. This not only led to certain feelings of helplessness as they watched a way of life that they valued continue to erode before their very eyes but it also created a great deal of animus toward both the mainstream media and Hollywood.

3. This created a pent up audience just waiting to be served (some would say exploited) by right-wing broadcasters. Audience members finally had their view being heard, and they found out they weren’t alone. There were millions upon millions of like-minded souls out there, and right-wing broadcasts served as a rallying point from which conservatives could come together and rail against - and, to a certain degree, fight back against - the left.

There has been no like-minded pent-up resentment on the part of the left because, by and large, the news media, television and Hollywood have largely been on their side in the nation’s struggle between left and right.

4. The broadcast personalities on right-wind radio and television seem, to me at least, to be much more professional than do the left-wing personalites. Limbaugh and O’Reilly both had considerable broadcast experience prior to the shows they have now. And Hannity, Reagan, Miller, etc. have been at their game quite a while also…which brings us to number five.

5. Right-wing broadcast personalities, being right-wingers to begin with, have a more business-like mindset. They not only conduct themselves, IMO, with greater professionalism and decorum while on the air than do AA types, but they take a more businesslike view of how they conduct their programs from their audience’s standpoint. They know what their audiences are upset about, what they want to hear, and they know how play to that in very effective ways. Large audiences and advertising fees follow.

Contrast that with most AA personalities, who are basically just angry leftist ranters who have been plucked from other fields of endeavor and placed in front of a microphone in the hope that an audience is out there and will find and stick with them. In other words, AA broadcasters are far less skilled in the professional aspects of broadcasting than are those on the right.

So, you put all that together and you get what we have today. A strong, vibrant and aggressive right wing radio (and to a lesser degree, television) presence, and a fairly weak, disorganized and unprofessional left-wing presence struggling for listenership and ad revenue.

[Bricker]

@elucidator

So for all the sneering at AA’s fragility, I gotta wonder: are they really playing on a level field?

Arbitron doesn’t lie.

[elucidator]

@Starving Artist

…Most of the right-wing audience has felt for decades that the left had powerful allies in the mainstream media and Hollywood, and that they themselves had little voice in the public dialog…

…There has been no like-minded pent-up resentment on the part of the left because, by and large, the news media, television and Hollywood have largely been on their side in the nation’s struggle between left and right…
…and a fairly weak, disorganized and unprofessional left-wing presence struggling for listenership and ad revenue.

So, for fifty years the left has the mainstream media in its sinister clutches, but last week they suddenly forgot how?

[dropzone]

@Sarahfeena

I live in a town that’s about 90% lefty, and what you wrote here has to be one of the funniest things I ever read. All they DO in my town is sit around and talk about how right they are, congratulate each other, and look at you very strangely if you disagree.

Move just a few miles southwest of you and the only thing you’d need to change is to exchange “lefty” for “righty.” It ain’t comfortable for those who THINK. And yes, I consider ALL Republicans to be either people who toostupid to think about how their party has screwed them in their name OR people who have benefited, financially and/or socially, from the same. :mad:

That said, I should organize a Chidope for people who dislike politics while they eat and/or drink.

[8675309]

Yes, we all miss Randy Rhoads, none more so than Ozzy…
(oops, nevermind)

[E-Sabbath]

Amen, brother. Too young.

[Shodan]

@Starving Artist

Most of the right-wing audience has felt for decades that the left had powerful allies in the mainstream media and Hollywood, and that they themselves had little voice in the public dialog. This not only led to certain feelings of helplessness as they watched a way of life that they valued continue to erode before their very eyes but it also created a great deal of animus toward both the mainstream media and Hollywood.

I think this is a big part of it. Rush Limbaugh identified a large, under-served market. Thus he had almost no competition. Much of the “old” media was already aimed at the left side, and Air America has to compete with them. And PBS gets subsidies.

The other thing is that the Left talked themselves into error. They saw Rush Limbaugh succeed, convinced themselves that the only reason for his success was crude insults against the other side, were already convinced that their positions were self-evident (everyone had always told them this, starting in college), and so they figured it was just a matter of [ul][li]buy some radio stations []start screaming invective []Profit![/ul]And now that they are discovering that things are not nearly as simple as all that, they are attempting to comfort themselves by agreeing that they are just too good and too smart for the unwashed masses. [/li]
The problem of reconciling this idea with A) their previous conviction that everything Daily Kos has ever said is obviously true, and B) their alleged warm feelings toward the common man, beat down by The Man and a heartless system - well, let’s skip over that part.

It’s probably a conspiracy by Diebolt anyway.

Regards,
Shodan

[Snag]

@John Mace

Sorry, I wasn’t addressing your point so much as Diogenes. But the idea that liberals don’t like a circle jerk, or don’t like as much as conservatives do is just laughable. This board is living testament to the falsehood of that statement. Or, if you don’t like that, then just look at the comments section of any link on ThinkProgress, DailyKos, or MediaMatters.

Really, you guys need to get over yourselves.

Eh? Conservatives never show a streak of self-righteousness? No circle jerks in the conservative media? :rolleyes:

C’mon John. You should know better.

[Snag]

@John Mace

Yes.

NPR audience: 29% conservative. 31% liberal. 26% Middle of the Road.

There is no margin of error given, but I think we can safely assume that it is at least 2%.

I’ve never thought of NPR as being more liberal but rather as giving pretty much equal time to both viewpoints. It didn’t bother me listening to it in my once more conservative days. I like it because they spend lots of time on any given new story; sometimes as much as 10 minutes if they have 2 different reports on the same subject.

I think they try pretty hard to disseminate 2 sides to a story in a report, be it political or not. Sometimes they do this with those 2 different reports.

[Snag]

@John Mace

No, that is not my point. There may not be a liberal TV version of Fox, but I’ve been spectacularly unimpressed by the internet favorites of this board’s liberals: MediaMatters and ThinkProgess. I’ve seen the same sort of spin and distortion on those cites as you see on Fox, and more to the point, I’ve seen the same circle jerk feedback from the respondents.

Oops. Well, I was right. You do know better.

[Ocean_Annie]

@Shodan

they are attempting to comfort themselves by agreeing that they are just too good and too smart for the unwashed masses.

This is a meme that right-wing pundits like to perpetuate, but it’s not true. The lefties/ liberals/ social Democrats are far more populistic than any of the talking heads on the right. The right-wing media machine is controlled by elites, and the caustic message is created by elites. What right-wing talk radio and fake news have managed to do so well is dumb themselves down to effectively exploit public ignorance. The conservative movement panders to prejudices, stereotypes, anger, and hatred. This allows people to scapegoat the plight of their existence while the right-wing elites firmly establish a corporate power structure and a government that protects corporate interests. People are duped if they believe right-wing radio and news pundits actually care about gay marriage or prayer in school. This is the big con to get an audience. People are also misinformed if they believe the right-wing elites actually identify with their audience. Believe me, Ann Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilly and Limbaugh are laughing at their audience all the way to the bank.