Being English I may be completely mistaken about this but it seems that there are far more right-wing popular media hosts on radio than there are TV ones. Late-night TV for instance seems to be an exclusively liberal domain while the talk-shows on the radio belong in the main to the right. Is this impression correct and if it is what’s the reason for it? One would think that with the large ratings for these shows both on TV and radio the right would also move to populate late-night TV and the liberals day-time radio.
A lot of it has to do with what works on radio and what works on TV. With radio, you can have some right-wing talk show host bloviate on how liberals are destroying the country for three or four hours but that type of format quickly gets tiresome on TV. Rush Limbaugh had a half-hour talk show where he’d say everything he said on radio (albeit in condensed form) during the 90s but it always struggled in the ratings despite his having the #1 radio talk show in the country.
It’s harder to watch TV when you’re slopping hogs or turd mining or whatever it is that red staters do to put hot dogs and apple pie on the table.
I’d have thought two minutes right-wing ranting would be one minute, 59 seconds too long.
They salute your respect and will bear it in mind come election day.
The kind of respect they give to liberals (“libtards,” “liberalism is a disease”) or Muslims (“terrorists!!!”), or the LGBT community (“disgusting perverts!!!”)? Should I go on?
FoxNews is the largest and most successful cable news network, so right-wing popular media is not unknown on TV.
But radio, especially AM radio, is cheaper than TV. That is/was Rush Limbaugh’s genius - to recognize the underserved market for conservative political commentary, as an offset to the liberal-dominated TV news and subsidized outlets like PBS.
Regards,
Shodan
There’ve been attempts to create liberal alternatives to right-wing radio programs in the U.S., most notably Air America (which was the home of Al Franken before he went to the Senate, and Rachel Maddow, among other commentators). But, there doesn’t seem to be nearly the demand for liberal voices on talk radio, compared to the demand for conservative voices.
I don’t think they need your votes… Whereas…
I don’t think that this is entirely accurate, though I do think it’s safe to say that there doesn’t appear to be a late-night talk-show host (other than on Fox News) who’s overtly conservative.
Some current hosts (such as Steven Colbert and Seth Meyers) are more overtly liberal and political in their approaches; both of them seem to have made their shows more political in recent months. Colbert, of course, originally came from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which was also liberal-leaning.
While other hosts (like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon) can and do skewer Trump (which, frankly, is often low-hanging fruit), that sort of political humor has been a staple of the late-night talk shows for decades, but those shows have, generally, not been primarily about politics, but more about entertainment, and have based a lot of their humor on other topics. Even if those hosts are, personally liberal, I think they realize that if they went all-politics, or banked too hard to the liberal side, they’d lose a fair amount of their audiences.
Looking at cable, particularly paid cable, you do also see clearly-liberal hosts like John Oliver and Bill Maher, but those are shows with considerably smaller audiences than the traditional late-night shows on the broadcast networks.
I thought Air America’s main flaw was they seemed to focus entirely on finding liberal voices at the expense of also considering whether the liberals they hired were good radio people. I hate Rush Limbaugh but one thing you could not say about him is that he didn’t have an extensive radio background prior to hitting it big nationally. With Air America, Franken was funny, Maddow was good but still learning the ropes, and Mark Maron was interesting but sometimes seemed like he also wanted to talk about subjects besides the latest Republican acts of idiocy. Beyond, they didn’t have a lot of people who were also compelling radio voices.
I take your point about Kimmel and Fallon. I should perhaps have asked why there are no overtly right-wing TV hosts as there are overtly left-wing but other posts have addressed that. Thank you all.
Part of the issue for liberal media in general is that there is, or at least was, much more competition for them than for conservative. Back when Rush Limbaugh got started, he was pretty much it in terms of a conservative point of view. (Nowadays we have Fox and lots more on AM radio). If he had tried to start a liberal program, he would have been in competition with ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, and PBS is subsidized. He went conservative, and had pretty much the field to himself.
That doesn’t guarantee success, but it helps. When he became successful, people realized there was a large, underserved market for a conservative voice, and we got a lot more applicants, with varying levels of success.
Regards,
Shodan
Just speculation here, but I wonder if the technology of AM radio contributed to its conservative leanings. AM radio has a long range, which might make it a good format for people who live in the Midwest and West and drive long distances, and who like hearing conservative views they agree with.
Maybe, but AM radio range is a lot longer at night than during the day, yet talk radio is far more dominant during the daytime.
I think the biggest factor is that the vast, vast majority of people who are listening to AM radio are older (maybe 55-60 and up); they grew up listening to AM radio, while anyone younger is likely to have largely grown up listening to FM radio (which has some talk radio, but that’s a relatively recent development) and even younger people don’t are not listen to radio at all. And that older audience is going to be far more receptive to conservative talk radio.
Yes, radio is a lot more right-wing than TV. IMHO it might be the target demographic; people like truck drivers or blue-collar folks who’d listen to radio on long drives or while at work are more likely to be rural, suburban and/or conservative people.
Another factor was likely that, by the 1980s and 1990s, most people who were listening to music on the radio were shifting (or had already shifted) from AM to FM. The AM stations needed programming, which is what provided the opportunity for Limbaugh and other political talk shows (which tended to be conservative), as well as the growth of sports talk.
Mostly it’s a case of format vs. target audience mismatch. Liberals don’t get into the stock and trade of talk radio, which is obnoxious hosts being obnoxious to guests and callers. Oh, Ed Schultz does OK with it, and there have even been a few conservatives hosts that played against type. We had a guy here in Michigan who was intelligent, articulate, respectful to his callers and was a conservative. His name was David Newman and his show was a delight to listen to even for a lib like me.