Would it be wrong to point out that the success of conservative talk radio is based in part on a perception, deserved or not, that the major news outlets labor under a systematic bias that some people term “urban elitist,” “liberal,” or whatever?
Just as there is a perception that there are no liberals in talk radio, there is an equally mainstream view that there are no conservatives broadcasting the news for any of the major networks. Fox, cited as proof that the media is conservative, stands alone in that regard. One of three 24 hour news channels being willing to hire an openly conservative announcer does not a crisis for liberals indicate. Since that leaves NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC as objective (read, liberal) news sources.
Which reminds me, my biggest pet peeve is not a liberal bias, it’s not admitting whatever bias you have. Dan Rather, you listening? Mine is a classical Liberal / libertarian bias. I like government lite. Dan, OTOH, thinks you can go to a DNC fundraiser and still claim to be an “objective” journalist. Don’t get me started on Peter Jennings.
december, both sides suck up to special interests. You don’t think the Republicans shill for the insurance defense bar? Some of my best friends are insurance defense lawyers, but, c’mon.
Actually it is surprising, because these same people support TV networks that lean more toward supporting a Democratic agenda.
BTW the only radio talk show host I can think of who was fired for philosophical reasons was the conservative Bob Grant, who was canned by ABC a few years ago. His replacement Sean Hannity is now even more popular than Grant was, so it turned out to be a good business decision, but that was not its motive.
BTW Sean Hannity’s success is not easy to explain. He has no sense of humor. He’s not a great debater. Limbaugh may be an unusually talented entertainer, but Hannity is merely a nice, friendly guy, who is also a traditional conservative. So, Hannity’s huge ratings would seem to be related to his conservative message. (If Barney Frank ever left Congress, I bet he’d be a great talk show host.)
FWIW, although gays, Jews, and blacks tend to vote Democratic, the most popular talk show hosts from these groups are conservatives David Brudnoy, Michael Savage and Larry Elder.
Funny how Ted Turner is a liberal, then, isn’t it, spoke-?
Or that large newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post would be to the left.
It would be interesting to find out from you how those nasty, conspiring conservatives caused Mario Cuomo and Phil Donahue to bomb out so disastrously.
As either Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra said, “If they won’t come to the ball park, how are you going to stop them?” People listen to Rush, and the advertising on his show sells to the point that he makes a lot of money. PBS claims, over and over, that they can’t survive without my tax money to support them.
Why won’t people support liberal talk radio, if they get a chance, as they have for the last forty years with PBS, who somehow managed to overcome all those dark conspiracies by conservative media bosses to keep them off the radio?
Thankfully, some wealthy individuals have some integrity! (Kudos to Bill Gates’s dad, as well, for calling “bullshit” on Republican tax schemes.)
Surely you folks aren’t scared to give the lefties a chance? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas?
By the way, at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, do y’all suppose that Goebbels only aired Nazi propaganda because that’s all the Germans wanted to hear?
Ah, you didn’t just risk Godwin’s Law, you walked right into it. It’s so rediculous it doesn’t need to be responded to.
Unless of course we all wanted to chant back: “Jennings, Rather and Browkaw are like Nazi’s more than Hannity, Rush, and Laura are like Nazi’s.”
Bad move, that one.
Oh, and this nonsense:
So, every time people disagree it’s because they are rich, powerful, evil Republicans. insert scary music here
:rolleyes:
Plenty of rich and powerful people on both sides of the political fence. Accusing the vast right wing conspiracy to explain away any problems the liberals have just makes you look silly.
Who said anything about conspiracy? Like I said before, it doesn’t take a conspiracy – just a convergence of like-minded conservative station owners and managers. They may all decide independently of one another that they don’t want Democratic views aired. No conspiracy necessary.
This was my assessment of the problem. As a libertarian, I often find the conservative hosts to be brash and annoying…but generally they seem to be talking about getting the government and others off our back. Liberals mostly seem to focus on getting government to hassle more people, which just isn’t very cheery. I don’t want to be told what to do by some guy on the radio, told that I’m a slacker who isn’t pulling his weight for the common good, told that I should have my freedoms curtailed for some schmoe on the streetcorner. I can hear that sort of message going to a church. Sure, the GOP is full of it’s own anti-liberty issues when it comes to personal freedoms, and the liberals are pretty good on that measure. But that doesn’t seem to be what they talk about. The conservatives talk about self-reliance and freedom from government constraint, they don’t dwell on the ares in which the GOP supports restricted freedom.
Another problem is the way they portray their positions. Conservatives have been pretty effective at portraying their positions as representative of “middle America”, common traditional values and ideas. OTOH, liberal pundits tend to come off as intellectual elitists who think the bedrock of modern thought exists at Berkeley or some northeastern private school (of course, the bedrock of modern philosophy is at Berkeley, and his name is John Searle.) Nobody likes to be talked down to, I think we saw that recently with Al Gore in the first presidential debate. And we saw what people think of northeastern-educated intelligentsia in the Dukakis and Mondale campaigns.
Exactly. Station managers/owners know the market. They know who their listening audience is comprised of. Last year an FM talk station started up here in Columbia, giving itself the patriotic nickname “The Eagle.” Their bumber promos are conservative-themed. They throw together Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Mike Savage, and BAM they have a conservative listening audience with the station frequency programming into their car radios. They have a local show from 5-8am featuring a entirely conservative viewpoints from 20-something hosts. But is it a conspiracy of conservative owners? All the stations around here are owned by one of two megaconglomerates of media, there’s no reason even to presume that the owner or manager himself is a conservative. It’s just about the market.
BTW, there isnt’ enough conservative radio to fill an entire day unless you tape delay. So even this arch-conservative station has an hour of Neil Boortz (libertarian), two hours of O’Reilley (moderate with conservative leanings), and my personal favorite Phil Hendrie (comedy.)
I might add that IMHO the reason liberal talk radio cannot succeed is that there just isn’t enough content to today’s liberal philosophy.
[/quote]
No man, that’s wrong. The only reason that conservative talk radio suceeds to begin with is because the conservatives ain’t got no rhythm. Clinton played the sax. Do you think Cheney could do that? Hell no. So all the liberals are grooving to the music on the FM stations and the tone-deaf conservatives prefer the gentle static of amplitude modulation. What the republican party needs is a bit more shizzle in its nizzle.
George Will and Bill Buckley are old hat. I’m starting to wonder if they are the only sort of conservatives that the established media really respects. These new conservative pundits make even Cal Thomas look mainstream. I guess I can understand their desire to stay somewhat conventional, and it’s not like they’re putting radical neoanarchist leftists on “This Week” either, so perhaps it’s consistent.
** December**, old wing nut, syncopant for all things Republican, I can’t help but think of Harry Truman who is reputed to have said in some context or another:
I’m not giving them hell. I’m just telling them the truth. They just think it’s hell.
Same problem for the anticipated liberal demagogue. There is no need to make things up, take things out of context, jump to conclusions, hide the ball, and shout down differing opinions. All we can do, all we need to do, is tell ‘em the truth, quietly, directly and often.
That leaves us FM and shortwave to colonize instead. If Ashcroft finds and destroys our secret transmitters, there’s always samizdat. We can find ways to sneak copies in and out of the camps.
"There would be plenty for a liberal rabble-rouser to talk about, like for example the idea that Republican tax policies amount to an attack on the middle class. Plenty of fodder there. "
This right here sums up why a liberal talk show is doomed to fail. They can talk about the “idea”, but as soon as they have to get into the meat of the issue, the “facts” start showing up, such as that a “middle class” person will pay far less under Bush’s plan than he had in the past. Kinda hard to spin that as an attack in any discussion longer than a soundbite.
(Kudos to Bill Gates’s dad, as well, for calling “bullshit” on Republican tax schemes.)