Why (Almost) No Liberal Talk Radio? Follow The Money
The paucity of liberal talk radio became ever more apparent after the collapse of Air America, an ambitious effort to create a progressive talk radio network. It was a highly visible initiative with well-known personalities such as Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo taking to the airwaves. Air America never attracted an audience, and without an audience there was no reason for advertisers to buy commercial time. When it finally stopped broadcasting in January of 2010, Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas mocked its demise, tweeting: “Air America was still really on the air?”
Yet there is some liberal talk radio. Although the nationally syndicated shows are almost all conservative in outlook, liberal talk radio can be found on local stations. Some hosts with liberal views are syndicated (Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, and Ed Schultz, for example), though no one on the liberal side approaches the audience size drawn by the conservative stars. There is also some presence of moderate or non-ideological hosts at the local level.
One basic reason for the modest size of the market for liberal talk is that much of the potential audience listens to other types of radio. Together, African Americans and Hispanics constitute somewhere near 30 percent of the nation’s population, but they constitute a much larger proportion of the nation’s liberal population, and these listeners can choose programming that is specifically targeted toward them. Talk programming is particularly popular among African Americans and there have long been stations catering to that market in urban areas. There are also Spanish-language alternatives that appeal to many Hispanic listeners. The potential audience for liberal talk radio is further reduced by the popularity of National Public Radio (NPR), which is more popular with liberal listeners than with conservatives. NPR rejects the charge that it reports news from a liberal point of view, but conservatives consistently deride NPR as biased. Ratings put the weekly audience for NPR at around 34 million and it is a major force in radio nationwide.
Political scientist William Mayer points to a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals in their attraction to talk radio. Surveys consistently show that conservatives are much more distrustful of the mainstream media than are liberals. Indeed, conservative hosts on talk radio emphasize this bias as the raison d’être for their programs. This bias is frequently illustrated by hosts who will use coverage of a story in the New York Times or other mainstream outlet as a jumping-off point for conversation. Talk will then focus on why the story must be understood in a different context. In short, conservatives like talk radio because they believe it tells them the truth, while liberals appear to be much more satisfied with the mainstream media and are more likely to conclude that it is accurate in its reporting.
And there’s a lot more where that came from.
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By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.