Posted on 08/07/2009 8:48:32 AM PDT by DanZanRyu
Conservative talk radio has never been more angry and extreme than today. You might think that’s a response to the Obama presidency. But even more, conservative talkers are responding to a collapse in advertising revenues.
According to Scott Fybush, the proprietor of North East Radio Watch, talk radio has lost 30-40% of its ad revenues over the past two years.
Further, in an interview with a talk radio trade publication, Talkers Magazine, late last year, Talk Radio Networks CEO Mark Masters said: “2008 will be known as the year that weak syndicated programs began dying off in droves,” adding that “it has only just begun.”
In this environment, radio hosts believe that anger is their only path to survival. “If you’re not the most extreme person on the radio or making the most outrageous headlines,” says Fybush, “there is going to be some portion of the base that is going to ignore you and move onto someone who is more extreme.”
One of the most civil voices in talk radio, Michael Medved, explains the economic pressure upon the industry. He told NewMajority: “In this [economic] environment, you have something of a push to be outrageous, to be on the fringe, because what you’re desperately competing for is… P-1 listeners [those who tune in most frequently]. The percentage of people on the fringe who are P-1s is quite high,” he explained. As a result, talk radio hosts are feeling more pressure than usual to yell harder, scream louder, and insult further. Talk shows “are fighting for an ever- smaller pie, [which means that] you’ve got to be even louder about it because you’re trying to get the attention of an ever-smaller niche,” said Medved.
All these factors exacerbate the existing negative tendencies of conservative news talk radio. Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine, notes that “news talk radio has traditionally been a street medium… [that employs] the language and emotions and attitudes that one would hear on the street, by the fence, in the schoolyard.” Of course, schoolyard emotions evoke schoolyard results: a downwards descent into name-calling and fringe politics. Talk radio’s fascination with the “birther” movement is the logical end point.
As conservative politics attempts to reach out and rebuild, the incentives for conservative radio hosts point in exactly the opposite direction. The fact of the matter is that the survival of news talk radio “depends on ratings and revenue, not on getting people elected, or even on bring right,” says Harrison. If the economy worsens, expect more venom on your AM dial.
I suspect if you add in the revenue of ErrAmerica then the averages across the spectrum might show such a decline.
And I don’t recall any late night shows putting “Snipers Wanted” over a picture of Obama.
Since you posted this patently false article without a “Barf Alert”, should it be assumed that you agree with its content?
Website Worth: $9,914.13Epic fail.Daily Pageviews: 4,527
Daily Ads Revenue: $13.58
Did you read Freakanomics?
I like Michael Medvid, but he is such a simpleton ass hat clown sometimes.
Here he provides the requisite sound-bite to be utilized in this leftist screed. And if it isn’t a leftist’s screed, it ought to be.
Folks are angry today, because the government is usurping it’s authority in a manner that has never been seen before in the United States. Medvid attributes the ‘anger’ to a method to attract new listeners. It never dawns on him that this anger could be the result of a government that has never been so out of control.
The lefties and the lunar right can gloss over what is taking place here, mischaracterize it all they like, but it is a grass roots example of folks who simply are not going to take it lying down any longer.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can misread the tea leaves so miserably, when the truth is staring them right in the face.
Medvid, quit playing into the left’s hands. Good grief.
If that’s true, then Air America hosts should be rabid and destroying their studios daily.
Really? a Collapse?
Truth or Propaganda?
Medved also says that it hurts conservativism to call Obama’s policies “socialist”.
Of course Michael Medved was Hillary’s friend in college and worked on staff for one of the farthest left congressmen in the 1970s.
He has moved towards the right but he’s a moderate at best. He just doesn’t swallow all of the liberal kool aid these days.
Michael Medved also believes there are still ghost armies on Civil War battlefields and believes in Bigfoot.
He doesn’t have a lot of room to point out “kooky” beliefs.
Exactly! It’s across the board. And guess who buys most of those PSA spots? The U.S. government, and the propaganda in those spots has gone through the roof.
When listening the WLS on the internet, all they play are PSA spots during their commercials. (at least they were a few years back) I’ve never heard so much leftist suck up in my life.
No. What does it say about talk radio?
RE :”As conservative politics attempts to reach out and rebuild, the incentives for conservative radio hosts point in exactly the opposite direction. The fact of the matter is that the survival of news talk radio “depends on ratings and revenue, not on getting people elected, or even on bring right,” says Harrison”
Missed here :
1) Talk radio get more popular as their side loses power(which is why you want to always question what you hear) , and less popular as their side has power but flounders
2) Talk radio has never seen more listeners because of #1
3) revenues down simply because commercials everywere are down with Obama economy nothing to do with number of listeners which is up.
They are, well, simply lying.
This is a RINO-inspired hit piece, by which elitists in tassel loafers allow themselves to be used by hard-core leftists in order to stick it to those Bible-and-gun-toting Palinites.
Mak works for David Frum’s New Majority — which should be called the Old Minority.
Ok. That makes more sense.
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