Commentary: News/talk stations should broaden content beyond MAGA politics

[Mark Roberts]

Unfortunately none of them are entertaining anymore. That's what distinguished early Rush. That's what used to distinguish conservative talk. They used to be entertainers. Now it’s all ideology, and that's not funny or entertaining. Radio is supposed to be entertaining. We've already talked about it being a bad sales environment. You might as well listen to preaching radio. WWE and UFC are more entertaining.

The justification that always seemed to be given for such one-sided programming was that “they’re just entertainers”. I never felt that was particularly true, but, now, most talk radio has more in common with Radio Pyongyang and its insistent hysteria than with any kind of audio entertainment.

That's why the topic of this thread is to broaden the content beyond politics. Because talking about politics isn't entertaining, even when you agree with it. There are lots of other things to talk about. We need to get beyond ideology. A day will come when we realize we all have to live together. That means there needs to be compromise and consensus. Neither exist in talk radio right now. The fact that there are differences among conservative hosts demonstrates that even they are getting bored with it.

Talk for the sole purpose of entertainment…e.g. “shooting the breeze”…seems to be limited nowadays to either sports formats or podcasts.

I’ll write more about this later, probably on the New Mexico forum; for now, I’ll mention that I’ve just spent a few days in Taos, New Mexico. From a radio perspective, it’s an unusual place. There’s no conservative talk, for one thing. There is a licensee called “Cultural Energy” that mostly broadcasts programs from Pacifica. Many of the ones I heard were hard to listen to and I tuned away from them quickly. Why? They were preaching all the time…just like right-wing commercial-radio hosts. Thank goodness there was a repeater for an NPR member station near Taos, so there was something informative that lets listeners make up their own minds without being hectored constantly.

 

[wadio]

It's hard to avoid right-wing politics when your station's morning talk show host is literally a right-wing politician who has run for office multiple times (and lost), like Curtis Sliwa on WOR or Bill Spadea on WKXW.

Have you listened to Sliwa and Mendte on WOR lately? Curtis is hardly a Trump fanboy ... far from it! The two take opposite sides on many issues.

Another well balanced talk show is "America At Night" with McGraw Milhaven. It's not all political talk and the politics are balanced.

 

[Jim1348]

...liberals are generally younger than conservatives...

The full saying is: “If a person is not a liberal [or socialist] when he is twenty, he has no heart; if he is not a conservative when he is forty, he has no head”.

 

[kevtronics]

The full saying is: “If a person is not a liberal [or socialist] when he is twenty, he has no heart; if he is not a conservative when he is forty, he has no head”.

Millennials and those following them are now bucking the trend of getting more conservative as they age:

Millennials aren’t getting more rightwing with age. I suspect I know why | Arwa Mahdawi

The radicalism of my generation is often attributed to housing costs. But, as I found when I had my first child, there are much deeper issues at play, writes Arwa Mahdawi

www.theguardian.com

 

[michael hagerty]

I'll admit, I avoid news stories about Trump. In the mornings I tune away from a music station that I enjoy at all other times of day because they run a top-of-the-hour NBC newscast that always leads off with a Trump story that turns out to be just another one of his opponents hurling breathless accusations.

Which begs the question: If you in fact avoid those stories, how do you know whether they are accurate or not, regardless of their “breathlessness”?

 

[thenetwork]

I want to say that morning shows are not too entertaining anymore.

Either they want to be too edgy and push the envelope to the limits (potty humor, sexual topics, stupid stunts...) or just cover human interest stories or polls.

Gone are the the days of character voices who are stereotypes -- Political correctness killed most of those characters off, or just plain clean humor suitable for all ages. I don't know of too many morning shows anymore that play off callers.

Then again, I haven't listened to a morning show faithfully in quite a while.

 

[kevtronics]

Gone are the the days of character voices who are stereotypes -- Political correctness killed most of those characters off, or just plain clean humor suitable for all ages. I don't know of too many morning shows anymore that play off callers.

Making fun of people's accents, sexuality, disability, religion, etc. was never correct, regardless of politics.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Millennials and those following them are now bucking the trend of getting more conservative as they age:

Millennials aren’t getting more rightwing with age. I suspect I know why | Arwa Mahdawi

The radicalism of my generation is often attributed to housing costs. But, as I found when I had my first child, there are much deeper issues at play, writes Arwa Mahdawi

www.theguardian.com

True and theres people who started out right wing who become more liberal as they age like Joe Scarborough on MS Now. Some of the pundits on substack are former Republicans who left the party because of how toxic MAGA is and yes the ties to Putin propaganda is a factor here.

“If a person is not a liberal [or socialist] when he is twenty, he has no heart; if he is not a conservative when he is forty, he has no head”.

That sounds true for Robert F Kennedy Jr in that statement.

 

[Rusty Muck]

A glaring omission in that Barrett Media op-ed is the demographic issue. You can't get younger people to listen when it is literally a 24/7 rehash of the same content, over and over. But at the same time, you alienate the existing demos if you deviate from the norm and put in something kinda/sorta different. That the majority of talk stations are on Ancient Modulation, a band very few under 40 would know exists, let alone want to listen, certainly doesn't help.

This is a long-term and inevitable self-fulfilling prophesy that also could have been fully preventable. 30 years ago. It can't be now.