Liberal vs Conservative talk

[KFodor]

There's another angle here I think very few consider when you talk about this subject...

Many NPR stations are on FM. Not all, I agree, but many.

People I speak to who tend to lean left politically tell me they are big users of NPR.

The liberal talk stations that come on the air are almost always on poor, signal challenged AM sticks...you know, the stations whose audiences (if they have one) are almost always the over 50 set. Now, that was OK back in the 90's when Rush started on the same lousy sticks and overperformed, ratings-wise, which is why his show later moved to bigger AM stations. (when his AM audiences were in their 30's, 40's and up...)

By the time liberal talk came on the air, the AM audience was pushing 50 and mostly conservative, so it generally underperformed on those same sticks. (based on the old thought, you get more conservative as you get older.)

Though I know there's liberal folks in their 50's, 60's and 70's, whenever I see a crowd of those folks, I see lots of college-aged people, and people in their 30's, maybe early 40's. I contend very few of those people have ever bothered to listen to a station on AM. Some younger ones don't even know what AM radio is.

That's why I've said liberal talk stations should be on FM. That's where most of the NPR audience is and that's the best place on the dial for those types of stations because they can be more demographically compatible.

Conservative talk is moving to FM and in most cases...guess what happens? The audience starts to get younger. Radically younger? No. But, if you were a 50 plus station on AM, and on the simulcast you add more people in their mid to late 30's and 40's, you're a winner. And there's plenty of stats on this these days to back it up.

Yes, these are generalizations I'm talking about here, and not necessarily everything above applies to everyone listening to radio. But, I think it's a reasonable consideration to make.

Radio listening does not move from FM to AM. Ever. But it will move from AM to FM.

 

[borderblaster]

What talk format would appeal to the Occupy Wall Street crowd...and if they want to do away with capitalism, what advertisers would be interested? What local advertisers in any market would be interested? "At Jones Motors, we're waiting for the day the revolution puts us out of business"

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What talk format would appeal to the Occupy Wall Street crowd...and if they want to do away with capitalism, what advertisers would be interested?

Is the "Occupy Wall Sreet crowd" seeking to do away with capitalism?

I got the idea they are a rare mixture of liberals and libertarians and tea party and maybe some gypsies thrown in for good measure. Some where I got the idea they are unhappy that "too big to fail" Wall Street financial firms are squeezing the life out of the working functional capitalists that are trying to make a go of it. Have you heard something different?

 

[w9wi]

What talk format would appeal to the Occupy Wall Street crowd...and if they want to do away with capitalism, what advertisers would be interested? What local advertisers in any market would be interested? "At Jones Motors, we're waiting for the day the revolution puts us out of business"

As GRC says, these folks are not, for the most part, socialists. In some ways, they're more free-market than the capitalists. (in that they want to see businessmen held responsible when they try to cheat the market, by misleading buyers about what they're getting) I'm sure you can find a few socialists in the movement though.

(IMHO, "capitalism" and a "free-market system" are not necessarily the same thing. Don't say that in an economics class if you expect to pass.)

NPR interviewed one of them this morning. She went out of her way to make it clear she made her living selling services to big corporations, and didn't want to see them go away!

 

[raccoonradio]

At least some have signs saying "End Capitalism Now", and, as the likes of the NY Post has observed,
they seem to forget that the products they're using--cell phones, cameras, computers, tents, soup,
you name it--were all a result of Wall Street investments. The Post biz writer does go on to say they're
right on some things, though... (It's like the South Park episode where a
"Harbucks" wants to come to town but people protest because it's a big corporation and one of the kids
points out "they (corporations) make great things like cars and computers and canned soup" and that they were small
companies which grew with hard work and investments into big companies, etc.

I used to poke fun at Air America by portraying them as attacking big corporations like WalMart, but when
it's time for a commercial: "We'll be right back after this...er, public service announcement..." As in, what big advertisers want to be on a station that would slam them?
'
---
>>Many NPR stations are on FM. Not all, I agree, but many.

In Boston it seems the conservatives/moderates dominate the _commercial_ talk dial, or at least they get half decent ratings (WRKO, WTKK, WXKS, and WBZ at night). WWZN has someone buy time to
put progressive talk on (a quirky AM signal) but they've survived several years. But then there is also
NPR--two huge stations, WGBH and WBUR, do air news and talk shows that may lean left. Both do
feature local talk, including the likes of Emily Rooney, daughter of the recently retired Andy. These
stations do well in ratings (WWZN doesn't show)

 

[ctkatz]

i don't think occupy wall street is anti-capitolism. i think occupy wall street is anti corrupt financial sector. they don't begrudge the people their success, but they do begrudge them getting all sorts of public funds to save their businesses but not sharing any of that business (ie capitol) with the 99% of the rest of us. they may start petering out when some of these ceos who stole the people's money are frogmarched in handcuffs in front of the national media and these financial institutions are forced to start lending to ordinary people and real small businesses or these financial institutions are forced to break up into smaller financial institutions.

 

[Tom Wells]

There are certainly those would tear down capatalism. Most people involved in the "occupy" mindset would like see a little more restraint and regulation, so corporations will not be able to have more influence than actual living persons.

Competetiveness is great, but for me that means that to keep my head above water I work every @#&% day, twice.
From 11 PM to midnight of "yesterday" and midnight to 7 AM of "today".
Rinse and repeat forever. No days off, no schedule, no set aside lunch or breaks.
This allows me to work 56 hours every week, and my employer can avoid another employee on the payroll.
If someone else decides to take a weekend off its 64 hours week.
It's the bleeding edge of efficiency and they're not going to limit their profitability by operating legally.

I can't very well complain about it if want to keep a job.

I can't very well go protest, either, as I can't afford to take a day off and appear unreliable.

My co-workers are in the same boat. I think I might be in that 99%.

Can't imagine when my next day off will be. I might take off the day before Thanksgiving, so I don't
have to actually work Thanksgiving Day from midnight 'til 7 AM.

Yes, to get a "whole" day off, I have to take 2, because work happens twice in each day.

Let's have a big round of applause for unbridled capitalism!

 

[Open Source]

There are certainly those would tear down capatalism. Most people involved in the "occupy" mindset would like see a little more restraint and regulation, so corporations will not be able to have more influence than actual living persons.

Competetiveness is great, but for me that means that to keep my head above water I work every @#&% day, twice.
From 11 PM to midnight of "yesterday" and midnight to 7 AM of "today".
Rinse and repeat forever. No days off, no schedule, no set aside lunch or breaks.
This allows me to work 56 hours every week, and my employer can avoid another employee on the payroll.
If someone else decides to take a weekend off its 64 hours week.
It's the bleeding edge of efficiency and they're not going to limit their profitability by operating legally.

I can't very well complain about it if want to keep a job.

I can't very well go protest, either, as I can't afford to take a day off and appear unreliable.

My co-workers are in the same boat. I think I might be in that 99%.

Can't imagine when my next day off will be. I might take off the day before Thanksgiving, so I don't
have to actually work Thanksgiving Day from midnight 'til 7 AM.

Yes, to get a "whole" day off, I have to take 2, because work happens twice in each day.

Let's have a big round of applause for unbridled capitalism!

Boo hoo. You work too much. Try telling that to the 10% of the population that's "officially" unemployed or to the 20% that's actually unemployed. What do you want? Mandatory 35 hour weeks like in France?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Boo hoo. You work too much. Try telling that to the 10% of the population that's "officially" unemployed or to the 20% that's actually unemployed. What do you want? Mandatory 35 hour weeks like in France?

I don't know that an automatic come-back of sarcasm is appropriate for what he wrote.

In my early working years the 48 to 60 hour work-week was quite common, but there were some other things that were also quite common: A non-working spouse at home to take care of some of the "housekeeping" of life like shopping, doing the banking and bill paying, etc. It was also common to have your workday hours contiguous, not 6 or 7 hours here, take a 4 hour break and come back for another 2 to 4 hours. It was also common to live within 10 to 20 minutes of the work place.

Today the hour-and-20-minute commute each way is quite common, the workplace being 20 minutes each way from a place to get food is quite common, and being a 45 minute drive or longer from the doctors office is quite common.

To make a political argument that a person ought to be happy to have any job, even one with the crappiest of conditions and rules and the crappiest of pay levels is beginning to wear on peoples nerves. I have in my life time worked under all the obnoxious conditions listed above but the trade off was that I had the dream and promise that I was paying my dues for a ride up the food-chain. [I started out with a $40 a week announcers job and worked my way up to General Manager of a major market station.] When the broadcast industry turned sour on the dream-and-promise part of the equation, I moved on to other industries. And I have worked for people who had un-cashed paychecks in their desk drawer so they would have enough money in the bank for me to cash MY check and I have worked for people who when it was time that I needed to move on, they kept me on the payroll until I found that next place to work. I think I was in the workplace 44 years before I ever signed up for an unemployment check. And it was one bitter pill to swallow.

One of the reasons we are having all these contentious and argumentative threads in the forum about Talk Radio is because programming is dominated by a bunch of millionaire talking heads, many of who have NEVER been responsible for an operating business, lecturing us that it is un-American for working people to give voice to the idea that working people in America deserve better than what they are getting. If there is to be a discussion of what the status of working middle-class Americans is, and should be, someone at the table should be addressing the topics from the viewpoint of middle-class Americans. Name for me the Talk Radio programs that even pretend to do that today.

 

[jas2525]

It's all the penny-pinching that is ruining both employees lives AND the business in general.

In a creative business, the businesspeople often undermine their own product because they often don';t understand what works and why.

These companies, in their thirst for profit, overspent and handicapped the industry for the forseeable future---maybe permanently.

 

[ctkatz]

If there is to be a discussion of what the status of working middle-class Americans is, and should be, someone at the table should be addressing the topics from the viewpoint of middle-class Americans. Name for me the Talk Radio programs that even pretend to do that today.

i can do that. unfortunately they are all shows that are politically liberal, which i think is a sad, stunning, and startling commentary to make when the simple fact is that for every hour of liberal talk there are something around 6 or 7 hours of conservative talk. i believe that stat does not take into account online shows. that only brings the ratio down to 1:4.

it is issues like this that crystalize what is a problem of access. conservative talk is widespread and it is being driven by individuals who don't understand the issues of the middle class while making several hundred times more than the middle class makes and would rather snipe at the president, democrats, and the protestors in the name of "entertainment". meanwhile on the liberal side of the issue hosts are pointing directly at what is causing the problem, who is allowing the problem to perpetuate, and why nothing is getting done and unless you have a smartphone or live in one of the 60 markets where you can hear the show you won't hear any of this. and npr ain't liberal radio. both sides of the issue are not being heard with equal opportunity.

am i paranoid enough to say that our corporate media now is conspiring to keep the story out of the news and for these talk radio shock jock to try and turn the average person who doesn't know anything about this story against this movement (which coincidentally also happens to benefit these same corprations who own the media)? yeah. so far i haven't seen any evidence that says otherwise. for such a movement that is just as allegedly as organic as the tea party with as coherent a message as the tea party, they haven't gotten the proportional amount of coverage as the tea party.

 

[Tom Wells]

Open Source, Boo Hoo indeed.

What do I want...Hmmm...are you ready to advocate?

I'd like to have a published schedule, where I could just walk up to it, and say

"Hey, Look! I got that Thursday off, two weeks from now!"

And not have to ask anybody FOR it. Or negotiate it. Or feel like I'm unreliable because I took a day off.

What else, hmm.... A set aside time to eat lunch without interruption would be dreamy.

And oh, yes. I'd like to be able to remember what a weekend is and how to relax for that whole Friday night to Monday
morning thingy.

Can you work on making some of those things law?
Oh, wait they already are...


Next step, would you like to know have stock valuations have improved for this company?

 

[borderblaster]

I don't know how you can honestly say that after this weekend, Occupy Everywhere has gotten no coverage. It's been on all the local affiliates and the TV networks. Now if you're saying they should have wall to wall coverage and no one should make a YouTube video of the hypnotic chanting while the Atlanta folks were snubbing John Lewis, I don't have your answer. The people participating hardly seem to be waiting for someone to put a liberal show on the radio, if they'd even listen to it in the first place. They're using social media.

Does everyone think Limbaugh, Hannity, et al started at the top? The local hosts in places like Cincinnati may be making a great living, but I doubt they are billionaires, at least from radio work alone.