chrisdanger said:
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Second: The political climate is changing in this country, people are tied of hearing "crazy wingnuts" on both sides banging the gavel. Even though I tilt middle-left, I like to be entertained and informed from other points of view, its why I listen to stations outside the market, in particular to KFI 640 in Los Angeles (Tim Conway Jr, Kennedy, Lisa Ann Walter), as they're engaging AND informed, even if I disagree at times with them.
I think the difficulty of this is that one man's "crazy wingnut" is another man's voice of sanity.
As for the political climate, any change that is going on is in the direction of what some refer to as "polarization," i.e., the distinction between different sides becoming sharper and more consistent. I think you will see that this is the case both among those who identify with the Right and with the Left.
Sure, there are many millions of people "in the middle." But these are mostly people who do not pay all that much attention to politics or who, for various reasons, have a personal discomfort forming strong definite opinions or who have a fear of forming opinions which might be unpopular with others. Those people "in the middle" can be
very relevant when it comes to swinging elections and, for obvious reasons, politicians on both sides of the aisle spend a great deal of time trying to pander to them. But when it comes to the flow of ideas and setting the ideological direction of the major political parties such people are utterly irrelevant. And while some of these people might tune in to opinion programing, an opinion show host who falls in this category would be worse than useless.
A host of an opinion show who is a afraid to take a firm position on an issue or to reveal his ideological underpinnings out of fear that he might offend or alienate or be demonized by certain people.....well, that makes for
boring radio. And a host who is a wishy washy pragmatist type whose position on one day is contradicted by his position on another topic another day - in the long run, it becomes a train wreck. Such a person might be good at hosting a non-opinion political show or a non political talk show. But an opinion host needs to have some sort of very clear ideological "core" that listeners can easily pick up on. If you are in the business of offering opinions
you have to stand for something and not be a bag of mush.
That is why I am very doubtful that the Huckabee program is going to siphon off a significant percentage of Rush's audience in the way that Cumulus has been spinning. If you really boil down to its essentials how Cumulus has been plugging the Huckabee program, according to them, the program's primary appeal is that Huckabee is
NOT Rush Limbaugh. But if you really do not like Rush Limbaugh, chances are pretty good that you are not listening to him in the first place. You are probably not tuning in while secretly hoping for some mild mannered, wishy washy (i.e. "less strident") milquetoast to come along - especially not a wishy washy
right of center milquetoast. Even if you dislike Rush, the mere fact that Huckabee is not Rush Limbaugh does NOT constitute a reason FOR listening to Huckabee. Huckabee may or may not draw in some audience from those who currently do not listen to talk radio. But, if he does, that would indirectly work to benefit Rush and every other talk host - a rising tide raises all boats.
As for Sandra Fluke, it would be a valid concern about the viability of Rush's audience if the outrage was actually coming from his core audience. But it isn't - it was largely ginned up by a campaign already planned and ready to use at the right time by his ideological enemies at Media Matters and was picked up by individuals of a similar mindset who already hate Limbaugh and most likely do not listen to his program. The same goes for the heat that Bill Maher is getting for his, arguably, far worse comments. The heat is not coming from people who watch and enjoy Bill Maher's program - it is coming from those on the Right who probably rarely if ever watch Maher but are outraged at the double standard that is applied to Limbaugh but not other commentators.
Cumulus has tried to use the Media Matters intimidation campaign against Rush's advertisers to its advantage in order to plug the Huckabee program. But that is very short sighted and self-defeating on their part. Several of the companies that dropped advertisements on Rush's program in order to appease those who lean Left (and most likely never hear the ads in the first place) found themselves having to deal with an even larger backlash from offended listeners on the Right who actually became paying customers as a result of the ads. Such a situation puts advertisers in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position. If such campaigns to intimidate advertisers takes hold, it will not merely impact the Limbaugh program but will make advertisers reluctant to run ads on
any radio or television program, Right, Left or otherwise that has content which might be in any way controversial in certain quarters. If so, then Cumulus's precious Huckabee program will most likely go down along with everybody else's. The Media Matters types would be perfectly happy with such an outcome because it would create a sort of
de facto return to Fairness Doctrine type censorship that they have failed to reinstate on multiple attempts through the legislative process. They think that doing so will somehow magically put the genie back in the bottle and bring a return to a world where their ideological opponents were almost totally invisible in widely available mass media. But that is not what will happen - it isn't 1972. All that will accomplish is drive controversial and engaging content and their audiences to the Internet and only hasten the decline of old time traditional media outlets - outlets in which Cumulus is heavily invested.
I keep reading that the audience for conservative talk radio is diminishing and the format is in decline. Unfortunately, I am not in a position of knowing whether this is mostly an assertion of wishful thinking being pushed as fact on the parts of Cumulus and others such as Media Matters or whether there might be some actual validity to it. But if there
is validity to it, my take is the decline is NOT because there is some latent demand for "non strident" milquetoast radio or because opinion from the Right is suddenly becoming
passé. If there is a decline, it is because of the Internet and because there are now so many outlets for the sort of news, information and opinion that, at one time, could only be found on talk radio. Rush's popularity and the popularity of conservative talk radio was fueled by two factors: 1) he gave voice to opinions and perspectives held by millions and millions of people in this country that had previously been almost completely invisible in the mass media and 2) he covered news stories that the mainstream media either refused to cover or, if they did cover, tended to obscure by burying in places such as the final paragraph of a story on page 36-D in the
New York Times. I remember a period of time in the 1990s when a number of people I know commented about how pathetic the news media was in that they had to listen to Rush Limbaugh as a news source in order to be fully informed.
Today, that is no longer the case. Those who used to turn to talk radio for news, information and opinion have more outlets available to them online than they probably have time to keep up with. For example, Google Reader feeds me headlines from all sorts of blogs and news sites. If a headline looks interesting, I can click on it and read the content, often without even having to visit the original web page. Anymore, when I tune into programs such as Mark Davis, Rush Limbaugh, etc., they are very frequently bringing up and discussing stories that I already know about and from the exact same sources I read a few hours earlier through my Google Reader news feed. Of course, each host is very talented and has their own unique take on such stories - so I do enjoy listening to them talk about it. But if I go for a week without listening to talk radio, I no longer feel as out of touch of having a full perspective of what is going on in national politics the way I would have in the 1990s. And, for that reason, I don't go out of my way to listen to talk radio the way that I once did - and I suspect that there are others in the same boat.
If talk radio is in decline it is not because of conservatives such as Limbaugh. If there is such a decline, it is for similar reasons that there has been a decline in newspapers and network newscasts. Their decline is not indicative of a decline in demand for news but rather because there are many other options which are more convenient or less restrictive in format. Those who value having a conservative point of view have more options today - and that could very well have an impact on talk radio. (On the other hand, if someone is creative enough, the growth of conservative Internet sites could also be used to bring in new listeners to talk radio).
