Now with Laura Ingraham out of the picture, at least temporarily, and Neal Boortz essentially retired, what do things look like in talk radio? Are people switching to new hosts or tuning out?
First, I’ll stipulate December is atypical – hosts are on vacation, listeners are distracted, sports are very active, radio stations are gearing up the holiday music….
Dennis Miller is solidly in #3 position now – it seems likely that Laura Ingraham listeners would be more attracted to Miller than to Glenn Beck.
Of the top 25 shows for the past week, 6 are late night shows and 4 are weekend shows.
The times they are a changin’…
“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Bob Dylan
I’ve started listening to Andy Dean, 9pm – 12am. It’s an interesting and different conservative format.
He’s getting much better and I agree – in the beginning, he was leveraging his friendship with Donald Trump a lot, but he’s grown his own wings and has left the nest.
At 9 PM, that’s a delayed broadcast – the show is live at 6 PM and is syndicated by Premiere / Clear Channel. Originally, Jason Lewis had that time slot, but he hasn’t caught fire.
I’m tuning out. My side loses again re:election. Just sick of the nonsense. I don’t even want to hear it anymore. Batchelor is a bore now, Beck is gone. Levin , ingraham.
I’m actually listening to NPR podcast of on point and rehm if I like the topic. Also bbc podcasts for world events. Like kudlow on the weekend.
Looking for fresh stuff, just tired of politics right now.
Unless a radio show is truly interactive, there is no reason for radio. Downloading a podcast and listening to it on your schedule and fast forwarding through what you aren’t interested in just is so much a better use of your time, and the chances of no Autism Speaks PSAs is one out of one.
Money Pit was never live. Neither was Car Talk on NPR. I’m pretty sure Dave Ramsey is a pre produced non-live show do they won’t have negative callers get on the air. I suspect Clark Howard may also not be live, but doing “call out” to people who call his help line. Michio Kaku is also no longer doing his show live.
I also soured on Batchelor over Libya – overnight he went from “what the hell are we doing there?” to “let’s murder all those bastards” with almost no explanation. He’s doing a show now to amuse himself, not his audience. I can only take so many interviews of authors who wrote some history book about some obscure aspect of the Civil War…
I’m with you fhiggins. I’ve pretty much burned out on all of the hosts, although I still listen in on occasion. I’m so glad that Art introduced me to John Derbyshire via this blog site. I have really been enjoying his ‘Radio Derb’ podcasts each week. Of course, who knows how many listeners Derbyshire draws? Hundreds? Thousands? I would seriously doubt more than that (and I wonder if he is just ‘preaching to the choir’ of we few who see the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves).
If anyone cares to hear Derbyshire for themselves, here is the link: http://takimag.com/radioderb
I’m still unclear if all the talk about living on the Greek island is factual or schtick – my sense is he has really left the United States, in which case I’m wondering why I should care what he thinks.
I also find I have a visceral dislike of British accents having listened to the voices leading the movement to “liberate” Libya from their government. I still listen once in a while – usually late at night when I want to fall asleep
Thus far (I’ve probably heard 10 of his podcasts) I have enjoyed it. I find him to be witty and thoughtful. Most importantly I find his podcasts to organized and succinct. My biggest beef with podcasters in general is their tendency to present random, stream of consciousness recordings that I have no interest in hearing. I assume that sort of thing (if anyone listens to them) must appeal to the ‘reality TV’ crowd (i.e. “Welcome to the podcast, today we are going to talk about the global economy, but first let me tell you what I had for dinner tonight, and let me tell you about the cute thing my dog did, and also about the movie I saw last week…” ZZZZZZZZ…tuneout)
I have been listening to the Wall Street Journal This Morning (and Weekend) from their web site. Beck is performing a service (in my view) but I can’t remember the last time I listened to all 3 hours – for me checking into the radio show 2xs a week covers it for Beck – I’ll look at the Blaze news 2xs a day. I subscribe to the TV side but my business day runs 5a – 8p when I’m done I rarely want to watch Beck (Inspector Frost, Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lewis). I like McCaslin’s news show. If Ingraham was on, she was on – I never took the time to look for her program. I like the Catholic angle, like most of her arguments – never found the presentation compelling enough. She gets into the whole bitchy-lawyer mode, I just don’t need it in my life. Looking at the gun tot’n lipstick lesbian who substituted for Ingraham, her business model, I can’t believe it has long term success – when people don’t renew to the podca$t replacing them with new customers has to be a challenge. If you don’t know Tammy Bruce the odds a stumbling upon her on the internet is remote, no?
Tammy got convinced that she had a huge audience from talkstreamlive.com – she was ranking #1 because she was directing the 5 people listening at the time on the radio to go there to listen.
I think once in a while she shows up on TV – that might count for how people find her.
The magic of podcasting (especially if people pay) is you don’t need.millions of subscribers – it’s almost all profit if you do it yourself. Get 500 people paying $10 a month and you have a viable income
Ah-Ha!!! So, podcasting is a viable way to earn some money. Question….does one need to be interesting – wacky – or what???
Well, there are two basic paths – you get people to advertise on your podcast or you get people to pay to hear you. Since it costs almost nothing to create them, I would suggest just practicing and then ask people what they think. When you get past the technical part of having a good quality recording and have a routine of preparing material and creating one every day, then you may have something people might buy. 97.32% of people who start podcasting get bored and stop after a few episodes if it isn’t an overnight success.
97.32% of all statistics on the Internet are just made up according to the International Forum for the discussion of Internet Statistics
Joeseph P. Ferrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. He is a prolific writer and is a regular guest on radio shows like Coast2Coast, Red Ice Radio, The Byte Show and many others.
He hosts a webstite – Giza Death Star Community – and he has a world-wide audience.
He is not your typical radio talk show host. Just browse over and listen to his latest take on the Connecticut school shootings, an international criminal network busted by the Italians for trying to use $1 Billion US Treasury Bonds as collateral for loans in order to buy plutonium, and other nefarious global schemes by the European Central Bankers.
http://gizadeathstar.com/2012/12/new-and-views-from-the-nefarium-dec-14-2012/