Down in the comments is this assertion, which i think needs some correction
As of 2011, Conservative talk shows own the top 10 of 11 spots in Talk Radio shows, the exception being the paranormal-themed Coast to Coast AM. According to Talkers.com these are the latest (March 2011) ratings for AM radio.
Program Weekly Listeners… in Millions
The Rush Limbaugh Show 15
The Sean Hannity Show 12
Michael Savage 9
Glenn Beck Program 9
The Mark Levin Show 8.5
The Dave Ramsey Show 8.5
The Dr. Laura Program 8
The Neal Boortz Show 6
The Laura Ingraham Show 6
Don Imus 2.25
Hugh Hewitt 1.75
Dennis Miller 1.75
Dennis Prager 1.50
Lou Dobbs 1.00
Roger Hedgecock 1.00
Dave Ramsey doesn’t do political talk – he gets people to cut up their credit cards. I don’t know what his politics are – although he relies heavily on churches to to find him new customers. The Left often makes the faulty assumption that religious = right wing.
Dr Laura left radio at the end of 2010. These are numbers for 2010, not 2011. She did a show giving out advice. She is politically Conservative herself, but hers was not a political talk show.
Neal Boortz is not a Conservative – he’s a Libertarian. To the Liberal mind, the only possible alternative is that he must be Conservative. Boortz is carried by Dial Global, the same people who syndicate Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann and Ed Schultz. He works for Cox Radio, a company founded by the man who ran with FDR in 1920 as his VP candidate.
Don Imus is a flaming liberal as his his wife. The fact that he likes guns and will talk to Bob Dole doesn’t make him a Conservative. Fidel Castro likes guns too.
As to the central question, yes I think Conservative radio is dying fast. With the exception of Roger Hedgecock (and maybe Laura Ingraham), all of the major Conservative hosts have stopped taking calls in any useful way.
- Rush has long viewed callers as nothing but a prop to introduce the topic he wanted to talk about for 15 minutes anyhow, and cuts them off after they introduce the topic.
- Glenn Beck would rather talk to Pat and Stu about nothing rather than to callers.
- Hannity’s schtick of calling the callers a liberal and hanging up on them wore out 5 years ago.
- Savage continues to drift off into his own little universe.
- Dennis Miller still thinks he is doing a TV show with structured segments booked a week in advance – and callers are just there to prove that you’re smarter than them
During the 2010 election, there was no noticeable spike in listening to radio like there was in 2008. Listenership started falling significantly after the “Tea Party Won” (as least here). Personally, I can’t stand listening to any of it anymore, hence my looking for the exit….
I think most of us see the onrushing train, and I don’t think Conservative Talk is going to do anything to stop that. Glenn Beck comes closest, but it looks like now he is headed off to Jerusalem to wait for the rapture.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the term conservative. I believe it has to do with the same endless rants, the same endless schtick, the same endless harping, and the never changing personalities (or lack thereof).
I enjoy being entertained occasionally. If the world is going to end in 2012, I really don’t want to know about it. Let it happen naturally. The din of doomsayers is deafening, as you point out.
Part of why the argument is framed this way is that non-Conservative Political talk has no audience…. so you measure what is left.
The biggest part remaining of “talk radio” that is not Conservative talk is Sports Talk (ESPN / Fox Sports / Sporting News). I don’t care enough about sports to have an accurate feel. Jim Rome is the -only- show that demonstrated a significant streaming audience. Tony Bruno had some until he went back to Fox. What is booming in the ratings is CBS’s Sports talk – but that’s local, not syndicated. People in Pittsburgh never get tired of talking about the 1960 World Series and Terry Bradshaw leading the Steelers.
I agree with you 100% on this one. 😉
There are perhaps 4 people on that list who consistently talk as a ‘conservative’.
Frankly, I cannot comprehend how Hannity stays at #2 ??? Just hearing his intro music sends me racing to change stations before the singing starts… “Let freedo—-
One of the biggest annoyances on most streams -seemingly done on purpose- are all the PSA’s being sponsored by “The Ad Council” with their social agenda/propaganda.
I haven’t been able to get anyone in the “business” to give me a straight answer on whether the stations actually get paid for those PSAs. A lot of the sleazy side of the radio business works based on “barter”, which is something they don’t want known in public.
Let’s say there is a local car dealer in town. Your sales guy cuts a deal that goes something like this “We’ll give you $10,000 in ad spots in the radio station” in exchange for letting us use a car for a year. Because no actual money is changing hands, it is ripe for abuse of the tax law and fake accounting. We would just as easy say we gave the car dealer $1 million in ads for the use of a car for a year – inflate out revenue and average ad rates – based on people not paying any cash for the ads.
Streaming PSAs are a special case – AFTRA still hasn’t come to terms on what they should be paid for letting ther members do the voice work on ads that are allowed to be streamed onto the internet – so for the most part, the streams substitute PSAs. Ads done by the show are not covered, so when Glenn Beck and Rush do their own ads, there is no issue with allowing them to stream. If you were listening to the actual radio station, you won’t be hearing all those inane PSAs
Yep, compensating ‘voice talent’ is just one aspect… in the 90’s I produced TV/radio spots. Often, on national spots, we just offered the ‘talent’ a flat payout for the work; if they balked, we’d tell them ‘such & such’ over at WKRP was willing to do it.
We were doing infomercials and shorts, so we could not offer any kind of residual because we had no idea if the show would succeed. If we came back 3 months later, they knew the show was a success and realized they had more negotiating power.
With the PSA’s I think there is something very insidious going on, not the least of which relates to ‘mandated’ public service requirements for broadcasters and dangling extra advertising revenue ‘carrots’ in front of the stations for their stream ads.
As we know, ‘non-profits’ are big business in America…
The ‘Ad Council’ gets federal funds and grants, and pockets a nice chunk of change while creating pathetically BAD ads for the stated purpose. Much of the ‘talent’ seems to be donated.
then: “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
now: “Only you can prevnet wild fires.” Huh?
Digging into their financials is quite an eye-opener:
SERPs, exec salaries, MONTHLY rent of $78,000 for their office? An annual $500,000 Dinner for “Internet Safety”.
I think they’ve discovered a nice way to churn money… their 4 smallest expenses are related to ‘creative services’ and PR.
Is anyone allowed to compete for those PSA funds and grants?
It’s quite the racket – if you to go to the national ad council web site and look at the list of their “campaigns”, you’ll quickly see how deeply they put messages into the public consciousness. Clearly they are being paid lots of money to create the campaigns.
I’m not at all clear on the “rules” of radio – a lot of the rules of radio were actually mandates by the NAB – agreements among commercial broadcasters (like running 5 minutes of news each hour on talk stations). Following the NAB rules gave you safe harbor that you were living up to your obligations. I believe PSAs probably fit into that saame general idea.
One idea that is lurking out there – Arbitron is starting to pick up streaming listeners in their PPM ratings (they are encoded differently so the PPM knows it is the stream and not over the air). If I’m an advertiser, and I’m seeing a certain rating for a station, I might assume that I’m reaching the audience for that number – but the stations are doing ad insertion overlaying the ads being paid for by the local sponsor with an internet-only ad. Someone is gonna be unhappy when they realize that.
Like a badger seeing a shinny gum wrapper, I drifted from Rush the Original to Savage to Beck to Miller and I am back to Rush. Now I listen the same way I listen to Fox News, half the time I forget he is on, I catch the first monologue at the top of the hour. I did subscribe to the Beck Insider blah, blah (but wait, there is more, a super secret thing I can only tell you later – vomit) more as a political statement and have no intention of renewing.