Move Over, Right Wing Radio: The Liberals Are Coming
Thom Hartmann, AlterNet May 22, 2003
A political explosion happened this weekend in New York, and it may be
the big one that gives Karl Rove nightmares. It could mean the end of
George W. Bush's seemingly unending ability to tell overt lies to the
American people and not get called on them by the American media.
At a Saturday talk radio industry event put on by Talkers Magazine,
Gabe Hobbs, Clear Channel Radio's vice president of News/Talk/Sports,
announced that in the near future this corporate owner of over 1,200
radio stations is considering programming some of their talk stations
"in markets where there are already one or two stations doing
conservative talk" with all-day back-to-back all-liberal talk show
hosts.
Using the analogy that music radio stations wouldn't run different
categories of music on a single programming day, Hobbs said talk radio
was similarly "all about format." This, he said, is why liberal
talkers haven't succeeded when sandwiched between conservatives --
radio stations shouldn't mix formats but instead should market to
specific listener niches. Understanding this, it's clear that only
all-liberal/all-day programming can fill the demand for liberal talk
radio, Hobbs' comments suggested.
The timing of Clear Channel's bombshell is interesting. Why this
particular week and month?
Back last year, I wrote an op-ed suggesting that there was money to be
made by programming talk radio for the unserved majority of American
voters who cast ballots in 2000 for Al Gore and Ralph Nader. It's the
nature of the marketplace to abhor a vacuum, and the hunger for
liberal programming -- as evidenced by its explosion across the
internet and its great success in the few markets where it can be
found -- can be a very profitable vacuum to fill.
About the time I pointed this out, a group of wealthy Democrats pulled
together $10 million, formed AnShell Media, and began the work of
raising enough cash to put together a progressive talk-radio network.
At the same time, the nation's oldest and largest progressive
talk-radio network, i.e. America Radio in Detroit, expanded their
programming to offer an entire day, 6:00 a.m. to midnight, of live
progressive talk shows, which are now carried on radio stations from
coast to coast, on channel 145 ("Sirius Left") of the Sirius Radio
Satellite, and streamed around the world on the web. Salon.com even
weighed in last week, running a feature article about one of i.e.'s
stars, Mike Malloy, and how he's so popular that his show is beginning
to rattle the world of internet radio and has a loyal following on the
network's affiliates.
At the same time, right-wing hosts are fading. For example, Bill
O'Reilly's radio failures in Limbaugh-dominated markets, documented
recently by Matt Drudge, imply the obvious: Right-wing talk radio has
reached market saturation and is no longer a growth industry.
According to Geoff Metcalf on WorldNetDaily, the O'Reilly show is even
paying stations -- in one case over a quarter million dollars -- to
continue to carry the show.
The handwriting is on the wall for right-wing talk radio: To build
profits, programmers must reach beyond diehard Republicans to unserved
listeners. This means bringing in the center and left of the political
spectrum. Thus, we're today seeing the early fuse-fizzing of the Next
Big Boom in talk radio, and many in the industry openly acknowledge it
(including Fox, which just syndicated liberal Alan Colmes).
But over the past year, as this became increasingly obvious to those
familiar with the radio business, the big media companies seemed
unmoved.
If anything, they appeared even more committed to exclusively
promoting the most hard-right elements of the Republican Party. MSNBC
dumped Phil Donahue even though his was the most highly rated show on
the network; hard-right talker Glen Beck organized pro-war/pro-Bush
events all across the nation; radio stations ran highly-publicized
Dixie Chicks censorships and CD-burnings; and both Limbaugh and
Hannity went into Republican hyperdrive with born-again 'Bush can do
no wrong' riffs that defied traditional conservative values by
embracing the bizarre idea that somehow deficits are good,
taxpayer-funded photo-ops are wonderful, and insider politicians
profiting from their knowledge and access are no longer worth
mentioning. (All things Clinton was savaged and/or investigated for.)
Many industry watchers were dumbfounded at the overt bias and
political boosterism. Even BBC Director General Greg Dyke weighed in,
saying, "I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning
the broadcast news media was during this war." Across America and
around the world, savvy media watchers wondered out loud why our giant
networks and media companies would suddenly become so overtly
partisan, loudly and unquestioningly kissing up to the Bush
administration? And why did they ignore a multi-million-dollar
audience of tens of millions of Democratic or liberal listeners --
people with upscale demographics whom advertisers would love to reach?
On my radio show a few weeks ago, I suggested the answer was simple --
it was all about June 2.
That's the Cinderella date for the giants of the media business, the
day when Republican activist and FCC Chairman Michael Powell will
announce whether or not the FCC will allow further mergers in the
media business -- mergers that will help wipe out the few remaining
small, local radio/TV stations and newspapers, and, most
significantly, make literally billions of dollars in profits for the
industry's giants.
This is all about paying forward, I said. The industry giants are
ignoring markets and passing up profits over the short term in order
to make bigger money over the long term. It's not politics -- it's
just good business. If Gore had been in office and his FCC chairman
was inclined to approve further industry mergers, Gore would have
suddenly found himself equally bulletproof in the media, much to his
delight. At least until the mergers were approved.
Nobody in the industry was willing to publicly agree with me, but
nobody denied it, either.
Now, it appears I was right, but the other shoe was dropped two weeks
early in Manhattan, a block from Ground Zero.
Last week, Michael Powell announced that he was refusing to postpone
the FCC vote on deregulation, and that he was personally in favor of
loosening the ownership rules, making the outcome a slam-dunk. In
giving the big media companies advance notice that they'd get what
they want, Powell also unwittingly began the process of cutting off
Republicans from an exclusive lock on hundreds of millions of dollars
a year in free political advertising provided by the constant national
drumbeat of right-wing talk hosts. Thus, Karl Rove's nightmare.
Now that they're past their concerns about how this administration
will decide the media consolidation issue, the media giants are now
breathing a bit easier, and getting back to the business of making
money.
The demands of the huge unserved market of Gore voters and
progressives is real, and internet empires are being built on it. For
example, RadioPower.org just last week announced they had surpassed
the 1.5 million-user mark for their progressive talk radio webstream.
The webstream of i.e. America Radio regularly maxes out with numbers
that make terrestrial stations catch their breath, as well as
successfully syndicating their programming on terrestrial radio
stations across the United States. The strongly left-leaning Democracy
Now radio show has exploded in listenership, and the new liberal talk
star Nancy Skinner has gone from zero to 14 stations in fewer than
three weeks, syndicated by both i.e. America and Doug Stephan's
network. Peter Werbe and Mike Malloy from i.e. America Radio Network
are doing great, even picked up by Sirius, and Michael Horn,
CEO/President of CRN Radio News (syndicated on cable systems
nationwide), announced at the Talkers conference this weekend that he,
too, was looking for good liberal talk show hosts.
Although the right-wingers love to claim that they simply balance NPR
(the claim was raised again at the Talkers event), it's an argument
that commercial programmers know is specious. NPR never has and never
will run hour after hour of a single commentator ranting about the
wonders of one party and the horrors of another. Centrist and
left-wing talk radio is still an emerging product with a huge unserved
market.
This is why Powell's announcement -- once the vote is final and
irrevocable on June 2 -- will begin the transformation of the
landscape of talk radio in America. Freed from the need to curry favor
with the party in power, the multi-billion-dollar media machines will
get back to the profitable core of their business: serving programming
that meets the needs and desires of a wide range of listeners while
delivering advertising to consumers.
Get ready for liberal-progressive talk radio, coming to a commercial
station near you. After June 2, of course...
Thom Hartmann, author of over a dozen books, started his radio career
in 1968 and is now the host of "The Thom Hartmann Program" from noon
to 2pm EST, nationally syndicated on the i.e. America Radio Network.
© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.