Nathan Newman:
> But that's Rush Limbaugh who like Howard Stern remains a bit of an
> entertainment phenomenon unto themselves. Buying a radio station doesn't
> get you their ratings.
-but Rush himself was created, purchased, by big money guys. -but there are a whole bunch of other media outlets that push -Limbaugh-like right-wing opinions (including those of Bill O'Reilly). -They dominate AM talk radio. The corporations -- e.g., Clear Channel -- get their audience partly via monopolizing it (or, more correctly, -by sharing monopoly control).
Partly-- partly Limbaugh's just really good at what he does and there is an audience for his schtick and those of related folks. I actually think talk radio ties into the conservatism of exurban voters who drive to work and are some of the main consumers of talk radio during drive time. That's not the sole explanation of why there seems to be less liberal demand for talk radio-- as you say it also taps into a mellow version of white rage -- but the reality is that while Air America for example has sustained okay ratings, it's not like a massive untapped liberal audience has rushed to it.
-Now if the AFL or C2W were to buy Pacifica, they'd probably have to do -a lot of top-40 programming (though these days, it's top-30) and the -like. But they could at least put a pro-labor spin on the news, which -would help.
It's a pretty massive investment to buy a media outlet, invest in an entertainment division, and the only positive outcome is a few minutes of pro-labor news commentatry. One reason Clear Channel invests in radio is that they don't have to make massive profits from their radio stations, since it reinforces their other profit-making divisions like concert venues.
Media is a business and if it's not a profit-making enterprise, it's a horrendously costly place to try to have a role. And this is a weird time for labor to try to buy in, just as online video, podcasts et al are threatening the traditional structure of the mainstream media.
It's not as if labor hasn't gotten a range of labor shows on the air across the country; they just don't get massive audiences: http://www.laborheritage.org/radio.html
What made the latino media promotion of the rallies work is that it was inserted into the middle of largely non-political daily fare, something that's hard to replicate on a day-to-day basis on many other issues: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/us/01dj.html
Look- I think good lefty media would be great. I'm a big fan of Jon Stewart and think it does good to have it out there. But there is a lot more organizers could do to create clearer messages for political campaigns, which are rightly sterotyped as so fuzzy in focus most of the time that even allies don't understand the message.
Nathan Newman