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.
> In Los Angeles, to speak of the relevant market, Stern was reaching 277,000
> listeners at any time, while his successor David Lee Roth was getting only
> 32,000.
>
> So owning the media doesn't automatically deliver listeners.
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).
It is true that supply does not automatically create demand. All of these right-wing outlets cater to a somewhat mellowed version of the white-male (etc.) resentiment and bile that spawned Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement 15 years ago or so. (As does Dubya.)
It's a vicious circle (or, from their point of view, a virtuous one). The problem is that the various liberals and lefts haven't even gotten past the minimal survival point without subsidies from rich angels. So they haven't had the chance to get into a virtuous circle.
Back in the 1920s, the labor movement had its own radio stations. WCFL was that owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor; last time I listened (1970?), it was a top-40 station. The creation of the FCC helped to end that and cemented corporate control.
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. -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles