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The liberals are coming, the liberals are coming!
A political explosion happened this weekend in New York, and it may be the big one that gives Karl Rove nightmares. (or make him laugh) It could mean the end of George W. Bush's seemingly unending ability to tell overt lies (such as?) 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 1200 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. The rating will soar! 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). Make way for the unclean/unserved masses! 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/liberal listeners — people with upscale demographics who advertisers would love to reach? Why are there not more 'Hate America' radio 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. I give this 'experiment about six months before they pull the plug. Al Gore and Ralph Nader as the only audience cannot sustain programming. Ask Phil and MSNBC. Can anyone see Al Gore taking a call that is counter to his thinking? It's almost too funny Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2003-05-20 |
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