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Why Does Liberal Talk Radio Fail?

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By Myrhaf from Myrhaf,cross-posted by MetaBlog

On HBList Joseph Kellard asked, "why does liberal talk radio consistently fail (when not funded by government), while free-market conservative talk radio prevails?"

It's a good question. Recent studies have showed, as I recall, that 90% of talk radio is conservative. Liberals such as Mario Cuomo and Jim Hightower failed at talk radio. Air America has financial troubles. The predominance of right-wing talk radio has some liberals wanting to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

It has been said that conservative talk radio just mirrors America. The people are conservative, therefore talk radio is. If this were true, then why do elections indicate we are nearly a 50-50 nation? Why does right-wing radio prevail even in places such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, where Democrat politicians succeed and conservatives are nowhere to be seen?

It has been said that the MSM is predominately liberal, thus talk radio is a reaction to it. People tune in to hear politically incorrect statements that one would never see in newspapers and television. This might explain some of right-wing talk radio's success, but not all of it. Again, elections would indicate that much more of the country agrees with the liberal MSM than is reflected in radio -- so why can't this point of view find a place in talk radio?

Here is my answer. Talk radio is a forum for opinion, which means rational, logical argumentation meant to persuade. In order to argue well, one must subscribe to and have confidence in reason. One must believe that rational argumentation is not a waste of time. Liberals, succumbing to two centuries of nihilistic modern philosophy, no longer believe in reason.

The Old Left had associated reason with socialism. By the 1960's socialism was discredited and the irrationalist New Left arose to replace the Old Left. By the time socialism received its final death blow in the late '80s-early '90s, the left had concluded from its failure that reason doesn't work.

In the meantime, the 1972 landslide defeat of McGovern by Nixon was a turning point for the Democrat Party. As New Leftists they realized that they could not campaign proudly and openly as who they are and win the Presidency. Since then the only two Democrat Presidents have been Southern governors who campaigned as moderates.

The left's philosophic loss of confidence in reason and the Democrats' bitter experiences with the American electorate have made them cynical about argumentation. To them it is about manipulating the prejudices and irrationality of the American people. They believe that when the right talks about God, guns and gays it stirs up emotions in Americans that overwhelm their capacity to think rationally. Same thing with patriotism. Al Gore's new book argues that right-wing talk is an "assault on reason."

When a faction no longer believes in the efficacy of reason -- despite the title of Gore's book -- what fills the void? Lies, smears and character assassination. Since the advent of Borking, we have seen the left rely more and more on ad hominem argumentation. It has become a regular Democrat tactic to release smears about Republicans late in October before elections. This recent post by James Wolcott, in which he smears Republican presidential candidates as animal abusers, is typical.

In recent years it has been bewilderingly difficult to understand exactly what the Democrats in Congress are fighting for. They attack Republicans, but they don't crusade for anything. I believe the roots lie in that traumatic 1972 election, in which they learned that openly fighting for big government is not the path to success.

After the 1972 election the Democrats did manage to defeat Nixon anyway by using the liberal media to mire him the Watergate scandal. This is another lesson that leftist baby boomers have not forgotten. Since then they have put enormous resources not into fighting Republican ideas, but into catching them in scandal. They had no answer to Reagan's conservative ideology, but they made the most of the Iran-Contra Scandal. Since day one of George W. Bush's Presidency they have struggled overtime to mire him in scandal. The best they've done is the ginned-up Scooter Libby trial. I take such meager results as evidence that Bush is the most honest, least corrupt President of my lifetime. (Bush's problem, in both domestic and foreign affairs, is that he follows his Christian morality too devoutly.)

There is another related reason the left does not thrive in a medium of opinion. Collectivism and statism are at war with reality. Setting morality aside (which the left has learned never to do, as the prevailing morality of our culture, altruism, is on their side), big government is not practical. The conservatives, as altruists, cannot make a moral argument against the welfare state, but they can argue its impracticality all day long, and this fills a lot of air time on talk radio. Liberals are crushed when the debate is about practical results. (Al Gore's crusade to destroy the economy in order to prevent global warming is currently being demolished by rational scientists. The left's best hope is to intimidate their opponents into silence by announcing that they have a consensus and anyone who disagrees is a wacko. When a scientist's career depends on government money, such a tactic is powerful.)

So liberals cannot be honest about who they are and cannot argue that their programs are practically better than their opponents'. They look at the American people with contempt and believe reason is useless with them. Is it any wonder they fail before radio microphones?

All liberals can argue for is the morality of altruism, because 2,000 years of Christianity have made the west equate altruism with morality. Unfortunately for the left and the right, arguing for self-sacrifice makes boring radio. It is about as interesting as a Sunday sermon or a pious lecture in political correctness. No ratings there. For the left that leaves ad hominem attacks and scandal mongering, which might entertain for a few minutes.

An hour is a long time to fill with talk when you really believe, deep down inside, that the only answer is force.

UPDATE: Revision.

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This is what Neal Boortz has been arguing for quite some time. But then, one has to ask, why are most conservative talk radio hosts also fundamentalist Christians? Those arguments certainly don't stand up to reason. I guess the obvious answer is that America is overwhelmingly Christian to the point that it is accepted almost axiomatically, whereas Americans are much more likely to listen to logic and reason when talking about economics and foreign policy.

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Business strategist Clayton Christenson predicted the demise of Liberal talk radio the day they launched for purely business strategy reasons. That is, one doesn't go head to head against entrenched competitors without being as big as them yourself. New entrants are best served by finding new and alternate business models not trying to create a parrallel one. There is too much infrastructure to create in order to reduplicate a nationally syndated radio program system the size of today's conservative talk radio to be able to do it quickly enough without losing financing.

It is basic business strategy, rather than ideas, per se. I think Moose's argument about Christians is very valid example of this. The answer is that the conservative Christians were there first and the liberals were simply too late to the party to try to look just like them. This doens't mean they couldn't succeed, but they'd need to be more patient or try alternate business models.

Here's the article: http://www.strategyandinnovation.com/insights/insight14.pdf

Edited by KendallJ
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This is what Neal Boortz has been arguing for quite some time. But then, one has to ask, why are most conservative talk radio hosts also fundamentalist Christians? Those arguments certainly don't stand up to reason. I guess the obvious answer is that America is overwhelmingly Christian to the point that it is accepted almost axiomatically, whereas Americans are much more likely to listen to logic and reason when talking about economics and foreign policy.

I've always wondered how much of a Christian Rush Limbaugh really is. I know he's an Ayn Rand fan because her books are in his library of recommended reading, but I don't know his take on religion. I listen to him nearly every day while at work and I hear him make references here and there, but nothing to the extent of other conservative talk show hosts who state outright their religion, beliefs, etc. I've been wondering if he doesn't portray himself as a Christian so as not to offend the majority of his listeners while still getting across his message of less government, less taxes and personal responsibility? (The way I behave at Grandma's house at Christmas when she's saying grace...bow my head out of respect for my Grandma without uttering a word or believing any of it.) Just a thought. Perhaps some of you have some insight into this or know more about his personal, religious beliefs?

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I've always wondered how much of a Christian Rush Limbaugh really is. I know he's an Ayn Rand fan because her books are in his library of recommended reading, but I don't know his take on religion. I listen to him nearly every day while at work and I hear him make references here and there, but nothing to the extent of other conservative talk show hosts who state outright their religion, beliefs, etc. I've been wondering if he doesn't portray himself as a Christian so as not to offend the majority of his listeners while still getting across his message of less government, less taxes and personal responsibility? (The way I behave at Grandma's house at Christmas when she's saying grace...bow my head out of respect for my Grandma without uttering a word or believing any of it.) Just a thought. Perhaps some of you have some insight into this or know more about his personal, religious beliefs?

K-Mac,

I agree with you completely about Limbaugh. I have listened to him for years and I dont recall ever hearing him talk about religion except in passing. I doubt that he is an atheist, more likely a non practicing Christian. He blathers on so much about himself, that he would at some point have mentioned a particular sermon, chat with a priest or some other religious event. He knows his audience, and like any good politician, panders to them once in a while.

I dont think most conservative talk show hosts are fundamentalist Christians--at least not the ones on the radio in my area. Besides Limbaugh, we have Medved and Prager. Both of them are Jewish, not Christian, and I dont think I can name a time when I disagreed with anything either had to say. Not sure about Prager, but Medved credits Rand for helping him escape his leftist youth. I have heard Limbaugh reference Atlas Shrugged, but I'll bet $100 he has never read it. He is not nearly as deep as he likes people to believe.

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I thought Rush was supposedly pretty fundamentalist...I wouldn't know. The only time I ever listen to him are those rare days when I leave work 2 hours early and can listen on the way home.

Neal Boortz is certainly no fundamentalist Christian, but he's definitely a theist. He even goes so far as to say, "I don't believe in atheists." I suspect, based on a number of his statements, that he is actually an atheist in self-denial...much the same way that I think Fred Phelps is a homosexual in self-denial.

Most conservative hosts will acknowledge the value in Rand's writings but, in my experience, they tend to be fundamentalist. They may accept Evolution, but they still want religion to play a large role in our government. Just listen to Hannity sometime if you need evidence.

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I would have thought that considerable lashings of the Clientele Effect (as applied more generally than finance) would be a major cause as well as liberals' poor content-generation ability.
In what sense do you mean that?

The article that Kendall linked to makes the point that the left-wing talk guys should have started small, learnt on the job, improved, tailored their message, sought out markets where they had a good chance of winning, and so on, instead of going wide and head to head. The idea is that they tried to do what Fox News did to the networks, but failed because they did not have the right approach or the capital to sustain it.

In contrast, Myhraf's essential point is that their product is not suited for radio, because of it's nature: people don't like their non-reasoning style of "argument", along with the attitude that comes with it: where they talk down to their radio audience.

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In what sense do you mean that?

I knew that was going to cause trouble. I tried looking for the name of the broader phenomenon as I know it is common and applicable to a wide range of marketing issues, but I had no luck at the time. A medium may begin to come to have a given reputation, attracting one type and repelling another in audience. That in in turn increases the market for material aimed at the first type and a shrinking market for material aimed at the latter. This in turn allows for increases the supply of material aimed at the first type and drives away suppliers of material for the latter. The whole thing turns into a cycle, concentrating the reputation for one type of content over another.

The idea differs from that in the article Kendall posted as that was focussed on one radio station whereas I am referring to the entire notion of talk-back radio. "Talk-back radio? That's what rednecks get into." I think Air America would have been spending more capital (if they had it) and for a much longer time than Innosight imagines as AA was fighting against the entire perception of the medium and not just the incumbents participating in it. This I take so far as to wonder if a single radio station could successfully effect the required change in any meaningful time-frame irrespective of how good a marketing strategy might have been put in place.

In contrast, Myhraf's essential point is that their product is not suited for radio, because of it's nature: people don't like their non-reasoning style of "argument", along with the attitude that comes with it: where they talk down to their radio audience.

That's definitely an issue and I didn't deny it, just suggesting that it is possibly overstated. Myrhaf's point that liberal content and delivery technique repels people definitely adds to the potency of the effect I describe.

JJM

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New entrants are best served by finding new and alternate business models not trying to create a parrallel one.

Oh, a liberal talk show IS an alternate business model! It caters to an entirely different customer base. It simply does not compete for listeners with conservative talk shows. A liberal talk show is not trying to take away market share from conservative talk shows; it is trying to gain a share of a different market. Only, as it's turned out, that different market does not exist at all, because liberals are simply too dumb for talk radio.

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Oh, a liberal talk show IS an alternate business model! It caters to an entirely different customer base. It simply does not compete for listeners with conservative talk shows. A liberal talk show is not trying to take away market share from conservative talk shows; it is trying to gain a share of a different market. Only, as it's turned out, that different market does not exist at all, because liberals are simply too dumb for talk radio.

I think the point that's being missed is that liberals are absolutely bankrupt and nihilistic. They're on such a low level now that they have little to offer except to tear things down. Let's face it, they've dominated all other media for a long while, and are at their end. Conservative radio has a mix of good ideas and bad ideas, especially Rush Limbaugh, and this is what attracts people, probably most especially the moral message.

In a way, this supports Peikoff's idea that the conservatives are the danger. Clearly they're holding sway on radio.

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On HBList Joseph Kellard asked, "why does liberal talk radio consistently fail (when not funded by government), while free-market conservative talk radio prevails?"

Leftists, liberals and democrats are anti-business and anti-capitalism. Hence they righteously attack businesses and corporations on the air. Liberals not only attack specific businesses and corporations including Halliburton, Exxon, Mobile, Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but they attack and disparage the very idea of business, corporations and profit. Thus businesses and corporations are hesitant to advertise on liberal talk radio and this causes revenue problems.

Conservatives and republicans generally are pro-business and pro-capitalism (even if on mystical grounds), so they naturally attract advertising revenue from businesses and corporations, and this keeps conservative talk radio flourishing.

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Fireball, any explanation of the predominance of the "right" in talk radio has to explain why the right is not dominant in other media.

That is to say: if it is true that advertisers spend money based on the pro-capitalism sentiment of the radio station, why do they not do the same for TV, magazine, and newspapers?

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Fireball, Rush Limbaugh is not a Jew. He is a big fan of Jews, however, or, more accurately, of Israel.

Fireball, any explanation of the predominance of the "right" in talk radio has to explain why the right is not dominant in other media.

One explanation I've heard, and makes sense to me, is that radio requires ideas be transmitted, where as TV simply requires pretty faces, and cool special effects. Radio is on the level of ideas.

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One theory sometimes advanced is that most liberals and centrists can turn to the mainstream media and its statist/leftist biases in both news coverage and editorial commentary.

That shuts out conservatives both as readers/viewers and even as journalists, who tend to turn to other media because they could not find themselves at home in the mainstream media. That explains the success of talk radio and the conservative blogosphere, and Fox News Channel.

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