Right-Wing Talk Radio Host: We're Killing The GOP

Right-wing talk radio host Michael Medved says right-wing talk radio is killing the Republican party:

The multibillion-dollar talk radio industry faces existential challenges and dramatic opportunities in the upcoming Age of Obama. Depending on responses from leading conservative talkers, this rude, raucous indispensable medium will either rise to new heights of mainstream influence, profit and credibility, or else collapse as a declining vehicle for an increasingly angry and alienated fringe.

For more than a decade, I've hosted a nationally syndicated political talk show. Like all radio veterans, I cherish the notion that the last time a young Democrat took over the White House with gauzy visions of change, it produced a "Golden Age" for right-wing talk.

...

Today's titans of talk naturally dream of repeating this revival, but even if Obamatrons offer targets for ridicule every bit as juicy as Clintonistas, it won't be easy to recapture the potent magic of the 1990s. Most obviously, the rapid development of cable TV and the Internet has given the public innumerable new options for debate and information. During Clinton's era, conservative talk radio offered the inevitable destination for political junkies who cared deeply about the fate of the new administration. Today, many leading TV comics and commentators lean unabashedly to the left, while progressive websites rival popular right-wing sources online.

This fragmentation of the mass audience has led many talk shows to cultivate a niche audience rather than the Republican mainstream. In the aftermath of stinging GOP defeat in November, radio crackles with blame-game arguments intended to divide "real conservatives" from unworthy moderate imposters -- as if the GOP could become the first party in history to expand an already shrunken base by purging its membership.

...

Increasingly, interests of commercial talk radio in a fractured market diverge from the needs of a viable national movement. A radio show (locally or nationally) that draws just 5% of the available audience can achieve notable success in ratings and revenue, but a conservatism that connects with only a disgruntled, paranoid 5% of the public will wither and die.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[shirleyfeeney]

Nah, I'm pretty sure that the GOP did this to themselves­...though it didn't help any when idiots like Medved or O'Reilly continued to spout out and out lies and praise for the Bush Administration. If they want to redeem themselves, maybe they ought to start calling the GOP out and holding them accountable like the rest of us have been doing for eight years.

We may have a Dem in the WH come January, but we will never forget the last eight horrific years.

[DRaymond]

The true irony is that the ultimate salvation of talk radio may rest in the first thing that it destroyed in the 1990's: Civil discourse.

Think of it: Even the most restrained blog out there typically winds up looking like a Junior High Cafeteria Food Fight. TV needs too much constant visual KAPOW! to really develop an issue beyond talking points. Radio uniquely has the ability to bring together intelligent reasoned people to have a lively and informative discussion of the important, or simply interesting.

Commercial stations hate including NPR in the list of ratings for their city, but when you have a decent station with a decent signal the results are usually very respectable. KPCC is number 24 in Los Angeles, a full ten positions ahead of KRLA, which carries Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewlett, Dennis Praeger and...yes Michael Medved. KPCC is heard by more than twice the number of people in Los Angeles than the station that carries Michael Medved.

[TovSquirrel]

I vote for . . .

". . . collapse as a declining vehicle for an increasingly angry and alienated fringe."

[coloradodreaming]

For the most of us the only time we are forced to listen to right wingers is when we are traveling through the US and nothing else is on the radio besides local or farm news. Would love to have at least one moderate talk radio or an alternative talk radio about finance, real estate, investments. The radio stations figure all they need to do to fill in blank time is buy the likes of Rush. It may keep me awake but I get sick to my stomach thinking that some people only get their news and opinions from such a source. Hate radio, I hope, will disappear as people become more educated. Or maybe when their children become more educated.

[novowel4me]

You got it, between the coasts and the large urban areas is a radio wasteland of ranting righties. With few exceptions will any of these goons submit to reasoned debate anytime anyone gets close they get shouted down and kill buttoned. The internet will slowly strangle them, I hope.

[IndependentMeans]

Please kill the GOP, please please please.

[b1rd67]

Let's increase their anger, alienation and marginalization until all they do is complain..­. well, all they do now is complain so I guess I mean until their protestations reach a fevered ptich and then we throw their own rusty canard back in their faces "LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!"

[Unsui]

Say what you will about Medved, he "gets it" this time. He is correct on almost every point in this piece. The Net has opened a door on information that has forever changed the face of all forms of journalism, for the better, forever. No longer can the likes of Medved, et al create the illusion that they represent a mainstream American audience. Their policy positions were always fringe, but they managed to pull off the illusion that they represented a mainstream political constituency. The ability of people to do real research on the Net has made their half-truths, flat out lies and sins of omission irrelevant.

The only part Medved got wrong here is the idea that Right Wing Blogsites rival the, more Mainstream, Liberal ones. Obama's landslide is evidence of this, I think.

[DuPageDem]

Rational introspection from a right-wing tool. Amazing. I'm going outside now to count the pigs flapping overhead.

[b1rd67]

I vote B: "collapse as a declining vehicle for an increasingly angry and alienated fringe. "

[Whinger]

Don't stop on my account, carry on regardless!

[goodog]

did he really just say stop being so damned mean, stupid, and conservative?

[datone]

....these are all one and the same.

[Teri]

finally one of those fanatics speaks the truth? it is a new day in america. change is coming on 1/20/09 and even these types understand! yahoo.

[LDnearthesea]

Right-wing haters like Medved and Bill-O The Clown get to hog 90% of AM talk radio time. Time to bring back the fairness in broadcasting rules that REagan did away with, and rescinding the FCC legislation that Clinton signed off on in 1996 when Newt Gingrich was the shadow dictator for awhile.

[b1rd67]

We don't need that... I think it's fair... they get 1940s technology and we get the Internet! The only reason to listen to AM radio is when the sign before the tunnel warns of traffic delays!

[JiminNC]

Well ... RIMFP

[bdaved]

During the Terry Schiavo fiasco it became overwhelmingly obvious that government­-by-talkra­dio was not a good idea. It's taking a while for some folks to catch on.

[donveylindsey]

donvey lindsey lol right is wrong