Cy, On this New Years day from Drudge I found a link to an NY times article.
"Outflanked Democrats Wonder How to Catch Up in Media Wars"
It's clear the dem's know they are in trouble. But it's even more clear they are clueless as to the cause. LOL
.... For years, Democrats have groused about their inability to balance
what they see as the increasing influence over the electorate by
advocates of Republican policies.
But they say their concerns have taken on a new urgency because of the
rise to the top of the cable news ratings by the Fox News Channel,
considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the loss of the
Senate to the Republicans in November. Some Democrats say the election outcome enhanced the influence of Fox News and personalities like Mr.
Limbaugh.
The efforts among influential Democrats, particularly liberals, range
from a grass-roots talent search for progressive radio hosts to the creation of research organizations to provide a Democratic spin for
the news media, to nascent discussions by wealthy supporters about
starting a cable network with a liberal bent.
People working on these projects acknowledged they were venturing into
territory where liberals have failed and failed again, most notably
with the short-lived radio programs of Mario M. Cuomo and Jim
Hightower, not to mention Phil Donahue's struggling liberal talk show
on MSNBC.
However, they said, the recent Republican gains have perhaps set the
backdrop for the emergence of an angry liberal who could claim the
same outsider status that worked so well for Mr. Limbaugh in the early
1990's.
The hurried efforts by Democrats to find more powerful media voices
come after years of carping but little action.
"If you start from the premise that the message was right, which we do, then the problem was that it wasn't getting out to the people,"
said one official of the Democratic Party who spoke on condition that
his name not be used.
With that sentiment, there is a sense within the leadership ranks that the party erred in not building a media support system after the 2000
presidential election, when it lost the media coordination of the
Clinton White House.
"Across the board, we need to muscle up," said John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and now a law
professor at Georgetown University. "That means from the Congressional
operations to the party committees to the think-tank world to, most
significantly, beefing up our capacity to communicate with the public in all forms of media, not just through obscure Internet Web sites but
on television and radio."
For his part, Mr. Podesta is discussing with the Internet entrepreneur
Steven T. Kirsch and others the creation of a liberal version of the
Heritage Foundation, the conservative research group that, along with
others of its kind, is credited with helping start the modern
conservative movement.
The foundation is part of a circuit of influential conservative groups
that are credited with helping to hone a singular message, bolstered each Wednesday at back-to-back meetings held by Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, and the conservative activist Paul Weyrich. Those meetings are monitored and at times attended by some
conservative commentators, columnists and Internet writers.
Democrats have long claimed that the circuit has corralled
conservative thinkers, and more important, conservative media, into a disciplined message of the week that gets repeated attention from Web
sites like the Drudge Report, Mr. Limbaugh's radio show, Fox News's
prime-time talk shows and the editorial pages of The Washington Times
and The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Kirsch, chief executive of the Propel Internet service and a
Democratic fund-raiser, said the foundation he and Mr. Podesta
envision would do the same for liberals.
"During the last 10 years the opposition has become more organized and the liberals haven't adapted to counter it," Mr. Kirsch said. "We will
have components that will include messaging, message delivery and coordination of progressive groups so progressives will speak with
more of a unified voice."
Should the organizers succeed at starting a foundation, it would not have anywhere near the number of prominent, outright partisan media
voices that its conservative counterparts do.
Democrats can point to a scant few. Their most prominent television
advocates, James Carville and Paul Begala on "Crossfire" and Bill
Press on CNN's "Buchanan and Press," square off each day against
conservative counterparts. Mr. Donahue stands alone on MSNBC, but his program has struggled some against the far more watched Bill O'Reilly
on Fox and Connie Chung on CNN.
Conservatives have Mr. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Reagan and Neal
Boortz, who collectively draw an audience of at least 30 million
people per week with a strictly conservative message.
They are led, of course, by Mr. Limbaugh, with an estimated audience
of up to 20 million people a week, and Mr. Hannity, with nearly 10
million. Democrats, most recently Al Gore ([25]news - [26]web sites), have also complained that the Fox News Channel, overseen by the former
Republican strategist Roger E. Ailes, slants its coverage against
Democrats, a charge Mr. Ailes denies. Its average nightly audience of
about 1.3 million people is the largest in cable news.
In one of the more ambitious of the ideas circulating, a group of
wealthy Democratic supporters is toying with the idea of starting a
liberal cable network. That endeavor would cost in the hundreds of
millions and require the backing of a media company with enough
leverage to force it onto the major cable systems.
Democratic officials said that they had discussed a similar idea with Haim Saban, a media mogul and party supporter, a couple of years ago,
as Fox News began its ascent, but that he ultimately decided against
it, in large part because of the odds against success.
Mr. Saban had no comment, but an associate played down the seriousness
of the discussions.
Still, Rob Glaser, the founder and chief executive of RealNetworks,
the Internet video service, said he believed there was room to create
a progressive version of Fox News.
"There is a hole in the market right now," Mr. Glaser said. "From my
personal standpoint, holes in the market are opportunities."
Democrats said a far more readily achievable goal would be to foster
national liberal radio personalities.
The task has fallen to a newly formed group, Democracy Radio Inc. It
is overseen by a former Democratic Congressional staffer, Tom Athens,
with help from, among others, Paul W. Fiddick, the Clinton
administration assistant secretary for agriculture and a co-founder of
the Heritage Media Corporation.
"We're going to go out and identify talent and help them to create
programming and actually connect them with local stations," Mr. Athens
said. "We want to plant a thousand seeds and see how many flowers
actually arise."
But if history is any guide, the soil may not be fertile. Liberal radio programs have not worked very well in the past. Liberals and conservatives said they believed this was in part because the most
prominent liberal hosts have tended to present policy issues in all of
their dry complexity while refraining from baring fangs against
conservative opponents.
"Most liberal talk shows are so, you know, milquetoast, who would want to listen to them?" said Harry Thomason, the Hollywood producer who is
close to Bill Clinton. "Conservatives are all fire and brimstone."
Mr. Athens said his group would encourage its hosts to be more brazen
and entertaining.
"Progressives have this problem: They sound too erudite, it's like
eggheads talking at you," Mr. Athens said. "We believe that
progressive talk radio can be every bit as successful as conservative
talk radio if people present and format a show that people like."
Conservatives are skeptical that all of this planning will do the
Democrats much good. "It's not a matter of packaging or meetings, it's a matter of ideas," Mr. Hannity said. "The public isn't interested in
the kind of liberalism that the Democratic party has come to
represent."
Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist and part of the conservative
team on CNN's "Crossfire," said the Democrats were making too much about the efficacy of the conservative research organizations. Mr.
Novak said he sent a staff member to Mr. Norquist's meetings. But, he said, while the information shared at the meetings is "helpful, it's hardly a decisive factor" in what he writes in his column or says on television.
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