Why Conservatives Dominate Talk Radio
Column/Article October 07, 2002
radioink.com
Why do conservatives so obviously and thoroughly dominate talk Radio?
No other major medium of communication operates with a comparably intense or upfront ideological orientation. Of course, television news and print journalism generally tilt left of center, but a handful of conservative dissenters — George Will, Bill O’Reilly, Robert Novak, William Safire, Bill Buckley — have always managed to thrive in those media. Moreover, the reigning mandarins of TV news (Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw et al) solemnly (if preposterously) pretend to political impartiality, while nationally successful talk Radio hosts who focus primarily on politics all identify proudly and publicly as conservatives.
Despite intensive liberal hand-wringing over this state of affairs (remember President Clinton’s attempt to blame Oklahoma City on right-wing Radio?), neither the left nor the center have made visible progress in challenging the conservative hegemony. Some prominent Radio talkers, such as Howard Stern, Tom Leykis, Dr. Joy Browne and Art Bell, may avoid the espousal of a right-of-center point of view, but they portray themselves as apolitical (or politically unpredictable and unorthodox) rather than expressing the “progressive” leanings so widely embraced on TV, in Hollywood and throughout academia.
Even the few legendary, left-leaning local hosts — Michael Jackson in Los Angeles and Lynn Samuels in New York, for example — have recently suffered career setbacks and look increasingly like relics of a bygone age. For more than a decade, Democrats and their sympathizers have dreamed of achieving explosive success with “a liberal Rush Limbaugh” (with his 600 stations), but meanwhile they can’t even come up with a “liberal Michael Medved” (with our 130 affiliates).
Some commentators view this situation as the result of diabolical machinations by The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, famously invoked by Hillary Clinton. In one hilariously overwrought book (its cover featured a giant swastika, a Radio microphone, and a neo-Nazi in a “Zieg Heil!” salute), two Boston university professors flatly declared: “Talk Radio in the United States is dominated by those who support the aims of militias, white supremacists, and ethnic purists.” Michael Keith of Boston College and Robert Hilliard of Emerson College go on to explain this frightening situation by citing (with no documentation whatever) the purportedly self-evident fact that with “the means of communication owned largely by conservatives, it should be no surprise that right-wing philosophy and practice dominate the airwaves.” Later, they even suggest that “the conservative-to-right-wing ownership of the media attempted to reprise their McCarthy-era suppression of opinion other than their own…”
Questionable Conservatives
Despite this alleged “suppression,” innumerable broadcasters with questionable conservative credentials (Geraldo Rivera, Dan Rather, Oprah Winfrey, Rosie O’Donnell, Bryant Gumbel, Phil Donahue) managed to somehow slip in under the radar and to construct thriving careers on television. This simple observation completely undermines the Keith-Hilliard theory of right-wing Radio because the same companies that dominate TV also represent a powerful influence in Radio. Consider, for example, the huge Disney-ABC conglomerate. Not only have many of that company’s most prominent personalities (including Chairman Michael Eisner) contributed extensively to Democratic candidates, but its most visible broadcast employees have included such well-known non-conservatives as Peter Jennings, George Stephanopolous, Sam Donaldson, and Ellen DeGeneres.
In fact, some of America’s most prominent conservative Christian organizations (Focus on the Family, The Southern Baptist Convention, Christian Coalition and so forth) felt so offended by racy and leftwing programming and movies by Disney-ABC, that they launched a gigantic (and hugely misguided) national boycott against all its products. This hostility by much of the organized right did not prevent successful operation of the conglomerate’s largely conservative talk stations (including WABC New York and KABC L.A.) or its syndication of right-of-center talkers like Larry Elder and Sean Hannity.
In other words, far from behaving like an operation with a deep-seated conservative political agenda, Disney-ABC — like most other big media companies — has powerfully (if imperfectly) pursued profit, in both TV and Radio.
More sophisticated liberal critics of the conservative talk Radio “monopoly” therefore blame the advertisers, not just the stations or syndicators, for right-wing bias. Edward Monks, an activist attorney in Eugene, OR, has called for federal action to re-impose “fairness” and balance on the Radio. In a provocative column in the Eugene Register-Guard (known to local conservatives as the Eugene Red Guard), Monks argues that “national advertisers tend to be wealthy corporations and entities, operated and owned by wealthy individuals. … Imagine a popular liberal host who argued for a more steeply graduated income tax, an increase in the tax rate for the largest estates, and an increase in the capital gains tax rate. Broadcasters and advertisers have no interest in such a host, no matter how large the audience, because of the host’s ability to influence the political climate in a way that broadcasters and advertisers ultimately find to be economically unfavorable.”
Of course, this argument ignores the fact that advertisers on television are even more wealthy and more privileged than those on Radio (because the ad rates are so much higher), and yet they generously support all the liberal journalists and commentators who, for instance, took such a consistently negative, even derisive view of the Bush tax cuts. Best-selling books like Bias and Slander make an overwhelmingly persuasive case concerning liberal bias on television, but even those who reject such analysis can hardly argue that economic interests of advertisers have stifled all left-leaning voices on TV. Why should commercial interests impose conservative orthodoxy on talk Radio, but fail to do so on a medium like network television, which reaches and influences far more people?
Liberal Attempts
In contradiction to Monks’ suggestion that broadcasters and advertisers on Radio would have no interest in some liberal host, the record shows no shortage of expensive and ambitious efforts to promote liberal talkers. In the last decade, various Radio companies have promoted a wide array of political stars as the new Great White Hope to dethrone Limbaugh and his fellow conservatives. Luminaries such as Mario Cuomo, Jerry Brown, Ed Koch, Alan Dershowitz, Gary Hart, Jim Hightower, Sam Donaldson, Ross Perot, Lowell Weicker, and Doug Wilder launched talk shows with great fanfare and soaring national ambitions — and all either disappeared quickly from the airwaves or continue to struggle in Radio obscurity. The record shows that advertisers, syndicators and local stations made determined and costly efforts to exploit such shows, despite the sun-bleached skeletons littering the landscape of countless previous failures by liberals in talk Radio.
The reasons for this frustrating record go beyond a simple public preference for conservative messages. In her wickedly insightful book Slander, Ann Coulter argues that “wherever there is consumer choice, the public keeps choosing conservatives.” This reasoning ignores the painfully obvious fact that in their crucial role as voters, these consumers choose conservatives only about half the time — hence our recent series of painfully close elections. Spurred by the stunning success of Fox News, television has begun to adjust to the obvious political divide in the populace, offering new alternatives to the monochromatically liberal palette that traditionally colored TV journalism. In talk Radio, on the other hand, we see no evidence of a comparable dawning of ideological diversity.
This imbalance argues against Rush Limbaugh’s own explanation for the rightward tilt of the medium he commands. “I am equal time,” he proclaims, making the credible argument that the audience seeks out conservatives on talk Radio as a desperately needed antidote to the one-sidedly liberal bias in other media. This suggests that, as Fox and other forces continue to provide more political balance on television, the mirror image effect should produce the same sort of result on Radio — the public no longer needs all-conservative talk because “mainstream media” are no longer all-liberal. Yet anyone who projects future trends in light of current realities will find far more reason to anticipate the collapse of liberal domination elsewhere in the communication business than to predict the decline and fall of the conservative talk Radio empire.
Atlanta-based syndicated host Neal Boortz suggests that the right-wing dominance should last forever because liberal arguments remain so flimsy and shallow that they can’t survive the rough and tumble of talk Radio debate. “A newspaper columnist or editorial writer publishes their opinion piece and retreats,” Boortz writes on WorldNetDaily. “…the author is safely out of reach, insulated from any challenges to the factual or logical base of their stated opinions.” Talk Radio hosts, on the other hand, must contend with a daily onslaught of challenging callers and open debate. “Bottom line: Liberals don’t do well at talk Radio because theirs is a political philosophy based on emotion and legalized plunder,” he writes. “Take enough listener phone calls and your credibility is shot — along with your ratings.”
Talent For Debate
Conservatives will instinctively agree with Boortz that our arguments remain more rigorous and durable than those of our liberal adversaries, but that doesn’t mean that they simply can’t hold up their side of the debate. No matter how intense the distaste we may feel for facile advocates such as James Carville, Paul Begala or Bill Press, honest observers should acknowledge that they do a tough, competent job expounding their ideas on cable TV. Say what you will about Allen Dershowitz — the man is hardly an ideological pushover who will simply crumble and humiliate himself in the face of a few hostile callers. I’ve debated Dershowitz frequently on my Radio show, and I can attest to the fact that this Harvard law professor and prolific author richly deserves his reputation as one of the nation’s most fiery, ferocious and effective advocates.
But he remains a Harvard professor and a quintessentially establishment figure — and that helps to explain why Dershowitz and other liberals have failed miserably whenever they have tried their own Radio shows. Liberalism and political correctness are so deeply entrenched in the “prestige” media and the American educational system that they have taken on a reigning, semi-official status. Anyone who has attended public school has heard plenty about our nation’s guilty, racist past, the capitalist rape of the environment, and the forthcoming ecological collapse, the horrendous oppression of females and sexual minorities, the unjust and exploitative distribution of wealth, the importance of peace-loving international organizations like the UN, and so forth.
Conservative appeal
Many Americans accept such notions as true and noble, but no one can fail to identify them with authority figures and the current media and bureaucratic establishment. Liberals, after all, like to suggest that they appeal to all those who are “right thinking” or “compassionate” or “enlightened” or “educated.” It takes an irreverent and rebellious streak to challenge all these smug and bland assumptions — and edginess, irreverence and rebellion work far better on the Radio than pompous platitudes.
This is the appeal that conservative talkers share with the popular masters of the “hot talk” format who promote no political agenda. Michael Savage may hold few values or philosophies in common with Tom Leykis, but both play a consciously anti-establishment role — and delight their fans by flouting the tired and scolding strictures of political correctness.
Radio listeners look for an edge from their hosts, whether that host is discussing the news of the day, playing hit records, revealing the details of his own sex life, or providing on-air psychological counseling. While TV liberals peddle fluffy feelings (remember when Rosie was “The Queen of Nice” and Katie Couric was promoted as “America’s Sweetheart”?), no successful national Radio host has ever achieved success based primarily on his kindness or gentleness or sweet-tempered personality. This doesn’t mean that a cruel nature and an explosive temper represent essential equipment for a triumphant talker. Rush remains an excruciatingly nice guy, on air and off, and I certainly try to follow that example. But the very nature of conservative advocacy puts you outside the bounds of “polite society,” challenging all the easy articles of faith of “enlightened opinion.”
As a visual medium, television inevitably emphasizes emotion and so will always give liberalism an edge. If you’re showing pathetic video footage of homeless people trying to sleep at night in cardboard boxes or other makeshift shelters, it’s hard to trump those heart-wrenching images with hard-hitting discussion of the need to defend a city’s business vitality by getting tough on the derelicts.
Verbal Advantage
Radio, on the other hand, relies on words rather than pictures, allowing for freer play of logical argument with less chance of emotional manipulation — providing a natural advantage for conservatives. When you combine that advantage with the clear audience preference for ideas and conversation that might be considered audacious, impolite and exciting, it’s much easier to understand why conservatives rule the Radio. |
