Drop in right-wing talk radio ratings

Sports talk works where I am because there is a passionate following of a local team that carries the audience all day long even during the offseason. I can't imagine how 24-hour sports talk would work in, say, Idaho.

 

Having more than a few friends who work in radio, specifically talk radio, in some of the biggest markets in the country, the issue is mainly this:

People are tiring of hearing the same voices over and over and over again, thanks to the age of syndicated radio. It's a little bit like McDonald's or Burger King. We like our Big Macs and Whoppers, but we don't want them every day. When you hear Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, et al, on every talk radio station in every market, there's no novelty to it anymore.

Listeners are growing increasingly bored with the same shtick every day, so they're seeking out other hosts, programs and/or forms of media to get their entertainment/information fix. They'll come back to the usual places from time to time, but talk radio no longer has a monopoly on the conservative voice.

Talk radio was a hell of a lot more entertaining, and mentally stimulating, when programming was unique to a local market. The age of syndication, which is a direct result of broadcasters (namely Clear Channel, the country's largest group owner) looking for more efficient (read: cheaper) ways to run their stations, has led to a situation where listeners are being overwhelmed with similar programming (especially through Clear Channel's own Premier Radio syndication division). If Limbaugh generates good ratings for three hours a day, adding hosts with similar points of view (like Beck for another three hours and Hannity for yet another three) ought to generate good ratings for nine hours a day, right? Or so goes the thinking. What they didn't factor was the audience's burnout rate.

(There's probably a parallel to be drawn to newspapers sharing content throughout their chain or with neighboring papers, but that's for another thread.)

The ratings trend doesn't mean the country is any less conservative. It only means the audience has more choices.

 

My question on the story would be this: "Are they taking into account the increased number of conservative shows? It's not like there's just Rush out there any more. There are loads of national and local conservative radio shows out there now. If someone prefers their local guy on one station to Rush or Hannity or whoever at the time on another station, that's bad for Rush or Hannity's ratings, but not a sign that conservative radio is dying.

Drop in ratings acknowledged, any network or station would still kill for those ratings.

 

I can't listen to sports radio for more than 10-15 minutes without shaking my head at the litany of factual errors and eventually changing the station. But I keep coming back for short bursts, bitching about the general idiocy, then changing the channel again. Analysis and opinion are one thing, but many of these hosts just spout off shit that is flat wrong, and should be known by people who make a living in sports. Irritating.

 

The worst is sports talk radio in which the hosts veer out into the world at large, and specifically into politics. Lordy is that some disinformation and stupidity.

 

tony and reformed hack, I'd suggest that the addition of other popular right-wing hosts is not new either. Savage has been around since 99 or so. Dr. Laura's been around syndication since the mid-90s. Hannity's been in syndication since 01.

It hasn't been hard to find all-day right-wing talk for a good 10 years and longer now. The question is, why is it just now getting to be "too much?"

 

I'm sure there are a variety of factors, starting with the sheer fact that, like newspapers, overall radio consumption is trending downward.

Beyond that, I would guess that more and more people are using the internet as an outlet for their rage, whether it is by reading/posting on blogs or commenting under newspaper stories. The radio is no longer the go-to sanctuary for the dissatisfied. And after spending all of their work day on RedState.com, they just want to listen to some music on the way home.

 

Sure. Some conservatives are very smart. And on some issues they may be correct -- or it may be just two different ways of attacking the problem.

Of course, some bright lights on both sides just spout cliches and buzzwords and act like they are original and brilliant.

 

Agree 110 percent.

 

Agree 100 percent. And Michael Savage is on when hoops or whatever preempts others down here, and he's simply wacko, although again, sort of an entertaining wacko in small doses.

 

I understand Limbaugh's appeal. But when you get to the "talent" on the second or third righty radio station market, you wonder why people listen.
Give me some unpredictablility. Surprise me. If I can agree with you and disagree with you on the same show, I'll keep listening.

 

Didn't say or mean to imply that the abundance of conservative talk is a recent phenomenon. (Beck's been around since 2001 as well. He got his national start in my hometown of Tampa, so I've been privy to some of the machinations of how he got from a local stage to a national platform.)

What I'm saying is what my radio industry people tell me: We've now hit critical mass. Maybe 10-12 years is the burnout point for the audience.