Gladiator
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![[*]](./images/iconic/default_icon.gif) posted on 2-13-2012 at 12:40 AM |
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Sirota's weekly average of 111,200 listeners puts him ahead of Boyles 109,300 (Rosen 141,600) - OSTROW LIED???
Note: Joanne Ostrow is also a former 630 KHOW weekend talk show host, who writes about radio topics well pver once a decade...
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Ostrow: In television and radio talk wars, why do conservatives drown out all the others?
By Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post Television
Click here for original article at: denverpost.com
Rush Limbaugh remains the dominant force in political talk radio. Bill O'Reilly and Fox News top the ratings in cable TV news.
Listening to the diatribes, watching the shrill back-and-forth, the question persists: Why do the conservative media have all the fun?
Consider:
Conservative talk radio rules 90 percent of the political airwaves today.
Fox News Channel just celebrated 10 years as the top cable news channel. For January 2012, Fox News' prime-time average (roughly 2.5 million
viewers) topped that of MSNBC and CNN combined.
Bill O'Reilly remains the top draw on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, with 2.909 million total viewers.
There is no syndicated radio icon on the left to match Limbaugh, who pulls 15 million cumulative weekly listeners, though conservative Mike Huckabee
this week announced a new radio show to challenge Limbaugh on the right.
It's not for lack of trying on the left. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart win awards, journalistic and comedic, for their blend of satire and
interviews. Rachel Maddow is insightful and wry, Chris Matthews is entertaining and sincere. They can foam at the mouth as fiercely as anyone on Fox
News. But Fox wins the ratings every time.
It's been a tough several years for national media on the left: Air America went bankrupt, the Huffington Post threw in with AOL, and Internet-based
groups like OpenMedia struggle to remain afloat. Keith Olbermann, once a roaring partisan for the left on MSNBC, was banished to Current TV.
The Denver-area talk radio market is cornered by Clear Channel, whose hosts are weighted toward the conservative end of the spectrum. Think Mike Rosen
on KOA, Silverman & Caplis and Peter Boyles on KHOW. All enjoy devoted audiences.
There are exceptions. National left-leaning radio talker Thom Hartmann has a fair local following (he's on Clear Channel's KKZN 760), and Denver
author-columnist David Sirota (760
AM) also mounts a decent local challenge from the left. (Sirota's cumulative weekly average of 111,200 listeners puts him just ahead of Boyles at
109,300 cumulative, but solidly behind Rosen at 141,600 cumulative).
Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, cites "a growing progressive radio success story" in Hartmann, Alan Colmes, Stephanie Miller and Bill
Press. But they are on smaller stations with weaker signals than the national voices hammering talking points on the right.
Nationally, in political talk media, the energy and ratings power lies solidly on the right. Why is the landscape so lopsided?
Audience and ownership
Harrison of Talkers magazine believes conservatives dominate, "because the conservative audience is easier to target than the liberal audience."
Listeners of a conservative bent, who feel alienated and disenfranchised by big media, Hollywood and academia, represent "a perfect mind-set for
radio, a niche medium, to target an audience that will be loyal," Harrison says. "They're seeking validation."
Harrison, who avers he is apolitical and speaks only as a broadcast expert, says, "the conservative audience mind-set is much more cohesive and
uniform, whereas "liberal" is a broader term that takes in many different political philosophies, ethnicities, voting habits, socio-economic classes.
It's not as cohesive a unit."
The consolidation of ownership of radio stations is at least partly responsible for the statistical dominance of conservative political talk radio.
"Toxic Talk" by Bill Press, is a prickly takedown of the "destructive power of Rush, Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, O'Reilly and the other
polarizing figures of talk radio." The book's subtitle says it all: "How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America's Airwaves."
According to Press, "the key is ownership. Follow the money." In the case of Clear Channel, he notes, the company owns 145 news-talk stations and also
owns Premiere, the top syndicator of conservative talk shows, which syndicates "The Rush Limbaugh Show," "The Sean Hannity Show," and others. Clear
Channel, in turn, is owned by (Mitt Romney's former venture) Bain Capital.
The biggest U.S. radio station owners Clear Channel, Entercomm, Cumulus, Salem, Cox and CBS establish their 50,000-watt blowtorches, like KOA in
Denver, as the home of conservative talk. "And you wonder why it's so hard for a liberal to make it as a talk radio host?" Press writes.
Talkers' Harrison argues that anyone who wins ratings, regardless of viewpoint, would be welcomed by a financially driven corporation. It's about
drawing audiences, regardless of ideology. That's been the Clear Channel stance for years. Press disagrees. A liberal talk radio icon is an
impossibility, he suggests, due to the corporate ownership of the media.
Authenticity
From farther to the left comes a more primal explanation for the disparity: good, honest rage.
According to Mark Crispin Miller, a left-leaning author and media scholar at New York University, the right is more authentic to "right-ness" than the
left is to liberalism.
"The right today is driven mainly by rage. To call them conservative is a little misleading because conservatism is an ideology, whereas this
Republican Party is ultimately less concerned with ideology than with a certain tribal animus."
That animus, Miller says, is "an undiscriminating fury that includes racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny..."
In Miller's view, if you subtracted that hostile impulse from today's GOP, there would be nothing left. He sees the rightinfected with "a kind of
malevolent self-righteousness."
"Freud tells us hate is more powerful than love," Miller says. "What we call the left doesn't have all that much fun because they don't really stand
for anything. They're not really leftists. The standard for what's left and right has shifted so far over to the right, we call someone a leftist if
they support spending on the environment and support contraception."
"Yes," Miller acknowledges, "we have Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, they are essentially unofficial champions of the Democratic Partya corporate party."
But Miller is convinced that, if left-leaning media personalities were true leftists, they would have much more fun.
They'd be more like Michael Moore, the filmmaker-provocateur who clearly has a blast.
Does it matter?
The monolithic gab on the right seems insurmountable. But does airwave domination translate to real political power?
During the course of an average week, fully half of the American adult population listens to talk radio enough to be considered regular listeners.
When you include all shows, shock jocks, sports, all manner of "talk," collectively, it's big. Individually, however, these titans of talk actually
draw tiny niche audiences.
"At his peak, Limbaugh may have 3 or 4 people out of every 100 listening to the radio," Harrison says. The impression is that 90 percent of people
listening, or 15 million listeners per week, are all hanging on every word. In fact, those numbers represent a "cume," or cumulative average.
"In talk radio, nobody is that huge. Basically, they're all minuscule. The Super Bowl telecast is huge. Nobody on cable news or talk radio comes
close," Harrison says.
Maybe the conservatives aren't having all that much fun, after all.
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Gladiator
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| posted on 2-13-2012 at 01:10 AM |
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Yeah...
Anti-Semite radio hosts like Rosen, Lavine, Prager, Medved, Savage, Beck...
wait...
Beck just thinks he's Jesus and ass former 850 KOA's Rick Barber would shout if he still had a radio gig, "JESUS - WAS A JEW!"...
where am I??? err... where was I???
oh yes...
I DO NOT know of a single CONSERVATIVE radio host who does not support Israel 1000%...
You know Israel...
WHERE THE JEWS LIVE!!!
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Gladiator
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| posted on 2-14-2012 at 08:04 AM |
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Tuesday morning, just before shifting into sappy err... "Happy" Valentines Day pap mode at 6:30 AM, 630 KHOW's Peter Boyles went off on Joanne
Ostrow's article about "HIM"... First off, it's about Conservative radio and not about "HIM"... Butt err... "But" Boyles no doubt was incensed by my
DRN post title pulling out the one line (which I almost missed the first time I read the article), showing Boyles being in THIRD place ass a boring
err... "as a morning" talk show host...
Boyles told a caller that Ostrow had made up the figures... The word "LIAR" was LIBERALLY uttered several times during the course of the verbal
exchange... Boyles didn't know where Ostrow had gotten her figures, claiming that HE was FIRST, then Rosen, then what's his face...
Bpyles said he had Dan Mandez(sp?) try and call her twice, but she wouldn't return the call... (Maybe she already had a "ski date" with Holly Martino
(cough)...)
The laughable part of Boyles "outrage" is that he DID NOT provide the actual ratings figures of the three shows to
PROVE he is the number one racist err... "rated" morning show!!!
Even more laughable was this Conservative "black" caller who brought up Ostrow and witch err... "which" Boyles tried to "bro snow"... Boyles now damm
near claims to have invented the concept and observation of Black History Month!!! LMFAO!!! Uh... WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME BOYLES HAD A GUEST ON HIS
SHOW WHO WAS BLACK, BROWN, OR EVEN LIGHTLY TOASTED ON ONE SIDE???
I suppose calling Mayor Hancock (WITHOUT ANY PROOF other than some busted pimp's ALLEDGED word) a whoremonger, for 9 months straight, counts in Boyles
mind as being the Black Man's BFF (Best Friend Forever)...
To hear Boyles now talk about his love and R.E.S.P.E.C.T. of the Black man, Desi Cortez should have NO problem being put to the head of the Boyles
show caller list, to be invited and recited on the Boyles show as a respected guest, to high five and jive live about Black issues in the community...
(insert "SOOOUUUULLL!!! TRAAAAIIIINNNNN!!!" audio clip here)
Yeah... I won't hold my breath either... How long til Cinco de Mayo Muchachos???
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Gladiator
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| posted on 2-15-2012 at 12:55 AM |
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I'm still waiting for "the real" Arbitron numbers please...
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XYXYZZZ222
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| posted on 2-15-2012 at 10:52 AM |
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I've seen the numbers, and not sure where Ostrow's coming up with Sirota's. She's pretty close on Boyles & Rosen (going by the December and Holiday
periods), but KKZN's TOTAL cume doesn't even come close to what she says Sirota pulls. What i saw showed him somewhere around 42,000 cume...
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