Talk Radio's Conservative Bias

The big story on the blogs today is this report by American Progress, which is a study on the political slant of talk radio. It discovers that 90% of talk radio is conservative in nature, while only 10% is liberal. (Nobody would debate that fact, I imagine.) The report also makes suggestions on how to ameliorate this discrepancy by passing laws and setting up regulations for radio station ownership and content.

The conservatives of course are livid about the suggestion that the radio dominance they have crafted through the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity should be curtailed legislatively. The liberals are gloating in some kind of "your politics suck, so it's only fair that you shouldn't be allowed to be so popular" theme.

Talk radio, like every other money-making venture, is based on profit. Rush Limbaugh's immense popularity with advertisers (and his 50-some-odd million listeners, or whatever it is) spawned a thousand conservative wannabe commentators in his wake. If you don't like Rush (and his thousand radio clones) and his politics or methods, too bad: Radio stations love the profit that he generates... and the listener share they are getting... which in turn increases their profits. People listen... even if you aren't one of them. Sorry about that. Bon Jovi gave us Warrant, Cinderella, Winger, and White Lion... Rush gave us Michael Savage. Some trends stick around, other's don't.

If the liberal side of the political spectrum had been able to find a radio personality with equally powerful drawing power early on in the game (back when Limbaugh was only a minor sensation), there probably would have been some parity between conservative and liberal talk radio... because there would have been two partisan preachers to clone, instead of one. But that isn't what happened, and now radio stations go with the "safe bet" of yet another conservative talk show host instead of gambling their valuable air time on a liberal. (The fact that only a handful of liberal talk show hosts have really caught on in the past 20 years makes the conservative "safe bet" even safer.)

It's an uphill battle for liberal talk radio, perhaps made more difficult by the failure of a real figurehead to emerge from the pack to become a liberal "icon" (although Al Franken had a go at it, and Alan Colmes continues his 15-year quest to accomplish the same), but if they keep trying, eventually things will balance out. Just look at country music as it made it back from deep obscurity 30 years ago to become the most prominent radio format in America today: Put up a popular, quality product first, and success comes second... not the other way around. There most is certainly no way legislation is going to bypass that fact, or the economies it represents.