I knew talk radio in this country skewed heavily to the far-right, but I had no idea it was this bad.
While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:
* In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.
* Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.
* 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.
That’s astounding. America embraces progressive ideas on almost every issue of national significance, but according to this report (.pdf), prepared by the Center for American Progress and Free Press, progressive ideas have practically been wiped from the radio dials.
Indeed, even in cities in which the left dominates politically, conservatives still dominate talk-radio. In DC, there’s twice as much conservative talk-radio than liberal. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s slightly worse.
Supply and demand suggests something is wrong here.
I suppose the natural response from the right is that the market is working. People prefer conservative radio to liberal radio, so broadcasters are just giving American audiences what they want.
But the report suggests otherwise.
Although talk radio audiences tend to be more male, middle-aged, and conservative, research by Pew indicates that this audience is not monolithic — 43 percent of regular talk radio listeners identify as conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and 30 percent as moderate. The ideological breakdown of the country as a whole during this same period was very similar — 36 percent conservative, 21 percent liberal, and 35 percent moderate. It is difficult to argue that the existing audience for talk radio is only interested in hearing one side of public debates given the diversity of the existing and potential audience.
More importantly, even in markets where progressive talk is considered a success by the industry standards of ratings and revenue, licensees will often broadcast conservative talk on three or four stations compared to one station for progressive talk. For example, in Portland, OR, where progressive talk on KPOJ AM 620 competes effectively with conservative talk on KEX AM 1190, station owners also broadcast conservative talk on KXL AM 750 and KPAM AM 860. Although there is a clear demand and proven success of progressive talk in this market, station owners still elect to stack the airwaves with one-sided broadcasting.
As our data shows, the norm under the existing market structure is for radio station licensees to broadcast only conservative talk, a pattern that holds true for more than 90 percent of the stations examined (236 stations out of 257). In Ohio, for example, there are 10 radio markets. In eight of those markets, there is not a single hour of progressive talk. In the two markets that do broadcast a total of six hours of progressive talk (Al Sharpton on two urban talk stations), those hours compete against 52 hours of conservative talk. Clear Channel Communications, the ownership group that has committed the largest number of stations to the progressive format, recently cancelled the only three progressive talk stations in the state of Ohio. When 91 percent of the talk radio programming broadcast each weekday is solely conservative — despite a diversity of opinions among radio audiences and the proven success of progressive shows — the market solution has clearly failed to meet audience demand. Even greater deregulation and consolidation of radio station ownership is therefore not likely to meet audience desires or serve the public interest in any meaningful way.
So, what should happen next? CAP and Free Press recommend, among other things that “national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market.”
Sounds like that would be a good start.