‘Is Era of Right-Wing Site Popularity Over?’

June 29, 2006

I like to keep an eye on Fox News’ TV ratings, and smile a little when they drop, so this new (subscriber-only) article from U.S. Politics Today also caught my eye.

Joe Rothstein reviewed web traffic for a number of top outlets for online conservative commentary and found that the leading voices are still talking, “but fewer people seem to be listening — at least on the Internet.”

During the past 3 months, for instance, rushlimbaugh.com traffic ranking has declined 18%…. Even Fox News, that gold standard of right-wing media, is down 13%. […]

You would think all of the attention the promotion of [Ann Coulter’s] new book has given her would raise visitor numbers at her web site, anncoulter.com. Nope. Traffic there is down 10%.

The audience chart reversal seems to be common across the entire right-wing side of the Internet viewing board. Billoreilly.com has dropped 40% in the past 3 months. Townhall.com, that once popular center for right-wing news and commentary, has fallen by 24%. WashingtonTimes.com is down by 27%.

Rothstein notes that some of this could be due to a drop off in interest for political sites, but adds that Moveon.org is up 13% over the same period.

Rothstein asks, “Is the era of right-wing site popularity over?” It’s hard to say without a more thorough review of a larger sample. Moreover, Rothstein used Alexa, which is hardly the most reliable system for measurement. That said, given the cursory results, coupled by Fox News’ drop-off in viewers, coupled by Republicans’ poor poll numbers, it’s at least mildly encouraging, isn’t it?

I told my wife to stop reading Ann (the bitch) Coulter. That’s why she’s down 10%

😉

  • C’mon Carpetbagger, give it up. How are you doing over here?

    I’ve read the DailyKos is generating somewhere in the neighborhood of a million unique visitors per month and there are several other blogs I visit that have a large number of comments. All-in-all without actually seeing any numbers I think the left side of the Internet is a growing and healthy community.

  • “C’mon Carpetbagger, give it up. How are you doing over here?” – MAA

    Who cares? The commentors are better over here. Even Ed Stephan or Tom Cleaver are a better read than most of what I see over at DailyKos or TPM (just kidding guys).

    But really, CB, you are missing the point. The audiance is probably just going to other new extreme right wing web sites with not respect for their readers…

    … like WashingtonPost.com 😉

  • I sure hope you’re right. The rightwing noise machine is still spewing lies, and the people who believe their crap make really stupid decisions.

    For example, Rush Limbaugh is still pushing BS like “Why Nobody Seems Interested in the Hundreds of Saddam’s WMD Found in Iraq”.

    http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_062206/content/truth_detector.guest.html

    But maybe Rush’s numbers are dropping because his audience actually does have a brain, and for some reason they can’t quite believe that Bush isn’t out there saying that WMDs have been found because he’s

    …a little scared because of the propaganda for the past three years that has got everybody a little frightened to go out on a limb about this…, because the propaganda has been so successful…

    …you have a lot of smart people on our side trying to play this down… I think they are gun-shy… they’re sort of like beaten dogs on this…

    Yeah, Rush. That makes perfect sense. There’s evidence, but Bush is too scared to mention it.

    Hopefully the other noise machines will all follow him off the cliff.

  • Lance — I’ll agree with you about Ed and Tom, as well as a few more of you guys. But in defense of the DailyKos site, while it’s noisy and rowdy, I think they’re a good representation of what discourse in a democracy should be. It parallels, roughly, the Sunday discussion forums we have here. There’s some really good ideas and some not so good. The main point being that we all get to contribute ideas and then thrash it out (that’s the fun part).

  • ***Hopefully the other noise machines will all follow him off the cliff.***
    Racerx

    Limbaugh and his laughable lemmings, eh?

  • The wingnuts are losing the moderates who were willing to give them a chance. They’ve had their chance and the wheels flew off. By this point, to take anything from Outer Wingolia seriously, you have to ignore everything but them. They’ve become detached in the most literal sense of the word.

    As for DailyKos, I’m a huge fan and I don’t understand much of the criticism the site receives. When reduced to an average, some of the criticism makes sense. But to do so ignores what the site is. It’s gotten so big that it might be fair to compare it to a flea market. There are ideas/opinions over there that range from junk to treasure. You have to be willing to sift through it to get the best of it.
    But at the surface level it functions well as a communal editorial board. Most entries point to a news item, which the community prioritises. It’s by no means perfect, but probably has done more to shift the debate to our terms than anything else the left has had in years. YMMV

    But for a signal to noise ratio? CB is my favorite.

  • But for a signal to noise ratio? CB is my favorite.

    Have I mentioned lately how much I love my readers?

    C’mon Carpetbagger, give it up. How are you doing over here?

    Well, Marcus, I’m a little bashful about my traffic. I heard someone describe me this week as an “A-list” blogger, which kind of surprised me because my traffic isn’t where I’d like it to be, but in the end, it depends on what the meaning of “A-list” is. And whether you go buy visitors or page views.

    I’ll put it this way: a) I’ve seen a steady, gradual increase in traffic over the last six months; and b) I’m probably among the top 30 or so among liberal blogs.

    [T]here are several other blogs I visit that have a large number of comments.

    It’s interesting — I know some blogs with a lot of traffic and very few commenters, and I know others with low traffic and lots of commenters. As for the quality of the contributions here, I’d put you guys up against anybody. There isn’t a day that goes by in which I don’t enjoy the insights I read from Carpetbagger commenters. Many thanks to all.

  • “… maybe Rush’s numbers are dropping because his audience actually does have a brain”

    I don’t know about brains (why else call them dittoheads?), but I do think even Rush’s audience contains people who may be subject to embarrassment when their acquaintances bring up such things as OxyContin and Viagra.

    Incidentally, I wasn’t certain how to spell “OxyContin”, so I googled “rush drug”. I wasn’t sure that would work because I believed the online literature would be full of references to “drug rush” in the 1960s Haight-Ashbury use of the term. Boy, was I wrong.

  • Apparently these people in the disappearing audience can hear “there are WMD in Iraq” 1,000 times and still think, “well maybe,” but on that 1,001st time, man, that’s all they can stand!

  • If the slide continues, will Fox become more fictional? more angry?
    more sensational? I read that the pressure from network executives is on and that Fox will be motivated to exert effort to regain ratings.

    I can’t wait to see O’Reilly hopped up another notch.

  • Well, when you compared the dialogue at the wingnut sites (“you suck, Clinton-loving Libtard!!!”) to the dialogue we have here (“you suck, but here’s my argument as to why you suck, with references”), it easy to see why the Right is losing the battle over the Internet.

  • First off, I am sure Ed (a really good guy, as you’ve all surmised) joins me in saying thanks for the recognition. Mark Twain once said “a man can dine out for a month on a good compliment,” so I am off to the vegan Chinese restaurant here tonight. 🙂

    Now, on to the matter at hand. This phenomenon of missing participants and viewers at rightwing sites is actually not that new. Both FreeRepublic.com and Little Green Snarfballs are shadows of their former glory, and have been now for months. I have a particularly annoying and persistent rightwing troll, who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth this past Spring. Wondering if my luck could be so good, or was he just hogging bandwidth over at his two favorite places (Freeperdom and LGF) I went over there to both the end of April, and both were down to less than half what they had been when I tracked him there and got his IP number a year ago. And BozoBoy hadn’t posted anything there since last November! (I did a search)

    I also hear that Michelle Malkin is suffering that fate all Filipina whores in Olongapo’s sex dens do: when they’re no longer new and young, the aging old rightwing white guys on their Viagra tours don’t want anything to do with them.

    At risk of sounding like an optimist, I will say this. Back during Watergate – which I “got” the first time they reported the arrest of Nixon’s bozo brigade (having been raised as a Nixon hater ever since the days of the “Republican cloth coat”) – it used to just frustrate the hell out of me, how otherwise-intelligent people could listen to everything that was coming out and still not “get it” about that pissant motherfucker and his gang of crooks. And then… and then…

    There was The Saturday Night Massacre, and then there was Butterworth’s revelation of the tapes, and the 18-minute gap, and…

    And all of a sudden, things turned. By the beginning of 1974, the only question was how long was it going to take to drive a stake through his heart (unfortunately, we never got to do that, but I did once pee on his grave down at the Nixon Library – and I wasn’t the only one doing so that day – I guess that’s why the grass is so green there).

    Let’s just think back to how dispirited we all were after the election in November ’04. (Hey, it took me two days to sober up) Bush was flying high 3 years ago, and look where he is now. You have to know that’s had an effect on the boneheads. It’s why the ones who are left are now so shrill – they remind me of Nixon defenders in May 1974: “He’s a good man! He is! He is! Stop saying bad things! I’m gonna tell on you!!”

    All of which means, don’t let up. Not for one micro-millisecond. There’s nothing more fun than kicking a rightwinger once he’s down – aim for the face and between the legs. Too much is not enough!!

  • Rightwing blogs are down because their readers are out huntin’ fer flag burners. (No references here, 2Manchu, you just have to take my word for it). 🙂

    Actually, by now, the Bush administration has probably somehow offended everyone in Rightblogastan–think Katrina, the Dubai port scandal, immigration for a start. Beyond that, it’s hard to sustain defending the indefensible, especially when your party is in power.

  • Sir Carpetbagger, no need to thank your readers. Your site is my first stop each day and the sane, consistently high quality posts (and comments as well) are brain candy. I especially appreciated your recent focus on the flag burning amendment. In short, you have a splendid site and your blog’s name is the first off my list when a friend asks for a good liberal blog to peruse.

  • I wonder if the right-wing bloggers are even aware how many of their readers are simply peeking over the fence to see what the enemy’s doing. I mean… Look at us; almost everyone has a “favorite” spot (blog or Faux TV program) to “mind” .

    Which means that when their numbers drop, they drop in the area of the legitimate readers/true believers. Loverly 🙂

  • Many of us turned to sites such as this because we felt we were not getting the truth from traditional media outlets. Now that MSM has moved so far to the right, perhaps fewer conservatives feel the need to seek out alternatives such as blogs?

  • Well, Marcus, I’m a little bashful about my traffic. I heard someone describe me this week as an “A-list” blogger, which kind of surprised me because my traffic isn’t where I’d like it to be

    c.b., be careful of what you wish for. if you were too successful, you’d get more trolls like ‘american hawk’ at ‘political animal’ who, while funny, doesn’t seem to have a brain in his head or even in the neighborhood.

    As for the quality of the contributions here, I’d put you guys up against anybody.

    aw, shucks *blushes*, i bet you say that to all the guys.

    your pal,
    blake

  • Maybe the LGFers finally got embarrassed by all of their tough talk, no action. I noticed none of them showed up at YearlyKos with axe handles like they were talking about. It would be like clubbing baby seals, they said. And didn’t even have the courage to go club said baby seals.
    And thanks to blake, amchickenhawk will show up here. HA.
    He is kind of fun to kick around.

  • The Christianists have caught on that most Republicans only talk the talk around campaign time and aren’t going to be converting the U.S. to a Christian version of Taliban ruled Afghanistan any time soon. They don’t understand that it’s because they really aren’t a vast majority and therefore don’t deserve to get everything they want.

    The fiscal conservatives have realized that they aren’t going to succeed in wiping out all of government except defense and law enforcement (Which is the only way to achieve the budget and tax levels they want.) and they aren’t even going to come close to it. The last sentence in the paragraph above also applies to this group.

    The people who supported the idea of a war on terror as a necessity and were willing to give the benefit of the doubt on Iraq because after all, whatever else might be true or false Saddam deserves whatever he gets are appalled by the sheer incompetence displayed. They could use Marley’s kerchief to lift their jaws from the floor after seeing that the stupidity of Rumsfeld continues unabated after 3 years of incompetence that has contributed more than a little to the number of dead and wounded Americans we have suffered.

    So is it really that much of a surprise that the media outlets, whether mass or internet are losing their appeal even as they continue to support the Bush administration and its sycophants in Congress?

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