Early today (as I’m writing), Air America Radio launched. Apparently, it was a day of mixed results, as I caught Jeanine Garafalo and Al Franken harping a bit on how cool they are to be starting this liberal network.
I’ll tell you in a nutshell why I think it won’t be very successful. But it may not be the reason you suspect!
Conservative radio is extremely popular. I was a devoted “Dittohead”, listening to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis for years (whenever I could). Recently, I’ve enjoyed disagreeing with Michael Savage on my evening ride home. But I think liberal radio is going to run into a roadblock.
You see, conservatism is about upholding tradition, and traditional values. Conservatives wisely believe that tradition deserves respect because it is an established method of pursuing human discourse that has been proven to work. Perhaps, not work well, but work. Without compelling evidence, it’s unwise to alter tradition. And compelling evidence is hard to come by when trying something untested. We’re often forced into the position of conducting experiments on live populations, much to our detriment later.
But sometimes, these liberal experiments improve quality of life. The successes are few, but dramatic: Equal rights for women. Equal rights regardless of race. Abolition of slavery in the U.S. Establishment of the United Nations, rather than every nation for itself. Mostly good things, with some occasional difficult ramifications.
The problem with “liberal radio”, is that people tune into the radio to be entertained. They also tune in to talk radio for affirmation and information. Although liberal talk radio may be helpful in the information department, what about affirmation? The view of progressive liberals are all over the map. There are generally few “traditional values” to defend when you are liberal; instead, individual positions must be decided based on their merits and rationality. Of course, in reality there are many sheeple who just want their opinions handed to them; I’ve been one of them before, and it’s a hard habit to avoid.
Demagoguery is the part and parcel of conservative radio: appeal to the emotions of your listeners. Get them mad enough about something, and maybe they’ll do something they usually wouldn’t, like call into your show to complain.
So my question is: Can liberal radio be demagogic enough to be entertaining and retain listeners? Based on the little I heard today (due to technical problems with Real Audio that were largely corrected by the time I was able to tune in again tonight — it’s not syndicated in Utah. Duh.), it sure doesn’t seem that way. Instead of emotional tirades against progressive opionion, I heard interviews with popular figures and self-congratulatory chatting about how weird and fun it is to have a radio show. I didn’t hear any stirring monologues, but instead felt like I was listening to a radio version of a daytime television talk show. Yes, people got on one another’s cases, but about things irrelevant to me.
Obviously, there are going to be some growing pains, and I’m eager to see what happens once they’ve outgrown them. Conservative commentators are entrenched in the airspace, though, and I suspect that misunderstanding the medium will be a repeated theme throughout the next year.
I’m eager to hear more tomorrow to see if they shake off the newness a bit, get past the “let’s interview people to fill time” phase, and start working on being entertaining themselves. Since the network is syndicated over Real Audio as well as radio, unlike any conservative talk show I’ve seen, I can stream over the Internet and be able to listen at work. But I’m not entirely enthusiastic about the prospects of liberal talk radio. It just seems to be too little, too late for a medium dominated by conservatives disappointed with the liberal slant of other major media.
Note: this is not an April Fool’s joke. Someone else needs to cook one up 🙂
Liberal Radio
I actually agree with you on most of this, Matt. I didn’t get to hear it yesterday – no radio at work – but I’m hoping to catch some of it this weekend.
One of the differences between conservative thought and liberal thought, that makes conservative media ultimately more viable than liberal media, is that conservative thought is made up of simpler, easier-to-digest nuggets of black and white, while liberal thought (and its bastard cousin “moral relativism”) is much more complicated.
Conservatives “Saddam Hussein is bad.” “Taxes are bad.” “Gays are bad.” “We are good. Therefore, anyone who disagrees with us is evil.” “French people are smelly.”
Liberals “The War in Iraq, while justifiable on certain grounds, has ultimately had the added consequences of spreading our military too thin, handicapping our already-struggling economy, and causing more anti-American sentiment throughout the world.” “No one likes paying taxes, but the occasional tax hike is necessary to replenish the US Treasury and therefore provide for necessary services like education and police, and counteract our growing budget deficit.” “Many Americans have moral and/or religious objections to homosexuality. However, human rights must be applied across the board in order to be effective. Or, maybe we could do civil unions. I don’t know.” “We try to do the right thing, but perhaps some foreign countries are justified in their hatred for us.” “French people are smelly, but boy they make good wine.”
One side provides nice sound bites, the other provides problems without easy solutions. Conservatism, by its nature of maintaining the status quo, doesn’t have to worry much about answers, since the plan is basically to do what has always been done; but liberalism, which by its nature forges new ground, is dealing with a blank slate, where the answers just aren’t obvious.
I hope, for our sake, that Franken & Co. are able to entertain as well as inform (I loved his latest book, for instance), and I hope that we can maintain a lasting liberal forum in the media to counteract the strong presence of the right. (And comments from the peanut gallery about the so-called “liberal media” will be met by guffaws.) — Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
actually…
Actually, Ben, you didn’t get to hear it yesterday because he’s not on in your market. Come to think of it, he’s not on in really any market. LA, NY, Chicago, and Minneapolis. I guess that’s a lot of people but not much geography. I predict an early demise to this experiment.
Their ISP bill
Heh, they are going to drown in the ISP bill, though, I think. They downgraded the quality of their audio stream over the ‘net to be able to accomodate the number of listeners. But the number of people with a high-speed connection who are listening probably won’t grab many advertisers.
And I think another part of the problem here is the ubiquity of “teams”. Seems like nearly every show is a 2 or 3-person “team” of personalities sounding off, rather than the “lone gunman” approach of most conservative shows. Not saying it’s bad, but I don’t think it grabs people like the solo guy willing to say whatever he wants without fear of offending other people in the studio. But what do I know, I’m an armchair quarterback here.
It’s very well-funded, though. If they can stick around for 2 or 3 years, it might just get off the ground. Good luck fighting in markets against Clear Channel, though.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Actually Paul
I’m in NY, so there’s an AM station in the area that plays it.
Presumably, if it goes well in limited distribution, they’ll try to expand beyond the major cities.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Salt Lake City
Which means it will hit the Salt Lake City AM market sometime around 2000-and-never…
Gimme my XM Radio:) Darn that $10 a month fee though. If you’re an average entertainment-oriented American, $10 for XM, $10 for Tivo, $50 for cable/satellite, $10 for movie rentals or pay-per-view, $50 for a cell phone… we’re at $130 a month and I’m not even trying hard.
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Matthew P. Barnson
I found their lone gunman
Randi Rhodes. Wow. She managed to insult Ralph Nader into hanging up on her yesterday. The funny thing is, she’s not really a big headliner there — but she’s very entertaining. Acerbic, almost painful to listen to, but no worse than Dr. Laura, in an opposite way 🙂
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Matthew P. Barnson
I listened
I listened to it over the weekend, and quite liked it.
Like all biased talk radio, it serves its purpose. It doesn’t tell me anything new, it simply reinforces what I already know.
An example:
Conservative talk radio presents no new information, but simply reinforces what its listeners already know — Bush is a hero for defeating Saddam Hussein, the terrorists are running scared, the economy is improving, etc.
Air America presents no new information, but simply reinforces what its listeners already know — Bush is a liar, presiding over the most crooked, elitist, and secretive administrations in history, the wars on terror and in Iraq are a failure, the economy is in a shambles, etc.
And us listeners pump our fists and say, “Yeah!”
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Conservatives don’t have a patent on demagoguery
Liberal talk radio can survive if they start to talk like the most popular liberal politicians. For example, John Edward’s economic populism would play well on liberal talk radio. Howard Dean’s “power to the people” theme would similarly play well. I also wouldn’t mind hearing more about the positive roles that unions play in our economic system. (But not from Gep. He drives me crazy.)
Ben has it right – you reinforce what your listeners already know in a methodical but entertaining way. Once they learn the trick, it should work — if Clear Channel doesn’t strangle this new liberal baby.