Conservatives Dominate Talk Radio - CAP's Palmieri on FNC

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/talk_radio.html

Despite the dramatic expansion of viewing and listening options for consumers today, traditional radio remains one of the most widely used media formats in America. Arbitron, the national radio ratings company, reports that more than 90 percent of Americans ages 12 or older listen to radio each week, “a higher penetration than television, magazines, newspapers, or the Internet.” Although listening hours have declined slightly in recent years, Americans listened on average to 19 hours of radio per week in 2006.

Among radio formats, the combined news/talk format (which includes news/talk/information and talk/personality) leads all others in terms of the total number of stations per format and trails only country music in terms of national audience share. Through more than 1,700 stations across the nation, the combined news/talk format is estimated to reach more than 50 million listeners each week.

Conservative talk radio undeniably dominates the format: * Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is 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. * A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.

This dynamic is repeated over and over again no matter how the data is analyzed, whether one looks at the number of stations, number of hours, power of stations, or the number of programs. While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, conservative talk continues to ...

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• america
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• congress
• conservative
• ingraham
• liberal
• palmieri
• pence
• progess
• progressive
• radio
• rush
• talk

[charleygregg]

laura ingram should seriously give her guests an opportunity to speak, but her mouth gets in the way; but she would probably want to send me to gitmo

[gizurix]

Fox invites CAP to speak then gets out shouted by the moderator and the conservative plant the entire time.

Why does CAP bother?

You have served Fox news well.

[omegarc1154]

How dare any of you try to limit free speech, who the hell do u think u are u communists? The day the fairness doctrine passes the day we start living in the u.s.s.a

[annarboriter]

With fair and balanced debates like this, who even needs to vote in democratic elections?

[jimwalsh2001]

The "conservative" domination of spoken-word radio has nothing to do with anyone's political agenda and everything to do with the fact that the average talk host (not to mention the average manager) wouldn't know an original idea if it kissed them full on the lips.

In other words, what we have is an industry where the hosts (with a handful of exceptions) are ripping each other off...because not a one of them has an original thought.