today's LTAR

[Bob Nelson <raccoonradio@yahoo.com>]

On today's Let's Talk About Radio, the question was
asked: why are most radio talk shows hosted by
conservatives and not liberals? Well, maybe talk
stations and program producers figure that the talk
radio audience is primarily conservative, and that
they'd get better ratings with a right-winger than a
left-winger.

If they thought a liberal host would get ratings as
high if not higher, they probably would have hired
more liberals. And indeed, there have been liberals
like Stephanie Miller, Alan Colmes, and (locally)
Marjorie Clapprood who have done shows. But the dial
is full of the likes of Severin, Carr, Limbaugh, and
Brudnoy.

Maybe someone should sign up a well-known liberal
to do a show, just to see if it does well in the
ratings. Bill Clinton? Jesse Jackson? Maybe, locally,
one of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates,
if they should lose (Reich, O'Brien, etc.) Believe me,
if a liberal host could get big ratings, stations
would have had him or her on by now.

This isn't to say that only conservatives listen to
talk radio-- moderates and liberals do as well--
but it seems that most hosts are on the conservative
side. Some listeners might be liberal and totally
opposed to a conservative talk host, but they may
listen to him or her because they feel the host is
entertaining.

Or maybe commercial talk stations figure that all
the liberals are listening to NPR, so they don't
go after that demo.

Liberals as well as conservatives can be entertaining,
passionate about their positions on the issues, and so
on. Not sure if talk stations often get complaints
from listeners saying that there aren't enough
left-of-center voices out there, but certainly if
enough complaints came in (and if the station owners
felt liberals could draw higher ratings), you'd
hear many more liberal hosts on talk radio.

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