'RKO launches blogger's show on Sun night

[Bob Nelson]

Well yes, there should be balance and liberal talkers are trying that
with prog. talk/Air
America. There have been efforts in the past (Mario Cuomo, Jim
Hightower) but somehow they didn't click. The interesting thing is
that few stations would want to cherrypick between conservative- and
liberal-leaning hosts. They feel their core audience would tune out
if,
at 3 pm, Rush gave way to Al Franken. Or if Michael Savage were to follow
Ed Schulz.

Sometimes conservative talk stations have switched to AAR--the
Entercom property in
Rochester, NY; WHJJ in Providence, and WKVT in Brattleboro come to mind. I don't
know how the first and third stations I mentioned are doing in the
ratings, but WHJJ
went lower and then lower. WPRO picked up listeners.

As I've said before, if the Air America programs are good, why hasn't
a station like
WTKK or WRKO considered changing? What would happen to 'RKO if they aired
Franken instead of Rush? I'd think the ratings would go down. (Maybe
if they had a local show with a liberal host, and it were well
done...Who knows.)

It has been said that libtalk hasn't done better for various
reasons--signal strength
(yet I still maintain that 1200 and 1430 do very well within Rt 128
and now we have
the sun till 8 pm...), or the fact that there's already a lot of
liberal media out there
and perhaps AAR can only pick up a small piece of the pie. Maybe they should go
more "moderate" and pick up more listeners who are conservative on some issues,
liberal on others, etc.

If conservatives tune in to Air America and all they hear is Bush
bashing, they may just chuckle and go back to their regular station.
Certainly the same atmosphere was present in the 90s when
Clinton-bashing rules conservatalk, and liberals felt underserved by
talk radio. But they always had CNN, CBS, ABC, NPR, the Globe, etc

Liberal media bias came up last night on the new blog-centered WRKO
show, "Pundit Review". It was suggested that we make a distinct
difference between _news_ and _opinion_. For example, someone
mentioned Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" motto,
"Maybe that refers to their news coverage, but Bill O'Reilly is an
opinion show which is different". It was pointed out that some panel
discussions on Fox News had people from both the left (Mara Liason,
Juan Williams) and right (Bill Kristol, etc.) It has also been said
(by Laura Ingraham, I believe) that "Fox News puts on more liberals
than CNN puts on conservatives".

Whatever, Fox News survived and thrived because it served to balance
to left-leaning channels like CNN. There was an audience out there,
and FNC grabbed it.

Anyway, yes, talk radio could use more liberal shows but let them be
entertaining and informative to both sides. Other than Stephanie
Miller I didn't find much of interest to me on AAR.

But who knows--from small acorns, mighty oaks grow. The likes of
Limbaugh took a little while to get a big following,and perhaps
"progressive talk" shows/stations may eventually get the same
following as Rush (14 million listeners) and Hannity (13 million).
Last I heard,, Franken hadn't broken the 1 million mark yet but fewer
stations, weaker signals, etc.

One thing's for sure: I would not want government-enforced "Fairness
Doctrine" radio. It would actually backfire. While some might think
"OK, you'll have stations running some conservative hosts and then
equal time for liberals", it may also result in stations opting not to
do controversial topics. They'd have to give equal time to liberal
hosts who may not offer great ratings. So Rush would be replaced with
Gardening Talk :)