Have you seen today's Boston Globe?...

[Bob Nelson]

As one person correctly points out in the comments, the Limbaugh 
crusade "Operation Chaos" was set to derail Hillary and nomimate
Obama whom they thought was a weaker candidate (the writer said it 
was to derail Obama).

Talk radio is not totally irrelevant. Events such as Bush's "Dubai 
ports deal" were criticized by Ingraham, Carr,
and Savage (IIRC) and pressure from talk radio listeners helped to 
derail it (also this shows that conservative
talk hosts weren't necessarily "in the tank" for Bush; Ingraham also 
came out strongly against the nomination of
Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court, and this pressure may have helped 
derail that nomination).

We do remember when Jerry Williams helped to stop the prison on New 
Braintree and, for awhile at least,
the mandatory use of seat belts. He used to have Ralph Nader on a 
lot, talking about stopping the
"Congressional pay grab" by having people call or write (this was 
pretty much before e-mails/the Net!)
Pressure was also put on the State Legislature, Governor, etc.

One comment mentioned that Fox News was part of the Mainstream Media. 
Some on the right now disagree, as the
channel has generally expressed support for the new President-elect 
and some are wondering (on forums, etc.)
if maybe Fox wants the government to back off from coming after them 
due to cross-ownership. A "boycott Fox"
effort was recently launched on the Right, believe it or not!

The point was made about Air America in another comment to the 
article. There was a comment wondering if
Elman, etc., was angry that AAR didn't survive, and: "We need talk 
radio to offset the BS that is coming from the liberal media".
The comment pointed out that despite the huge fundraising advantage 
of Obama and the huge support he got from
the media, he only won in the popular vote by a few percentage points 
nationwide.

It is true, though, that many talk shows don't take as many calls as 
they should. In some cases maybe there just
aren't too many people listening to call, or maybe the host prefers 
to wage his or her opinion most of the time.
I was listening to Talk Radio Network's Tammy Bruce and wondering why 
she hardly took any calls! (Bruce, btw,
does some fill-ins for Laura Ingraham--and she does take more calls 
in that capacity--and her bio shows that
she's not totally "left" or "right". "...an openly gay, pro-choice, 
gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic 
feminist. A lifelong Democrat, in the 1990s she worked to help elect 
Senators Feinstein and Boxer..."