Air America went off the air last week and no one cared, but people love to give reasons as to why the liberal station failed while conservative radio has flourished.
Bill O'Reilly: Its a sign of the "collapse of far-left media".The bad management explanation seems pretty widely accepted by people affiliated with the station, supposedly there were four or five different management teams over a six year period, and for the most part, each had very little experience in radio. And some former Air America hosts have found homes on other stations. But that still leaves the question as to why liberal radio fails to approach the success of the conservative radio "goldmine", which includes people like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity.
Air America: Its because of tough economic times, a "perfect storm in the media industry".
Thom Hartmann, a radio host who'd left Air America in 2009: Air America was "spectacularly incompetent" at running a network and gaining an audience.
Michael Harrrison, editor of Talkers Magazine: The station didn't know "whether they were a political campaign or a broadcasting company. They ended up not being terribly good at either."
NPR's David Folkenflik points out that the real counterweight to those conservative voices isn't in radio, its in websites like The Huffington Post and The Daily Kos. Oh yeah, that's right: liberals actually read, whereas conservatives like being read to. And as many others have pointed out: liberals actually think, whereas conservatives like being told what to think.
They love going to church, where a guy reads from a book and tells you how to live your life. They love the military, where a guy barks orders at you and if you disobey you can get shot or put in the brig. Radio is such a great fit for these people. They don't have the time or intellectual capacity to sift through the internet, gathering information and evaluating it on its merits. They don't want to think for themselves, they want to be given their marching orders over the loudspeaker.
So doesn't it seem likely that conservatives are more responsive to advertising? During elections, they always seem to fall for the lies told in political ads. Remember these classic hits?
- Al Gore claims he invented the internet.
- John Kerry lied to win medals in Vietnam.
- Barack Obama pals around with terrorists.
- Harold Ford wants to have sex with our white women.
All of these slanderous ads had profound impacts on each campaign, but how often do you hear about a liberal ad changing a race? Almost never, because people who swing that way aren't as easily swayed by commercials.
Perhaps even more than during his campaign, after he was elected, George Bush was able to control public perception using what amounts to the same exact technique as the ads for Head-On.
If you repeat the same thing over and over again, conservatives will believe it. This is why they're such a great target demo for advertisers, and you can bet these advertisers are willing to pay extra for air time in front of these easy marks. Meanwhile, liberals have such a skeptical view of advertising. Ad-men just don't get much bang for their buck trying to fool those fact-obsessed rational assholes.
Did you ever listen to Air America and hear one of the hosts do one of those in-program ad reads, where the host'll talk about some product as though its still part of the show, when in fact its a paid advertisement? It always sounded so incongruous, like, who does Ed Schultz think he's fooling? But when a conservative host does it, you can almost picture the dumb yokels nodding along, thinking "wow, this sounds like one heck of a product, thanks Rush!"
And by the way, have you listened to top 40 radio in the past ten years? Its music for stupid people who crave conformity and repetition. If commercial success in radio is contingent on catering to that type of person, the failure of Air America is a sign of our success as human beings. Head On!
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