Remember all the big talk about liberal talk radio competing with conservative talk radio? As you can see, it was all just…talk. Air America was never able to get off the ground. Dealing with financial and personality problems, the ailing show will never be able to match or even come close to the success of conservative talk radio.
Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives, seems to be everywhere since the release of his book (good PR). In an article for the Los Angeles Times (reg. req.), Why the Liberals Can’t Keep Air America From Spiraling In, he speculates about why conservative radio has succeeded where liberal talk radio has failed. He cites entertainment value, fragmented audience, and liberal bias in old media, which is why conservatives turned to radio in the first place.
The fragmented audience factor is one I’ve thought about myself. Anderson writes:
Fragmentation of the potential audience. Political consultant Dick Morris explains: “Large percentages of liberals are black and Hispanic, and they now have their own specialized entertainment radio outlets, which they aren’t likely to leave for liberal talk radio.” The potential audience for Air America or similar ventures is thus pretty small — white liberals, basically. And they’ve already got NPR.
Last year I wrote a draft post about the differences between white and black liberals, and I speculated that their inter-party differences are significant. Conservative groups tend to be more homogenous than liberal groups, which I think is a key reason conservative talk radio is a success.
Conservative radio is message-driven rather than personality-driven. Back when Rush Limbaugh got started, people were hungry for something — anything — other than bland National Public Radio. What Limbaugh was saying is what people bought, and his ratings soared.
Air America, in contrast, seems to be personality-driven, by lackluster personalites, at that. Who cares about Al Franken? Franken’s message is what people should be tuning in to hear, but obviously too few are doing that. I can’t imagine the average black person listening day after day to a bunch of whiny white liberals cracking bad jokes about white conservatives, especially with someone like Tom Joyner in the marketplace.
When I first heard about Air America, it struck me as strange that a group of people — investors and Hollywood personalities — thought all they needed to do was put the product out there, generate heavy promotion in mainstream media, promising to be the answer to conservative radio. I’m no economist, but I thought there had to be a market for a product. Anybody could’ve seen what was coming.
Black and Hispanic liberals apparently don’t want to hear the likes of Janeane Garofalo spewing anti-white conservative sentiment all day long. I’m glad liberal talk radio has crashed and burned. Air America may preach diversity, but it’s playing to homogeneity. If they want to succeed, they need to figure out what they want to sell and market to the people who want to buy it.
And stop trying to out-do conservatives.
Update: Sam Donaldson is a little slow on the uptake. He just discovered what we already know.
Update II: Comments with vulgar references go straight into the moderation queue. If your comment hasn’t appeared, you may want to rephrase and resubmit.
