Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Banishing the right to the low-side of the dial creates a rebel’s media.
The left won the culture war; they invaded Hollywood; they took over the airwaves, and they purged dissent. Though bias in itself is tough to prove in 500 words, personal politics are not: money is the ultimate representation of free speech in a market driven society, and the donations of mass media employees characterize the bias as firmly embedded.
Conservative voices, with very few platforms available to them, reclaimed the 60-cycle hum of the AM dial.
This dinosauric technology has remained largely unchanged in the past several decades, but while left of center NPR’s Morning Edition commands 13.3 million listeners weekly for All Things Considered — on the novel FM technology — AM radio’s Rush Limbaugh is at their heels with 13.25 million, and does it all without any Federal funding.
Progressive talk radio can’t even compete. The Thom Hartmann Program is considered to be the top liberal talk show in the country by Dial Global and Talkers Magazine. It is broadcast by only 80 stations in 37 states. It is beat out by several Country music stations. Read: not only are millions of people each week tuning in to listen to music on AM radio, but are doing so in numbers greater than the most popular progressive talk show on the dial.
Rush Limbaugh is carried by 590 stations, Sean Hannity, by 530, Glenn beck by 400. It’s not even close.
What drives this popularity? It’s certainly not the technology or the ease of access. AM stations break up under trolley lines, near high tension wires and under tunnels, perhaps the waves themselves are revolted by urbanity. The technology itself is more suited to long, country commutes.
Rush, his companions on the airwaves, and their callers represent a backlash, and anger against the liberal dominance of the media. They see themselves and their opinions cast aside, and see it proven in the very format of AM itself. There they are on their fuzzy little station pointing out the flaws in the reporting of the giants of big media — for 3 hours a day. You’d think they’d run of material; they don’t.
The new left of the 60’s was born out of counter cultural elements, but now that Hollywood and the mainstream media bathes Americans in the social and cultural Koolaid of the left, it’s simply not counter anymore. Being on the left, as an 18–40 year old is simply expected. A college education nearly doubles that expectation, given that knowledge is approximately ten times as likely to be handed down from a liberal professor than a conservative one. Your odds for a right-winger are slightly better in math and economics.
During an election year which sent millions scrambling for information online, mainstream media sources experienced predictable growth in unique users: comparing data from October of 2015, to October of 2016, NBC news up 12%, CBS, 38%, MSNBC, 48%, CNN, 29%. The New York Times, Washington Post and New York Post matched this with 32%, 35%, and 42% respectively.
Some New Media organizations on the left had similar numbers: Salon 38% and Slate 27%. The grand agglomerator, the Huffington Post, slid 9%, Vox managed only a 2% increase and BuzzFeed was down 20%. DailyKos was up just 9%.
Meanwhile the conservative and centre-right New Media took serious gains in the market: Breitbart, 102%, the Drudge Report, 105%, Redstate.com, 274%, The Daily Caller, 75%, Town Hall, 123%, Real Clear Politics, 203% Washington Examiner 101%. (Data from compete.com)
The Fake News claim launched at right-wing websites isn’t particularly new or fresh and follows logical patterns: call them unhinged, racists, anti-women, call their commentary pro-Russia, anti-Israel (or pro-Israel — the radical left has switched allegiance), or the rantings and ravings of mad men. The topical criticisms of Breitbart are the same that have colored the perception of conservative talk radio for decades.
Do not listen to this sensationalized garbage, is the message from the main stream. I will concede that there is an element of sensationalism to conservative talk radio, an element of exaggeration, but they are little Serbia compared to the Austro-Hungarian empire that is mainstream media. They haven’t got the firepower to compete on the battlefield. Forgive Gavrilo Princep for shooting the Archduke, and forgive the AM talk show hosts for their tactics that might fall outside of the articles of war.
Thus the shot heard round the AM dial is not the voice of the mainstream. Just as 60’s parents implored their long-haired hippie children to stay away from the Grateful Dead and the Weed, the mainstream liberal current begs the kids to stay away from conservative thought.
But who listens to their parents anyway?
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