HOD
2004-01-02 14:34:12 UTC
Liberals unable to capture talk-show audiences
BY REUVEN FRANK
For some time now, a group of people who classify themselves liberal has
been making plans and raising money to launch a broadcast network. For them,
the almost total command that conservatives have of radio and TV talk shows
has lost them elections. They are tired of hearing that the country is being
undermined by socialized medicine, progressive taxation and handouts to the
lazy and incompetent.
At this moment, this brave band is shopping for broadcast frequencies or a
cable network, hiring secretaries, renting office space and raising money up
and down Sunset Boulevard and Central Park West. They are eager to recapture
the national debate from people who grew up ignorant of economic depression,
the poll tax or world war.
They remember 1994, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich drove the
Democrats out of Congress and snuffed out 60 years of federal activism. They
also remember how that victory was celebrated: It was at a posh resort. No
press allowed. Adam Smith being unavailable, the keynote speaker was radio
talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, the acknowledged architect of their victory.
But the outlook for the current plan is gloomy. Luring audiences from
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the others may be harder than the liberals
imagine. It is not just a matter of talking louder or funnier; it's a
question of who listens to right-wing radio and watches conservative talk
shows on TV. Do they listen because they agree, or are they waiting for a
liberal Lorelei to seduce them with Third World poverty, job training for
single mothers and saving various varmints?
These audiences have been carefully measured. Advertisers won't spend money
otherwise, and that's the point, isn't it? So there are experts to be asked.
And their answer is that those listening to Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest
``skew older and male.''
To be specific, at least two-thirds of the audience for the array of
conservative talkers are men. More than a quarter of Limbaugh's listeners
are over 65, as are almost as many of those who tune in Dr. Laura
Schlesinger, another right-wing advocate.
The picture is even stronger for television. As all-news cable evolved into
all-talk cable, the unquestioned star and runaway leader of the form is Fox
News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. But Nielsen says that almost half his
audience -- 49 percent -- is 65 and older. (Also mostly men.)
Likewise 46 percent of those watching Fox's Shepard Smith. Old people.
Mostly men. Angry geezers.
You can sketch in the rest. Retired men, or unemployed because the plant
closed and the manufacturing moved to Asia somewhere. Eking out a living on
Social Security; maybe the wife works at Wal-Mart. The men who wait for the
public library to open so they can be first at The Wall Street Journal. They
complain that their taxes are sent abroad to support socialist experiments
and corrupt leaders. Or to pay for welfare for ''those people.'' (What do
those people want?)
For them, government is a conspiracy of pencil-pushers and pantywaists who
won't let them burn leaves in the fall and who give away their tax money to
foreigners and other deadbeats.
It is proposed that people such as Al Franken or Michael Moore wheedle such
angry geezers away from right-wing talk radio, from Limbaugh and Hannity and
O'Reilly and Schlesinger, from their anger and frustration. I don't think
so.
As skeptics keep pointing out, liberal talk radio experiments with former
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower and former New York Gov. Mario
Cuomo found that no one was listening.
Nor is it likely that liberal broadcasters can build a faithful audience of
the young and not yet disappointed. Those are already owned by late-night TV
satirists, by Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Conan O'Brien, the programs that
older people hardly ever watch. But it is older people who vote in large
numbers, and younger people hardly at all. If you are a liberal in an
election year, that is another dilemma that you face.
Reuven Frank is a former president of NBC News.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/7617151.htm
BY REUVEN FRANK
For some time now, a group of people who classify themselves liberal has
been making plans and raising money to launch a broadcast network. For them,
the almost total command that conservatives have of radio and TV talk shows
has lost them elections. They are tired of hearing that the country is being
undermined by socialized medicine, progressive taxation and handouts to the
lazy and incompetent.
At this moment, this brave band is shopping for broadcast frequencies or a
cable network, hiring secretaries, renting office space and raising money up
and down Sunset Boulevard and Central Park West. They are eager to recapture
the national debate from people who grew up ignorant of economic depression,
the poll tax or world war.
They remember 1994, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich drove the
Democrats out of Congress and snuffed out 60 years of federal activism. They
also remember how that victory was celebrated: It was at a posh resort. No
press allowed. Adam Smith being unavailable, the keynote speaker was radio
talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, the acknowledged architect of their victory.
But the outlook for the current plan is gloomy. Luring audiences from
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the others may be harder than the liberals
imagine. It is not just a matter of talking louder or funnier; it's a
question of who listens to right-wing radio and watches conservative talk
shows on TV. Do they listen because they agree, or are they waiting for a
liberal Lorelei to seduce them with Third World poverty, job training for
single mothers and saving various varmints?
These audiences have been carefully measured. Advertisers won't spend money
otherwise, and that's the point, isn't it? So there are experts to be asked.
And their answer is that those listening to Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest
``skew older and male.''
To be specific, at least two-thirds of the audience for the array of
conservative talkers are men. More than a quarter of Limbaugh's listeners
are over 65, as are almost as many of those who tune in Dr. Laura
Schlesinger, another right-wing advocate.
The picture is even stronger for television. As all-news cable evolved into
all-talk cable, the unquestioned star and runaway leader of the form is Fox
News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. But Nielsen says that almost half his
audience -- 49 percent -- is 65 and older. (Also mostly men.)
Likewise 46 percent of those watching Fox's Shepard Smith. Old people.
Mostly men. Angry geezers.
You can sketch in the rest. Retired men, or unemployed because the plant
closed and the manufacturing moved to Asia somewhere. Eking out a living on
Social Security; maybe the wife works at Wal-Mart. The men who wait for the
public library to open so they can be first at The Wall Street Journal. They
complain that their taxes are sent abroad to support socialist experiments
and corrupt leaders. Or to pay for welfare for ''those people.'' (What do
those people want?)
For them, government is a conspiracy of pencil-pushers and pantywaists who
won't let them burn leaves in the fall and who give away their tax money to
foreigners and other deadbeats.
It is proposed that people such as Al Franken or Michael Moore wheedle such
angry geezers away from right-wing talk radio, from Limbaugh and Hannity and
O'Reilly and Schlesinger, from their anger and frustration. I don't think
so.
As skeptics keep pointing out, liberal talk radio experiments with former
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower and former New York Gov. Mario
Cuomo found that no one was listening.
Nor is it likely that liberal broadcasters can build a faithful audience of
the young and not yet disappointed. Those are already owned by late-night TV
satirists, by Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Conan O'Brien, the programs that
older people hardly ever watch. But it is older people who vote in large
numbers, and younger people hardly at all. If you are a liberal in an
election year, that is another dilemma that you face.
Reuven Frank is a former president of NBC News.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/7617151.htm