The Rise and Fall of Talk Radio

[Garion_55]

Specifically right wing talk.

I truly believe we are nearing the end of any kind of legitimacy for AM talk.

I remember tuning in to Rush during the impeachment. It was tough to get real time news. The internet was still in its infancy no cable news yet really that i remember. I got all my information from newspapers, local/network news and the radio. Listening to Rushs callers call in bad mouthing clinton pissed me off. But it was really the only place one could go for real time political talk.

Thats probably why Rush and then later hosts grew so large, so popular, so influential, where else were right wingers supposed to go and bitch about the dems? Rush spent time at the bush white house if i remember right, got to ride in air force one. right wing hosts got interviews with bush and his cronies, invites to the white house. They were real players because bush needed them to get his agenda out.

Along comes obama and the white house visits end. The interviews with the president and his cronies end. The access to the white house ends. All they have left is to sit on the radio and bitch and piss and moan. The the FLUKE is a SLUT episode and rush proceeds to lose thousands of sponsors. Hannity was booted off the local right wing station here in DC and got stuck on an ex liberal station with little coverage. Laura ingraham not only got booted off the local station but the whole station went hispanic. talk about a slap in the face.

Half of hannitys radio show now is him doing live commercials hacking for anyone willing to send him money. Three years ago he never did live commericials now he cant shut up about LIFELOCK or whatever. He is reaching for every single dime he can get now because I think he sees the writing on the wall.

Right wing politicians have been WAY TOO cozy with talk show hosts for no reason. There is no reason an elected official should get on the radio and get berated and yelled at by mark levin or whoever for not supporting a certain policy. WHO THE FUCK IS MARK LEVIN? what has he EVER done to deserve politicians having to call into his show and kiss his ass? same with hannity. same with Rush. IF these blowhards want influence over policy, RUN FOR OFFICE! get elected, be part of the people writing the laws. OTherwise stfu.


So yeah from what I am seeing locally here in DC, right wing radio seems to be taking a huge dump. It certainly doesnt have the juice it did 10 years ago. Hopefully the end comes soon!

[TxVietVet]

1. I was wondering when it would all end. Personally, right when Clinton took office,

I tuned into druggie limpballs. Just about every week, the lying drugster would spew out the line of bu$hit about he got information from a good source that Hillary would going to be subpoenaed or new evidence on Vince Foster or Whitewater. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was all a bunch of lies. limpballs rabid fans, dildoheads, would call in and heap praise on the POS. What had he ever done besides talk on radio and lose wives? That's when I figured out that there needed to be liberal/progressives on air. Thanks God Air America came along.
Some guys at work would turn those lying bastards on the radio and I'd ask them the first time to either turn it down so just they could hear they lying pricks or turn it off.

I think one has to be pretty sick in the head to listen to limpballs, Hannity or Ingraham. They are so full of bu$hit. Ingraham sounds like she's sucking on rocks. Always the expert. Of what? Not a f*ckin' thing. Just conservanazism.

[xfundy]

2. Reporters' access ended with Bush the dumber.

News media was shut out so they could claim "librul media" was the enemy, just as Nixon had done years earlier.

People who report what they see are dangerous, just as they were to other equally inept and/or evil regimes, or to anyone who claims the reporters have an "agenda" that's against the pol being reported on. Never mind what they saw with their own eyes, they must be lying 'cuz they hate the pol/hate Jeebus/must be on drugs, never mind if they report what they actually see with their own eyes.

Ailles went out of his way to make the lie much, much bigger and be the loudest asshole in the media.

[lpbk2713]

3. And in the end, the hate you take ...

is equal to the hate you make.

[Garion_55]

4. LOL!!!

gross

[frazzled]

5. Oh, no you di'int

C'mon. Are you kidding? You tuned into Rush Limbaugh to get real-time news on the impeachment? There was never an excuse to do that. Never. There was cable TV coverage, there were the actual proceedings on C-Span all day long, and there were newspapers. Admit it: you did it for your prurient interest. Because there was nothing to be learned from listening to Limbaugh, ever, about anything.

There was never any legitimacy for talk radio. Honestly, the only time I ever listened to it was back in the early 80s when my newborn daughter used to wake up for feedings and the only thing on the radio at 3 am was Larry King (before he was on TV). It sucked then, and it sucks now. It was always dead to me. And that even goes for the few lame attempts at left-wing talk radio. The reason it never got off the ground is because left-leaning Americans are too smart to fall for that format.

So it's dead? That's what I said last week about Sid Caesar when he died: I didn't know he was still alive.

[jaysunb]

7. +1 LOL ! n/t

[certainot]

10. rw radio has dominated politics and media the last 25 years. it has been by far the best place to go

keep track of the enemy- what they were planning and doing. and because the left ignored it, what they were going to succeed in plaguing the country with. it creates made-to-order pro-corporate constituencies and mobilizes them for any issue. it can create the kind of buzz mad ave would kill for.

anyone listening to limbaugh two months before before the 2011 august debt ceiling limit would have known the teabaggers (dittoheads) were going to be stupid enough to go all the way. we got the sequester.

talk radio was essential for selling the araq disaster.

anyone listening to RW radio would know 2 decades of lying about health care to 50 mil a week would make single payer politically impossible.

almost every bit of ALEC crap pushed in local and national legislation is preceded by a local or nationally coordinated talk radio campaign.

ACORN wasn't done in by that stupid video- they attacked it for years on talk radio and along with years of immigrant bashing and other shit that couldn't be sold on TV or in print, we got voter suppression. those electronic voting machines were sold by local talk radio blowhards as efficient money savers.

the benghazi BS was predictable to anyone listening to rw radio.

considering the time lost on global warming, ignoring talk radio has been the biggest political blunder in history.

[Archae]

6. Remember Rush Limbaugh's TV show?

I actually enjoyed it, when it first started until shortly before it was canceled.

The show got shrill, over-partisan, (especially over the "Clinton Scandals,&quot and how many times did he run that stupid video clip?

As to talk radio, I avoid *ALL* talk radio.
All of it.

[certainot]

11. please see my post above about ignoring RW radio. it has been the perfect weapon- the people it harm

harms the most ignore it because it gives them a headache so it's been invisible while it kicked liberal ass for 25 years.

[DesertDiamond]

8. I hope they're all saving their pennies because pretty soon they won't be employable anywhere.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. I'm old enough to remember tuning in on the AM dial for Top 40...

....and the FM dial to get stoned.

[polynomial]

12. Limbaugh-Levin-Hannity gate radio

My turn to jump in this topic about talk radio, or more defined as hate radio, or a Limbaugh-Levin-Hannity gate radio, or right wing radio labeled a long time ago being twenty four seven smear conspiracy. Now cable on the same path.

No, they have not realized yet how they are perceived as criminals conflagulating to commit a greater crime. They are the Supreme Court free speech moneyed up hired gun Journalist, the Paladins of the free market eventually that will expand the private penal institutions.

They know what they are doing, especially Rush every time saying he is have more fun than a human should have. They are the precursor in a long line of the condemned GOP that will be divinely syphoned coiled into the twilight zoned black hole with the sign above saying welcome deceivers perpetrators of profiteering.

It does seem shocking to some that there are those who seek to listen to them. Years ago when Rush first started from my view there was an eerie, creepy haunting free speech institutional asylum connotation that is awkward offensive a dissonant resonance that was more of a mental straight jacket than pure honest constitutionalism.

Those of the right wing resonated with a huge discontent Democratic population. As statistics go it only take the square root of one percent of liberals to change their mind to vote the other way.

Yes just as one percent can hoard trillions of dollars and rule by money. It only takes the root of one percent of the Democratic Party to cross over and ask for Republican political asylum.

That begs the question is this compromised asylum a sanctuary for free men or Dante’s parlor, an economic slave?

Those politicians that make a choice with todays Republican find this new experience in solving problems is a heuristic powerful whirlpool parochial illusions sinking to the abyss hard to climb out yet we the people always seem to give a helping hand to bail out. What do we the people get in return, just retribution and retaliation.

[KharmaTrain]

13. Several Factors...

You are correct...the heydays of hate radio are coming to an end, but it's as much a representation of the decay and decline of commercial radio and the largess of its corporate owners. Basically it's audience is dying off and corporates such as Salem, Clear Channel and Cumulus are not able to subsidize these station like they did. They have huge debts and shrinking revenue sources as more, and specifically younger, people tune away from terrestrial radio and the corporates are desperate to find something/anything that will make a buck.

Hate radio was always a loss leader...never much of a money maker, but it was a far cheaper way to run a station. Hundreds of local hosts were replaced by satellite babble and the corporates were able to find enough bulk advertisers to keep many dying AM stations alive.

While Rushbo's attack on Sandra Fluke has seriously hurt the business, its decline was already underway. It's biggest failure was the 2008 election...it became the center for the clown car demolition derby that began tearing the GOP apart and then failed to get their boy, Gramps McCain elected. While they briefly revived in 2010, President Obama's re-election was a devastating blow to the industry. With the Fluke boycott hate radio has become both a financial and a political liability.

Hate radio isn't totally dead...and I'm sure we'll be hearing from the blowhards and asshats a lot in the upcoming election as well as in 2016 but their influence is in serious decline. Some stations are preferring to switch to mindless sports talk that is one of the few formats that can turn a buck or the stations are just going off the air altogether.

[Jenoch]

14. I agree with you the right wing talk radio is on the downslide.

However, the cable news channels were all over the impeachment story. CNN had already been around for 17 years, while Fox and MSNBC had been on for a couple years. The odd thing is that I remember Chris Mathews of MSNBC being highly critical of President Clinton.