A radio show (locally or nationally) that draws just 5% of the available audience can achieve notable success in ratings and revenue, but a conservatism that connects with only a disgruntled, paranoid 5% of the public will wither and die.
Those are the words of Michael Medved, the right-wing gasbag who's apparently learned to accept that the collapsing Republican brand will not be saved by talk radio like it was in the '90's.
I never, ever thought I would say it, but I think I actually agree with Michael Medved!
Coming freshly off the news that Bill O'Reilly's radio program will be going off the air, perhaps Medved and O'Reilly have finally realized that the GOP's preferred mode of mass communication has now since failed to sway the public in its direction during the last two elections. That's not for lack of trying. Conservative talk radio is not exactly a dying breed for mass media. Over 90% of weekly talk radio programming is conservative. Rush Limbaugh still gets anywhere from 12-20 million listeners per week. Sean Hannity still rakes in big bucks. Medved has been venting his rage on a nationally syndicated program for more than a decade.
But Medved is onto something when he writes:
The rapid development of cable TV and the Internet has given the public innumerable new options for debate and information. During [the 1990's], conservative talk radio offered the inevitable destination for political junkies who cared deeply about the fate of the new administration. Today, many leading TV comics and commentators lean unabashedly to the left, while progressive websites rival popular right-wing sources online.
Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm a liberal voter who has very few (if any) nice things to say about Medved or any right-wing hate monger. This is the same guy who claimed only a couple weeks ago in his blog that Prop 8 didn't outlaw anything. This is the same guy who, last year, wrote in Townhall that people "exaggerate" our horrible history of slavery, not because they're grounded in reality, but because they want to discredit America as the greatest nation in the world.
But this time, Medved is probably right. Neither he nor Rush nor Hannity nor any other right-wing radio host will be riding in shining armor to rescue conservatism. FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver wrote a wonderfully cogent argument about why conservative talk radio might have actually killed the GOP (although I hesitate to think that radio did the Republicans in when the economy and President Bush played much bigger roles):
Almost uniquely to radio, most of the audience is not even paying attention to you, because most people listen to radio when they're in the process of doing something else. (If they weren't doing something else, they'd be watching TV). They are driving, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes -- and you have to work really hard to sustain their attention.
.....
Conservatives listen to significantly more talk radio than other market segments; 28 percent of conservative Republicans listen to talk radio regularly, as opposed to 17 percent of the public as a whole. (Unsurprisingly, conservative hosts also dominate the the Arbitron ratings). It may have gone to their heads a little bit; they may have forgotten about radio's idiosyncrasies as a means of communication. The failures of the Bush administration have woken the country up; conservatives now need to find a way to communicate with people who are actually paying attention.
Not that I welcome conservative talk radio's efforts to evolve. Whether or not O'Reilly and the rest of the right-wing radiosphere go the way of the dodo, they'll still find ways to spew their comedic ignorance. I'd like to believe that the Limbaughs and Hannities of the world would be replaced by smarter, rational voices during the next five years, but that's about as likely to happen as my getting exempt from any and all income taxes.
Here's hoping that, just this one time, Medved will actually act on his own message (and at no other time, heaven forbid) by following O'Reilly's lead and leaving talk radio for good. You can do it Mikey. Just turn off the dial. It's what I and everyone else does when we don't want to hear you anymore.