PUTTING HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS?

No matter how many times I point out that independent left wing talk radio is at least as soporific as the same stuff on public radio, they never get the message.  Case in point: Thom Hartmann, who has a radio show, the tone of which ranges between irritated and scolding.  "The GOP hold on most of American radio seems pretty unshakable, but Democrats must get into the talk-radio game before ever more damage is done."

He opens with the predictable whining.

After Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, Republican money men got the memo. Whichever party controlled the most states would have a big edge in both the Senate (and thus control of the Supreme Court nominations) and the Electoral College, and most of the low- and medium-population states had relatively inexpensive media markets.

You could buy or lease radio stations for less than a party might spend over a four-year electoral cycle on advertising, so why not simply acquire a few hundred stations across a dozen or more states and program them with rightwing talk radio 24/7?

This became particularly easy after Bill Clinton signed the neoliberal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ended limits on how many radio or TV stations a single corporation or billionaire could own. Within months of that bill passing into law, Clear Channel and other networks had gone from small regional groups to massive nationwide radio empires.  The strategy worked, and today there are over 1,500 rightwing radio stations in America, along with another 700 or so religious stations that regularly endorse Republican memes and candidates for office.

I wonder if the availability of public radio and its hawking of leftist talking points crowded out any attempts by well-off leftists to acquire radio stations on the cheap.  There might be a Minimal Publishable Unit for a professor of media studies in answering that question.  I know that Al Franken, and perhaps a few others, attempted to put together a national network offering counter-arguments.  Alas, that didn't last long, and one of the participants in the network, Chicago's WCPT, are just like public radio in their airing of excessively long segments on extremely recondite topics.  Yawn.

Mr Hartmann, though, isn't done whining.

A few years ago, a billionaire acquired one of the largest networks of these stations (800+ stations) and a senator I’ve known for years invited him and me to meet in his office near the US Capitol. The Senator asked the billionaire — who then owned several hundred stations programming exclusively rightwing content — if he’d ever considered putting some progressive content on the air.

Answer: no. “I’ll never put anybody on my air who wants to raise my taxes.”  That's fine, radio stations are still reasonably cheap, and podcasting technology provides a way for people to listen on demand, whether to programming on traditional radio, or to programming explicitly for online streaming.

He then credits the Franken network, Air America, for selling the hopey-changey stuff.

Along with Fox “News,” rightwing talk radio is the main way Republicans have seized and held control over multiple red states. History shows that putting progressive programming on the air in those states could reverse that trend.

Back in 2008, Air America was broadcasting on 62 radio stations that covered a large part of America, including rural areas that had never before experienced progressive talk radio. Most of the stations were leased from Clear Channel, which also owned and programmed rightwing radio on several hundred of its stations.

I’m not aware of any studies proving or disproving the hypothesis, but I believe a large factor in President Obama’s election in 2008 was Air America promoting his candidacy relentlessly. It certainly didn’t hurt: we reached millions of people every single day during that election.

Liberal talk radio carried important messages that were vital to the rural parts of America. That we are all interdependent; that none of us can entirely stand alone unless we are fabulously rich, which is the sales pitch the billionaires try to sell us with their libertarianism; that without government supports and a social safety net, farming would be so vulnerable and financially dangerous (particularly with our weather emergency) that it wouldn’t be viable.

Think about it — political campaigns will pay thousands for a minute of advertising, and find that to be so effective that they continue to buy ads year after year. If that minute can be so influential, how about a host — who’s built a relationship with his or her listeners — telling them dozens of times a day who they should vote for and why? You literally can’t buy promotion like that; you have to buy the station instead.

I'll leave his dubious endorsement of intrusive government for now, and credit him with working, once again, to set up a private sector broadcast network.

It works. Every weekday, all across America, people get into their cars and drive to or from work listening to the radio; as the nation’s largest statistics organization, Statista, notes, “During an average week in September 2020, radio reached 90.9 percent of all American men aged between 35 and 64 years of age.”

Radio engages, persuades, and informs — and, when done right, builds trust. And the first rule of politics is that trust wins elections.

In politics, just a few points usually decides winners and losers — and talk radio has reliably delivered that incremental edge to the GOP for three decades.

Democrats must get into the talk-radio game. As the old saying goes, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

Drive-time radio that puts drivers to sleep might not be the winning idea he thinks it is.  The network appears to be shaping up, though, despite protestations from National Review's James Lynch that the transaction is irregular.

The Biden administration is fast-tracking approval for the transfer of more than 200 radio-station licenses from bankrupt broadcaster Audacy Inc. to a nonprofit controlled by George Soros’s progressive philanthropy empire, raising the ire of Republicans who say the Federal Communications Commission is breaking with established procedure to push the deal through.

The FCC voted 3-2 earlier this month to allow a restructured Audacy Inc., now controlled by the Soros-funded nonprofit Fund for Policy Reform, to maintain over 200 broadcast licenses as it emerges from bankruptcy proceedings.

There's additional material in that story about other bulk sales of radio stations involving Cumulus Media and iHeart (c.q.).  So now the Soros organization owns radio stations and Thom Hartmann might get a larger platform.  At least until the advertisers get bored.  Those distress sales of other companies holding portfolios of radio stations suggests the medium isn't that lucrative.