May 04, 2005

Air America's Ratings Are Floating Next to the Tidy Bowl Man

I guess I'm showing my age when I mention the Tidy Bowl Man...the little sailor floating in the tank, touting the benefits of Ty-D Bowl toilet cleaner in those '70s commercials. But face it: Air America's ratings are in the toilet. Byron York reviews the numbers:

For one thing, the network is only on the air in about 50 of the nationÕs 285 radio markets. And in most of those, it is broadcast on small stations, often with weak signals. So it is impossible to compare Air AmericaÕs ratings to those of its conservative competitors, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who are heard on hundreds of stations.

But we can compare them in at least one place Ñ New York City.

Air America's flagship station, WLIB, is based in New York City. So is WABC, home to Sean Hannity. So comparisons in the city should be interesting.

When the fall 2004 (October, November and December) ratings came out, they revealed that Franken had pulled just a 1.8 percent share of the 25-to-54audience Ñ well behind LimbaughÕs 4.1 percent share...

Now we have ratings for January, February and March of this year, and they show Franken with a 1.9 percent share to LimbaughÕs 3.2 percent share.And thatÕs just Franken versus Limbaugh. Air AmericaÕs overall ratings in New York are far, far worse.

The station on which it is heard, WLIB, used to broadcast a mix of Caribbean music and talk. In its last quarter before switching to Air America, it won 1.3 percent of the total audience in New York. Despite all the publicity, Air America is now actually drawing lower ratings than the old music format; in the most recent figures, Air America score a 1.2 percent share of the New York audience.

And that is in true-blue New York City, where you might expect a liberal
talk network to do well.

York goes on to cite that Air America is doing well in a few places like Portland, Oregon. Yet overall, the network is floundering. He thinks that perhaps it's because the hosts just aren't very good, or that they aren't as civil as they like to pretend they are (Randi Rhodes' little "jokes" about killing President Bush, for example).

But my theory has always been this: Most leftists don't like to bother with pesky details, even when those details are those they agree with. They prefer soundbites from news shows on television, scanning the newspaper headlines, and getting little e-alerts from CNN and other sources on the Internet. (And those who do want detail usually tune into NPR because they're used to their daily dose of refined leftism.) I know now that when I considered myself to be a "liberal," I really was terribly uninformed. I simply didn't "have the time" to investigate matters thoroughly. I allowed others to do my thinking for me.

Talk radio isn't for everyone, but those who tune in do so because they want to be informed. The audience Air America wants to reach doesn't have time for that kind of information avalanche. And that's why Air America is doomed to fail.

UPDATE: In an interview on Chrenkov today, Brian Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives, has an opinion as to why leftwing talk radio is failing:

What need was there, though, to listen to, say, Mario Cuomo's brief-lived radio show - he was going to be the liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh - when you could get the same snobby condescension on the New York Times editorial page, CBS News, or NPR? I love Cuomo's explanation for why liberals fail on the radio: we write with "fine-quill pens," he says, while conservatives write with "crayons." Unpack that arrogant, elitist observation and you get a quick picture of why today's Democratic Party is having trouble winning elections once you get away from the coasts.

Read it all for a more comprehensive look at the conservative "backlash" among younger people today.

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