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clones, even shifting long-time non-political talk hosts into making right-wing proclamations in order to retain market share. The industry discovered right-wing talk radio, found it profitable, and thought that conservative talk was the only kind of talk that could work on the AM dial.
In the meantime, the i.e. America Radio Network waited until August, 2003 - when they felt their programming lineup was solid and stations were starting to solicit them - to run industry advertising. As a result, many people - even in the radio industry - are just now discovering that liberal talk radio is already here. In most cities, existing contracts and inertia mean its going to take some time - as it did for Limbaugh - before i.e.'s liberal programming reaches into all the nation's radio markets.
As Hendrik Hertzberg comments in "Radio Daze" in the August 11, 2003 issue of The New Yorker, although "Al Gore's margin over George W. Bush [in New York City] was four to one, and the city's congressional delegation consists of twelve Democrats and one Republican," there is not a single commercial station in New York City that carries liberal talk radio all day and "four powerful stations feature 'conservative talk.'"
But the i.e. America Radio Network and the possibility of other liberal startups like Chicago's Anshell Media mean that liberal talk radio has set the stage for a second great explosion in growth for AM radio. The number of AM talk stations will once again expand, the airwaves open up politically, and the radio industry will see a revival similar to the early boom years of right-wing talk radio.
It's dawning on radio programmers that 54 million people who cast ballots for Gore and Nader (and another 50 million who tell pollsters that they lean liberal but didn't bother to vote) represent a huge market opportunity, and that the boom potential for the radio industry is extraordinary.
For example, in most markets Rush Limbaugh owns the noon-3 pm EST slot. If a second AM station wants to move from an unprofitable music format to talk radio, they have to get a second-tier conservative host like Bill O'Reilly to compete with Rush. The predictable result, as reported recently by Matt Drudge, is that the conservative listener half of the pie got split into smaller slices - the Rush station does a little worse and the O'Reilly station never quite makes the profits the Rush station does.
Enter liberal talk radio. Increasingly, stations are realizing that the biggest difference between conservative and liberal talk is that conservative talk is well distributed and market-saturated, while liberal talk is virgin territory brimming with possibilities for any station willing to invest the time it takes to build an audience base.
And the time is right. Just as Bill Clinton was a gift to conservative talk radio, today's liberal/progressive outrage at the behavior of the Republican president, Congress, and Supreme Court are fueling an explosion in demand for liberal programming. Still in its early stages, this groundswell first transformed non-commercial FM, where in just the past year Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" has become one of the fastest growing and most successful programs in national syndication with over 140 affiliates including most major markets.
On the AM dial, stations are picking up commercial progressive/liberal programming, and doing very well. Old radio hands like Peter B. Collins and me have come back onto the air, and high-profile progressives are starting their own programs. Fueling their growth, Democratic candidates, unions, and progressive-minded companies are considering the powerful synergy of advertising on liberal talk shows, just as Republican candidates and conservative companies have benefited from message-consistency with right-wing hosts over the past 15 years. For over a decade, rich conservatives and right-wing corporations owned the airwaves - now it's the workers' and the unions' turn to speak to their constituents.
Programmers once thought liberal talk wouldn't work, noting radio listener studies that showed many Democrats and progressives had left AM radio for FM. But is that cause, or effect? As one liberal listener wrote, "If every day people turned on the AM radio and heard just static, they'd stop listening and go to FM music. Right-wing blather is static to me, and so as an AM non-listener I'm not even considered in the ratings and market analysis."
But that can change, as this listener noted: "...give me talk that resonates with me, and I'll turn my AM radio back on." A hundred million Democrats, Progressives, and Greens are waiting for their local stations to carry programming they can embrace - and advertisers are eager to reach this upscale market.
Now that there's a whole day's lineup of progressive/liberal talk programming for this listener and the hundred million or so like him, we're seeing the early stages of a Second Great Renaissance in AM radio.
And, many believe, a renaissance in American democracy as well.
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