The Conservative Cat

« Another Shutout Against the Predators, 69-0 for the Force | Main | Weekend »

June 24, 2007

Confused Americans for Truth - The Structural Imbalance of the Report on the Structural Imbalance of Talk Radio

I have been meaning to discuss the Center for American Progress report on The Structural Imbalance of Talk Radio for some time, but I had more important things on my mind, including my desire to promote the Chicago Force football team and not worrying about the mysterious lump on the Other Cat's tongue. Since then the report has passed from the public consciousness; however, one of our missions here is to debunk bad science, and this report contains a real whopper.

The presumed cause of right-wing talk radio's dominance is that it draws in listeners, and this causes the radio stations who specialize in right-wing talk radio to make money. The report has the following to say about that.

This argument is misleading on numerous fronts. Although talk radio audiences tend to be more male, middle-aged, and conservative, research by Pew indicates that this audience is not monolithic—43 percent of regular talk radio listeners identify as conservative, while 23 percent identify as liberal and 30 percent as moderate. 16 The ideological breakdown of the country as a whole during this same period was very similar—36 percent conservative, 21 percent liberal, and 35 percent moderate. It is difficult to argue that the existing audience for talk radio is only interested in hearing one side of public debates given the diversity of the existing potential audience.

This is a common sense argument, and like all common-sense arguments, it is offered without any evidence. It is, however, possible to test this hypothesis. A hypothesis that passes the evidence test is worthy of being called a theory and therefore suitable to use as a basis for reasonable discussion. (This distinction is a big deal to scientists. They used to call things Laws instead of Theories, but this practice was ended when the Theory of Relativity overthrew the Law of Gravity.)

Here's how I propose to test the hypothesis. I'm starting with two assumptions: one is that liberals know how to operate a radio dial; another is that if you give any person a bunch of things they don't like and one thing they do like, they'll choose the one they like. (You can verify this by giving someone ten pennies and a quarter and asking them to pick one coin they want to take home with them.) Given these two hypotheses, we can argue that even in a situation where there are many conservative radio programs and only one liberal one, people who want to listen to the liberal one will choose it listen to it anyway.

You'll notice that I've presented these beliefs in a form that allows you to test them. That's important. I deduced these principles from my belief that liberals tend to be brainier than conservatives, but I've couched them in terms that you can test if you believe otherwise.

Okay, so given these easily-verifiable assumptions, you can deduce that if liberal talk radio is offered as a choice, then liberals would choose it if (as the report asserts) they wanted to listen to it.

Air America was supposed to prove that liberal talk radio could work. Despite continuing predictions by conservatives that the network can't last and perennial cash-flow problems, Air America has survived. It's possible that it would do better if the owners knew more about how to operate radio stations, or it's possible the concept really was doomed from the start; however, it's still out there. It has an audience. However, in cities where people have choices between Air America and conservative talk radio, it still has negligible ratings.

In the example I used as evidence of my hypothesis, I chose a report that concentrates on the big-market cities. This is also the case in the cute little graph in the report. A city that is missing from the cute little graph is Seattle. In Seattle, the Thom Hartmann show, which bills itself as progressive, is the top show in a time slot directly opposite Rush Limbaugh. So, there are markets where people choose liberal talk radio in noticeable numbers. The report does mention Seattle, and expresses surprise that there are still more conservative talk stations in Seattle than liberal ones; however, if you go here and ask for the Seattle/Tacoma radio ratings, you'll see that though Hartmann's Seattle affiliate KPTK is experiencing audience growth, it is still the lowest-rated talk station overall. Yes, KPTK has a good show in the Rush Limbaugh time slot, but there is still enough demand for conservative talk to power three times as many stations.

There is reason to believe that the demand for liberal talk is increasing: Clear Channel is converting some of its stations to a liberal talk format. This could be a result of a leftward shift in the population, or it could simply mean that the new generation of liberal talk radio hosts is much better at the game than the Hollywood comedians they're replacing. God knows, I find Hartmann much easier on the ears than Al Franken (whom Hartmann replaced), but being a superior lfe form, I know better than to think everybody else has the same tastes I do.

That's exactly the mistake made in the American Progress Center's report. The liberals who wrote the report know they'd much rather listen to a liberal commentator than a conservative one, so they assume every liberal would make the same choice they do. It's an extremely unscientific way of thinking, and to prevent this from happening again, they really should have me go over their reports before they release them.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Sun 8:32 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (4) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: Air America Al Franken Center for American Progress Chicago Force Clear Channel conservative radio ratings report Seattle Structural Imbalance The Other Cat Thom Hartmann

Trackback Pings

Comments

Posted by: Michael at June 25, 2007 3:31 PM

Posted by: Ferdy at June 25, 2007 8:11 PM

Posted by: Michael at June 29, 2007 12:34 AM

Posted by: Ferdy at June 29, 2007 2:27 PM