[grc] Found this on Quora

[Frieda Werden]

For anyone who wondered about this question - this fella's answer covers a
lot of the bases:

[image: Sean Phillips] <https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-Phillips-29>
Sean Phillips <https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-Phillips-29>, Poker
Dealer In Pre-Early-Semi-Retirement (2016-present)
Answered Aug 25, 2014
<https://www.quora.com/Why-have-conservative-radio-talk-shows-been-more-successful-than-liberal-radio-talk-shows-e-g-Limbaugh-vs-Air-America/answer/Sean-Phillips-29>
<https://www.quora.com/Why-have-conservative-radio-talk-shows-been-more-successful-than-liberal-radio-talk-shows-e-g-Limbaugh-vs-Air-America#>
I spent 25+ years in the business.  The answer to your question is complex,
but clear.

First, to those who insist there is no audience, or that the political left
represents a minority,  I say "Hogwash".  The fact is, this country is
split into three virtually equal groups; the left, the right, and the
middle, and the 1/3 of the country that makes up the middle splits almost
perfectly down the middle, half leaning right, half leaning left.

The reason all you hear is right-wing talk on the radio has to do with the
psychology of human beings, and how that relates to the methodology of
ratings being tabulated, and ruthless profit motive.

Radio audiences are measured in two ways.  The first is cumulative audience
(called "cume"); the total number of people who listen to your radio
station each week.  The second is average quarter hour audience (called
"AQH"), which is quantified in time spent listening ("TSL").

Each listening day is broken up into quarter-hour periods, and just as if
an attorney spends 5 minutes reading your email, and is ethically allowed
to bill you for a quarter-hour's time, if you sample a radio station during
a quarter hour, even if you stop listening after only a minute, or two,
they get credit for that quarter hour.

Ratings are arrived at though a mathematical combination of both cume and
AQH.  Let's say Tom tunes into a radio station for 5 minutes in the
morning, every Monday, but doesn't listen any more that week.  He is
considered a member of that station's audience.  Now let's say Bill tunes
into that same station for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week.  He is also
considered to be a member of that stations audience.  Cume-wise, both Tom,
and Bill represent the same thing to that radio station, they are both
members of it's audience.

AQH is another thing, however.  Tom gave the radio station a single
quarter-hour's listening for the survey week.  Bill listened for 15 hours
that week, so he gave them 60 quarter-hours.  He is exponentially more
valuable to the radio station.

How does this relate to the political right, or left?  Psychologically
speaking, the further left you go, the more anachistic you tend to become.
The further to the right you go, the more you tend to crave organization.
Politics aside, look at the difference between the TEA Party and Occupy
Wall Street.  Occupy was, by design, an organization with no leaders, no
agenda, no defined mission, and no two people seemed to be there for the
same reason.  Meanwhile, all of the various TEA Party organizations quickly
coalesced into a single entity.  People on the right tend to pick a single
station, and listen with great loyalty, while people on the left tend to
listen to a wide variety of stations.  Loyalty = TSL.  Very valuable to a
radio station.  The tendency of loyalty towards a single station inherent
in people who lean right politically can also be greatly intensified by
making them feel they are a part of a group of people who are looked down
upon, and discriminated against.

There's more.  Ratings are measured by recruiting respondents, and people
on the political right are much more likely to take a telemarketing call
recruiting them, and agree to participate.  They're also more likely to go
through the process, and return the diary, or people meter.  This leads to
an undersampling of the left, and an oversampling of the right.  There's no
conspiracy, it's simple psychology.

Most people don't realize it, but the airwaves are actually a public
trust.  Just like a national park, they belong to the people.  All the
people, regardless of their politics.  Radio stations are issued licenses
to "broadcast in the public interest".  In the Communications Act of 1934,
congress went to great pains to ensure no one single political voice could
dominate the airwaves.  They put strict ownership limits in place, and
cross-ownership limits (radio, TV, and newspaper).  They initiated The
Fairness Doctrine, which held broadcasters to a standard of truth.  They
also initiated the Equal Time Rule, which required stations broadcasting
one political viewpoint to give equal time to opposing views, so if you had
3 hours of Rush, you'd have to give three hours to the left.

Beginning in the 80s, ownership limits were relaxed again and again, until
you got to the present day, where one company (Clear Channel) owns over
1,000 radio stations, and over 90% of the radio audience in this country
listens to radio stations owned by just four companies.  The exact sort of
concentration of power the Comm Act of 1934 was designed to prohibit.  Once
consolidation began, those newly powerful broadcast companies used their
lobbying power to have congress do away with the Fairness Doctrine and the
Equal Time Rules, so they were free to broadcast anything they liked.

Then there's the fact that right-wing talk is pro-business, and left wing
talk advocates re-regulation.  If you owned a company whose very existence,
let alone it's massive profits were owed completely to the lifting of
virtually every regulatory restriction, would you pay to air a show that
urged people to reach out to their elected representatives to demand
regulations be put back in place?  That's why Air America failed.

When a radio station has a signal that only covers part of it's market,
it's called a "rimshot" signal.  After deregulation, the big four gobbled
up all of the strong signals in the 200 most heavily populated cities in
America, leaving only the rimshots for independent owners.  The four
companies that owned all the strong signals wouldn't touch Air America, so
they ended up on the rimshots, with no money for marketing, or promotion.

Years ago, while working for one of the "Big Four", I went to a manager's
meeting, attended by all the top-level brass.  We'd just put on a new talk
station in a crowded market.  It was the third one, and it's competitors
already had Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly etc. all locked up.  Rather than
putting on third-rate conservative talkers, the program director wanted to
put on Air America, and had reams of ratings breakouts, showing where, in
zip codes where the signals were comparable, Air America performed on-par
with the big conservative talk shows.  The president of the company became
very agitated, and said: "we aren't EVER going to air a show that wants to
destroy us".

The fact is, for the past 20+ years, the peoples' airwaves have been
dominated by a non-stop right-wing political propaganda machine, not
because of some vast conspiracy, but simply due to the most basic of
capitalist principles: profit motive.



Frieda Werden, Series Producer
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org