Move Over Right-Wing Radio, The Liberals Are Coming

A New Thom Hartmann article on the coming lefty radio shows.

It's the nature of the marketplace to abhor a vacuum, and the hunger for liberal programming - as evidenced by its explosion across the internet and its great success in the few markets where it can be found - can be a very profitable vacuum to fill.

About the time I pointed this out, a group of wealthy Democrats pulled together ten million dollars, formed AnShell Media, and began the work of raising enough cash to put together a progressive talk-radio network. At the same time, the nation's oldest and largest progressive talk-radio network, i.e. America Radio in Detroit, expanded their programming to offer an entire day, 6 am to midnight, of live progressive talk shows, which are now carried on radio stations from coast to coast, on channel 145 ("Sirius Left") of the Sirius Radio Satellite, and streamed around the world on the web. Salon.com even weighed in last week, running a feature article about one of i.e.'s stars, Mike Malloy, and how he's so popular that his show is beginning to rattle the world of internet radio and has a loyal following on the network's affiliates.

At the same time, right-wing hosts are fading. For example, Bill O'Reilly's radio failures in Limbaugh-dominated markets, documented recently by Matt Drudge, imply the obvious: right-wing talk radio has reached market saturation and is no longer a growth industry. According to Geoff Metcalf on WorldNetDaily, the O'Reilly show is even paying stations - in one case over a quarter million dollars - to continue to carry the show.

The handwriting is on the wall for right-wing talk radio: To build profits, programmers must reach beyond diehard Republicans to unserved listeners. This means bringing in the center and left of the political spectrum. Thus, we're today seeing the early fuse-fizzing of the Next Big Boom in talk radio, and many in the industry openly acknowledge it (including Fox, which just syndicated liberal Alan Colmes).

Although the right-wingers love to claim that they simply balance NPR (the claim was raised again at the Talkers event), it's an argument that commercial programmers know is specious. NPR never has and never will run hour after hour of a single commentator ranting about the wonders of one party and the horrors of another. Centrist and left-wing talk radio is still an emerging product with a huge unserved market.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the award-winning, best-selling author of over a dozen books, who started his radio career in 1968 and is now the host of The Thom Hartmann Program from noon to 2 pm EST, nationally syndicated on the i.e. America Radio Network. www.thomhartmann.com