No

by Andrew Evans

Created on: June 27, 2007

Conservative voices dominate talk radio according to a study collaborated on by The Center for American Progress and Free Press. The study finds that during the spring of this year that, "91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative and 9 percent is Progressive."(1) The study also found that during each day of the week that up to 10 times as many hours of conservative talk radio was aired compared to Progressive talk. Also according to the study, "A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is Progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago." (2)

Those numbers are undeniably large and numbers of that size would get anyone's attention like it has gotten mine and yours as well. Whether you are conservative, Progressive or centrist all you have to do is turn on the radio to mainly your AM stations and you will find that these numbers in the study do not lie. What does this mean, are more Americans who are conservative listening to the radio more than those who are not?

The numbers say no, the study released in June of 2007 also reports that, "90 percent of Americans ages 12 or older listen to radio each week, "a higher penetration than television, magazines, newspapers, or the Internet." Although listening hours have declined slightly in recent years, Americans listened on average to 19 hours of radio per week in 2006." (3) This statistic counts a lot of Americans who are not voters being under the age of 18 but even then the argument that more conservatives listen to talk radio is unfounded. Last time I checked some 42 percent of voting Americans identified themselves as independent. That means that 58 percent of voting Americans actively identify themselves as either Republican, Democrat or have an affiliation with another political party. The numbers just don't add up that more conservatives are listening to talk radio than Progressives or others.

Another explanation could be that there are simply more conservative shows being produced than Progressive or other shows. Air America which has been the most recognized staple for Progressive talk has been making some successes but its network penetration is much less than conservative talk shows. So the argument of more conservative shows in production has some validity but on the Internet there are more and more Progressive and shows of other political points of view. The study goes on to claim that ownership diversity is a main cause of the lack of Progressive talk radio, "Ownership diversity is perhaps the single most important variable contributing to the structural imbalance based on the data. Quantitative analysis conducted by Free Press of all 10,506 licensed commercial radio stations reveals that stations owned by women, minorities, or local owners are statistically less likely to air conservative hosts or shows.
In contrast, stations controlled by group ownersthose with stations in multiple markets or more than three stations in a single marketwere statistically more likely to air conservative talk. Furthermore, markets that aired both conservative and Progressive programming were statistically less concentrated than the markets that aired only one type of programming and were more likely to be the markets that had female- and minority-owned stations." (4)

Free Press has been a leading advocate for more locally owned media and is against further unnecessary media conglomeration so the study also states that increasing locally owned radio stations and media outlets will balance this out. I agree but in the meantime and in the future Progressives and other groups such as independents and centrists should look to Internet radio for political talk radio. More and more people are discovering Internet radio as way to get a better variety of music and talk radio than they can get through regular broadcast radio or even satellite. On Blog Talk Radio an emerging Internet talk radio station you can search Progressive and 331 matches of shows come through. Search for conservative and 968 matches of shows come up. Those numbers are still heavily favored in conservative talk radio's advantage. However the ratio is much better than 91 percent to 9 percent on broadcast radio.

Free speech and opportunities are important with this issue but so is the free market. Both need to be respected and can be. Progressives, Centrists, Independents and Libertarians need to voice more of a desire for talk radio that expresses those viewpoints. So the fight for more representation on the broadcast airwaves is a noble one and I support that fully but also look to the Internet for Progressive and Other Views for talk radio. Look to the Internet not only for the meantime but for the future because it will continue to grow and allow more voices to speak.

Copyright 2007.

(Check out www.americancentrist party.com and freepress.net to help fight for Net Neutrality and Broadband Internet Access and Internet Radio)

Sources:

Ben Scott, Josh Silver, Derek Turner, John Halpin, James Heidbreder, Mark Lloyd, Paul Woodhull. The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. June 2007.

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