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

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