McQ over at OTB brings up the other day, a study in listenership numbers for the various talk stations around the country. he’s done a pretty fair job, of cataloging all of this.
I respond to him:
The Limbaugh/Hannity station, WABC pulls a 3.7 while WWRL, the AA crew, pulls a .6.
Your points are well taken, however it should be noted that while WABC is a 50kw clear at Lodi, NJ,with an omnidirectional pattern and huge coverage at night….(I get it here 450 miles away during the day often as not) WWRL is on 1600… by definition a graveyard channel, with a highly directional 4 tower pattern, running 25kw day and 5kw night. The night signal is bad enough that fifteen to twenty miles away, the signal cannot be heard at many points on the compass.
Perhaps a better comparison of the programming and it’s relative draw would be in the Buffalo market about 60 miles to my west. The big talker in town, is 930/WBEN. this is a 5000 watter, with facilities on Grand Island. This is the station that carries Limbaugh within the market, and has lots of local talk, as well.
The supposedly “progressive” station, (which just dropped Air America about a year back for another ‘progressive’ lineup because of AA’s abysmal ratings), is WKBW/1520. They share tower space on Grand island with WBEN which is co-owned. While somewhat directional, KB runs 50kw 24 hours and has enormous coverage particularly to the south and east. As a result of that signal, KB was one of the big voices of top-40 radio back in the day.
Some coverage maps for local staions, including the ones I mention can be found here.These days, the Big KB has sunk rather low… Their new format, seems to be doing somewhat better than the old one. But it’s still not competitive. It seemingly can’t seem to draw half the listeners that WBEN does, where WBEN is running 1/10th the power.
He responds, in part;
In Rochester, Limbaugh/Hannity pull a 10.4 on WHAM while WROC where Schultz is, has a 1.0
And of course at that point, the light goes on. I tell him:
Interesting that you should mention the business with WHAM vs WROC, because it adds a little interesting twist to your story.
WHAM is a 50kw clear on 1180.
WROC is a 1kw directional on 950Now, there are those who will argue that the 1kW station is drawing lower numbers, because of its minuscule power, comparatively. on the surface the argument makes sense, to those who don’t know the local history.
From about 1956, until 1987, what is now WROC was WBBF, the local top 40. keep in mind, this was during the period that WKBW was kicking serious butt over in Buffalo. Little WBBF was clobbering the entire market for listener numbers. At that time, everybody else in town, save one station (250watt WYNR a daytimer on 680) was higher power than BBF was. Mostly, 5000 watters… and by the latter half of the period a couple big top-40 FM’s had come online, too) And yet, BBF led ’em all, in all dayparts and in all demos for years and years. It’s only the last twenty years are so, that WHAM has been getting the lion’s share of the numbers.
Of course, the point I’m making, is the same as you were making; that the programming is the key.
And later on, during the conversation:
As a direct result, of course, leftist slanted talk radio, has almost never been a profitable venture. Radio execs, of course, are driven by dollars and cents. They put up, as a direct result of that desire for cash, what the audience wants to hear. That’s called a free market.
But understand the basis of their argument that the current state of affairs is a failure; the leftist believes, that any failure to get their message out there, for whatever reason, is a failure of the free market. Bake the free market should be giving them a free voice.
Put another way; the complaint of the leftist when he starts talking about radio and freedom of speech, is that he thinks freedom of speech means that he’s got a guaranteed audience. Well, clearly, the constitution was never intended to provide such. And just as clearly, the left is ill equipped to get people to listen to their nonsense, on their own. So, the only solution to them is big government and forcing their listenership.
And again, Just this afternoon, I had an epiphany of sorts. I just dropped this to McQ:
In discussing this with a friend via another medium, he pointed out the idea that given the same programming, the larger station will always win. I brought up our local situation with the 50,000 watter, and the 1000 watter, and told him the story. He suggested, that were you to place the same programming on both stations, the 50kw station would win on numbers, hands down. I accepted that seemingly axiomatic point, and we moved on from there.
But later on, it occurred to me what he was really suggesting… I got to thinking about what the left sees as the quality of their ideas. I’ve come to the conclusion that they are so upset about “lack of opportunity” because they figure their point of view, their opinion, and their means of expressing it, are the equal to that of the dominant conservatives. On that basis, they figure if they got a “fair chance” their opinions, their positions on the issues of the day, would be heard more often. Thereby, conservative talk radio would be less dominant…. which of course is their goal.
The problem here, is that perception of their views being at least equal to that of the conservative majority is a complete fallacy. They can’t bring themselves to believe that the reason they are less dominant, is not because of the technical qualities the radio or television stations they are on, it’s simply because of the quality of the content of the programming. Specifically, people are not buying their opinions. Their point of view. It must be some other reason, by their thinking.
Of course, being big government types, their immediate diagnosis is that it’s a failure of government policy.
And that really is the crux of the whole thing. They can’t bring themselves to admit this is not a situation of lack of exposure. They can’t bring themselves to admit that this is a situation of people not understanding what modern day liberalism represents. This is not a failure of the free market , as if they actually cared about the free market at all, anyway. This current state of affairs in talk radio is the success of the free market. People do understand what liberalism represents and they have rejected it .
That’s what the free market does; it separates the wheat from the chaff, the good products from the bad, and the good ideas from the bad. Beta versus VHS versus DVD versus blu ray.
In all cases, and in all fields of endeavor, the inferior products are superseded by the superior. That’s what happens in a free market. So it is with the free market of ideas, as well.
If the government for some crazy reason had come along and created laws stating that providers of recorded video product such as movies had to sell their product on both VHS and DVD, I daresay we’d be selling a few more VHS tapes, just now. That, however, it does not say that the quality would be as good. Nor does it say that people would be watching the inferior product.
The liberals and their point of view on things, is in the process of being superseded by better ideas. And yes, and government regulation, as with the Video tapes, would give them some time… but understand; what they’re using government for in the case of the “fairness doctrine” runs directly against of what the American people have said repeatedly with their feet, and with their tuning buttons, that they want.
