holy arbitrons! it's npr, air america, talk radio and the blessed virgin

Popularity of National Public Radio as reported by the PI's Bill Virgin in his Radio Beat column (3-31) should be heartening to those who believe radio is only listened to by those of us who love the drive-by debate and smashmouth of AM talk.

(Virgin's (rhymes with Bergen's) weekly column is the only regular coverage radio gets in Seattle. Otherwise, print seems to take notice only when a right-wing talk host sticks his foot in it or if the Mariners changes their spot on the dial. The huge, ubiquitous, never-not-been-popular, multimillion dollar medium which has always played a significant role in our culture and now an expanding role in our regional politics gets less ink than nude sushi or breakdancing. The evolution of excess by local right-wing radio, its brilliant strategic use by the Republican Party, and the phenom of power and influence it has in this liberal community can be partly explained by the studied ignorance of our elitist MSM. The radio community always complains about Virgin's efforts--by necessity restricted to larger trends and press releases--but blatherWatch is grateful to him and the PI for those earnest, well-written crumbs we get...but when comes a whole slice?).

The right wing constantly complains that NPR is the left’s equivalent to conservative talk radio. Would that right-wing radio was so tediously balanced and ploddingly responsible!

Conservatives talk-hosts routinely and cynically blur opinion and real reportage. It's not unusual to hear listeners gushing to designated GOP liar, Sean Hannity about how thankful they are for him "educating us." A recent Hannity tag line refers to him as " America's news source," and Fox News calls itself "fair and balanced." When the naive and partisan listeners hear real news reports that questions or contradicts conservative boilerplate, they call it "liberal media bias."

In reality, they just don't like bad news and would rather hear Rush or Sean's versions.

Arbitron, the commercial service that compiles radio ratings does not survey public radio because it’s not commercial and their numbers are for advertisers. (see Cooking The Book for blatherWatch’s appraisal of the dubious but powerful radio ratings system).

NPR has always enjoyed the freedom from not having to pencil. Like PBS, it serves public interests and tastes not broad enough to make ratings on commercial media. Therein is its strength and texture.

Despite that "public" is its middle name, and Bill O'Reilly castigates it as "left-wing propaganda financed by your tax dollars," NPR is not a government network.

Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin explains on the NPR website:

"A small amount of NPR money comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a federally created private, not-for-profit corporation that administers some of the money allocated by Congress for public broadcasting. CPB funding amounts to between 1-2 percent of NPR's budget and it's often "seed" money for new programs. NPR must bid for these grants annually and there is no guarantee that NPR will get them. Funding also comes from other federally supported foundations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. But money from those organizations accounts for less than 1 percent of the budget."

Conventional wisdom has been that there's no progressive audience for talk. Air America’s tentative successes may be proving that wrong; and Virgin’s new numbers support the contention that people who truly care about fair and balanced are listening to NPR, a proud form of talk radio, in bigger numbers than local talk programmers want to admit. Virgin writes:

“NPR says "Morning Edition" is now the most listened-to morning show in the country and the second-most-listened-to program overall for commercial and noncommercial radio (trade publication Inside Radio says Rush Limbaugh is first).

Locally "Morning Edition" does just as well. Between 7-8 a.m. weekdays in the fall book, the combined listenership for "Morning Edition" on KUOW-FM (94.9) and KPLU-FM (88.5) was higher than that for KIRO-AM (710)'s news or Howard Stern's nationally syndicated show on KISW-FM (99.9).

Overall, KUOW-FM's audience share placed it fourth among all stations in the Seattle market, comparing the Arbitron ratings with data from the Radio Research Consortium. KPLU-FM would have been in a tie for 12th. And several other noncommercial stations had audiences of a size to show up in Arbitron data, including KEXP-FM (90.3) and sister station KXOT-FM (91.7), KNHC-FM (89.5), KBCS-FM (91.3) and KVTI-FM (90.9).

If Air America thinks it can wean listeners from the generous NPR teat of commercial-free, low-key reason and pithy (if lengthy) eclecticism, by putting them on a crash-bang diet of hyperbole, partisan invective, and ads for Gutter Helmet; they’ve got another think coming.

The voice of reason, Dave Ross (KIRO m-f, 3-6p) may be learning it the hard way: back in his former 9a-12p spot, he could pull the gentle NPR folk away when KUOW’s “Weekday,”(KUOW, 9-11a) got too wonkie. But in his new afternoon drive show, he has to steal them from “All Things Considered,” a much tougher competitor.

Air America and KIRO, with the shrieky commercials and hard breaks are a tough sell to listeners used to the hushed, monotonal two line ”sponsorship” messages heard these days on public radio. Or the twice annual membership drives, annoying, but so easy to turn off and over so soon once you've pledged.

Many listeners to conservative talk are in it for the entertainment value, and are not the right-wing hallelujah choir that the bulk of the callers make it seem. Remember, only 1% percent of talk radio listeners actually speak on-air.

Air America, Dave Ross and other liberal hosts talk should try for NPR listeners--but they aren't their true audience. Their people are listening to the right-wing stations, and they're up for grabs. Liberal talkers should go after them and not with reason and pith but by fighting ire with ire.

Comments

[sue c]

why can't Dave Ross go to NPR?

[Joss]

There aren't enough fair and balanced lefty journalists in Seattle to populate your one miserable Franken station. Too bad. Ha.

[Bill]

NPR puts me to sleep. Thanks to Air America and especially Randi Rhodes, there is some truth on the airwaves. I challenge the righties to listen to Air America and bring forth anything they've heard there that they think is a lie.

[Chris]

I've taken Air America for a few test listens and I'll tell ya, there isn't any more insipid, hypocritical pandering idiocy on the air for anyone to listen to. They talk about the right as if they were hate-filled monsters while at the same time heaping hot coals of hate speech onto their listeners' ears as well. Anyone listening to Air America hoping to have an alternative to Rush & Co. would do better to turn to NPR, 'cause Air America is hardly a breath of fresh air, just recycled sludge from the right's brand of radio.