John S. wrote:


running dogg wrote:
John S. wrote:


Torinda de Algodon wrote:
wrote in news:12219-4379758A-1071@storefull-
3257.bay.webtv.net:

www.humaneventsonline.com

All of the talk radio shows around here are conservative.
cuhulin


Liberal mainstream media is dedicated to abortion, atheism, and sodomy.
This results in a large audience of conservatives who want an alternative.
Conservative talk radio fills that need while the liberals are content
with the mass media fare and don't need an alternative such as Air America.

Why is talk radio so conservative you ask?

Well, maybe the conservatives are trying to play catchup with their
wildly successful liberal competition on NPR. Conservatives have been
unable to create a single network that can provide the quality of
programming and informative news that is available on NPR. Indeed the
polished presentation skills of NPR talk show hosts far outshines the
usual strident delivery of most conservative talk show personalities.
Consequently conservatives have decided to flood the AM airwaves with
ranting personalities like Rush Limbaugh spouting extremist gibberish
for hours on end.


Touche! Besides, without large numbers of conservative talk show
hosts, AM radio would have DIED an unholy death 20 years ago. All these
extremist ranting far right talk show hosts have kept AM radio in the US
from utter extinction. They're literally its bread and butter. The only
other significant formats on AM are evangelical preaching and Spanish
language formats meant for Mexicans who may not have cars with FM
radios, or who may not be familiar with FM (FM's limited distance makes
it impractical outside of major cities, and Latin America has a large
amount of sparsely populated jungle and desert). In major cities AM also
provides a home for other languages such as Asian tongues where there is
a demand for native language programming but the community doesn't have
a lot of money. AM provides cheap airtime. Outside of a) right wing
ranters b) preachers and c) foreign languages there is NOTHING on AM.
All the music is on FM, and satellite radio is just beginning to cut
into FM listenership. So basically, if you buy an old radio on Ebay and
it doesn't have FM and you need to test it out the right wing provides a
way to do that.

No doubt there is a preponderance of ranters and ravers on AM. But
there is still some good stuff om AM too. I've got two DX oldies
stations that pop into the east coast around 7:00PM. And the all news
stations are always good for a quick update and traffic report. And to
be honest I enjoy the mexican music when in California.

It's anyones guess as to where standard AM and FM broadcasting are
headed. If satellite radio takes off and one standard emerges then I
suspect that more quality programming will shift to that medium, but
how much is a guess. I think it will take a merger of the two
satellite radio providers before that will happen.


Well, here in Northern California the three formats I mentioned are the
preponderance of AM. There is one all news station, KCBS in San
Francisco, which only covers the Bay Area (of course, but useless if
you're in Sacramento). There are no oldies stations left on AM. There
used to be a big band station in Sacramento (KCTC, 1320) but they dumped
their format after determining that their listeners were all dead. (They
went to Air America, which probably caused some heart attacks among the
remaining members of the greatest generation.) Most stations that
advertise as being "oldies" in fact play a lot of hippie rock and 70s
stuff, not Elvis era stuff. AM simply isn't commercially viable outside
of a narrow range of listeners. Preachers like AM because it's cheap,
for the same reason that most domestic SW in the US is religious (and a
lot in Latin America too). Minority communities like AM because they can
serve their communities easily and cheaply. The rest of the stations
fight to survive by loading up on ranting Rushes.