The Rise and Fall of Talk Radio

[KharmaTrain]

13. Several Factors...

You are correct...the heydays of hate radio are coming to an end, but it's as much a representation of the decay and decline of commercial radio and the largess of its corporate owners. Basically it's audience is dying off and corporates such as Salem, Clear Channel and Cumulus are not able to subsidize these station like they did. They have huge debts and shrinking revenue sources as more, and specifically younger, people tune away from terrestrial radio and the corporates are desperate to find something/anything that will make a buck.

Hate radio was always a loss leader...never much of a money maker, but it was a far cheaper way to run a station. Hundreds of local hosts were replaced by satellite babble and the corporates were able to find enough bulk advertisers to keep many dying AM stations alive.

While Rushbo's attack on Sandra Fluke has seriously hurt the business, its decline was already underway. It's biggest failure was the 2008 election...it became the center for the clown car demolition derby that began tearing the GOP apart and then failed to get their boy, Gramps McCain elected. While they briefly revived in 2010, President Obama's re-election was a devastating blow to the industry. With the Fluke boycott hate radio has become both a financial and a political liability.

Hate radio isn't totally dead...and I'm sure we'll be hearing from the blowhards and asshats a lot in the upcoming election as well as in 2016 but their influence is in serious decline. Some stations are preferring to switch to mindless sports talk that is one of the few formats that can turn a buck or the stations are just going off the air altogether.