The Deplatforming of President Trump

Redwingfan9

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And you support those conservative media and internet access points having the right to ban any form of expression on them that they disagree with? Or would that be "dangerous" too?
It's only dangerous on Twitter because they have hundreds of millions of people on their site and are banning one political ideology. If these conservative sites got to the point where they had a near monopoly on social media and started banning one political view, that would be dangerous as well. I would still argue the solution is found in the free market not the state.
 
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parousia70

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It's only dangerous on Twitter because they have hundreds of millions of people on their site and are banning one political ideology. If these conservative sites got to the point where they had a near monopoly on social media and started banning one political view, that would be dangerous as well.

Interesting... So I suspect you would argue that the fact that Conservative Talk Radio stations outnumber progressive talk radio stations by a factor of 9:1 is "dangerous"?

Here’s a look at the state of talk radio by the numbers:

50 million: Number of listeners who tune into news/talk radio each week.

Conservative Dominance
257: Number of news/talk stations owned by the top five companies.

2,570: Hours of conservative talk broadcast by those radio stations each day.

254: Hours of progressive talk broadcast by those stations each day.

92: Percentage of those stations (236 out of 257) that broadcast no progressive programming.

91: Percentage of total weekday talk programming that is conservative.

100: Percentage of news/talk radio in Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia that is conservative.

69: Percent of news/talk radio in L.A. and San Francisco that is conservative.

As I understand your position, this qualifies as "Dangerous" in your view.

I would still argue the solution is found in the free market not the state.

Well, there is no such thing as a free market. (which I'm beginning to learn is the crux of our political disagreement)
Markets are the creation of Government and do not exist in the absence of Government intervention into them.

I could laundry list it out myself, but I really can't paint the picture any better than this guy already has:
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.

Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."

The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.

When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.

When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.

Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.

The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."

And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."

Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.

We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.

But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.

But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).

Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.

If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.
 
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Redwingfan9

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Interesting... So I suspect you would argue that the fact that Conservative Talk Radio stations outnumber progressive talk radio stations by a factor of 9:1 is "dangerous"?

Here’s a look at the state of talk radio by the numbers:

50 million: Number of listeners who tune into news/talk radio each week.

Conservative Dominance
257: Number of news/talk stations owned by the top five companies.

2,570: Hours of conservative talk broadcast by those radio stations each day.

254: Hours of progressive talk broadcast by those stations each day.

92: Percentage of those stations (236 out of 257) that broadcast no progressive programming.

91: Percentage of total weekday talk programming that is conservative.

100: Percentage of news/talk radio in Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia that is conservative.

69: Percent of news/talk radio in L.A. and San Francisco that is conservative.

As I understand your position, this qualifies as "Dangerous" in your view.



Well, there is no such thing as a free market. (which I'm beginning to learn is the crux of our political disagreement)
Markets are the creation of Government and do not exist in the absence of Government intervention into them.

I could laundry list it out myself, but I really can't paint the picture any better than this guy already has:
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.

Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."

The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.

When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.

When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.

Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.

The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."

And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."

Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.

We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.

But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.

But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).

Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.

If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.
Talk radio is a matter of the free market. The left has tried for decades to counter conservative talk radio, Air America being the biggest failed attempt. The problem isn't that liberals can't get on the radio, the problem is that liberals don't listen to the radio in the same way that conservatives do. No one has barred them, their shows simply don't bring in big ratings.

The current Twitter and social media issue is nothing like talk radio at all.
 
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parousia70

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Talk radio is a matter of the free market. The left has tried for decades to counter conservative talk radio, Air America being the biggest failed attempt. The problem isn't that liberals can't get on the radio, the problem is that liberals don't listen to the radio in the same way that conservatives do. No one has barred them, their shows simply don't bring in big ratings.

Rather it's the desire of the ownership of the stations not to broadcast it... Conservative owners will broadcast a conservative radio program with a lower rating than a progressive one in a decidedly progressive leaning market, or even change the format to a lower ratings sports or music format, if they don't like the message of the progressive programs, without batting an eye.
They would rather make less money on the conservative program, to promote their agenda, or less money on creating a 5th sports channel in a small market that struggles for market share, than make more money on a stand alone progressive channel that will dominate the ratings... which is totally within their rights.

But it should come as no surprise that after decades of conservative talk radio ownership domination, that any attempt at a progressive foothold would be automatically throttled.
It's not for lack of progressive listeners, its for lack of progressive station ownership.

The current Twitter and social media issue is nothing like talk radio at all.

Sure it is... they are both about the rights of private companies to broadcast/host only views they agree with.

You're either for it or you're against it.
 
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Redwingfan9

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Rather it's the desire of the ownership of the stations not to broadcast it... Conservative owners will broadcast a conservative radio program with a lower rating than a progressive one in a decidedly progressive leaning market, or even change the format to a lower ratings sports or music format, if they don't like the message of the progressive programs, without batting an eye.
They would rather make less money on the conservative program, to promote their agenda, or less money on creating a 5th sports channel in a small market that struggles for market share, than make more money on a stand alone progressive channel that will dominate the ratings... which is totally within their rights.

But it should come as no surprise that after decades of conservative talk radio ownership domination, that any attempt at a progressive foothold would be automatically throttled.
It's not for lack of progressive listeners, its for lack of progressive station ownership.



Sure it is... they are both about the rights of private companies to broadcast/host only views they agree with.

You're either for it or you're against it.
There is zero evidence any of this is happening. The failure of Air America is exhibit A.
 
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parousia70

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There is zero evidence any of this is happening.

Here is a real world example.

Progressive Host Thom Hartmann was rated #8 for 2019 in Talkers Magazine top 100.
Thom's show is Broadcast on 80 Stations Nationwide

Conservative Host Glenn Beck is rated # 10, two slots below Hartmann, and His show is broadcast on over 400 stations.

Conservative Host Hugh Hewitt, is rated all the way down at #18, 10 slots below Hartmann, yet Conservative Station owners consistently choose to put his less popular show on over 400 stations than the consistently higher rated, Progressive Host Thom Hartmann.

Michael Savage is all the way down at #20, and is also on 400+ stations....

Ownership decisions to run lower rated hosts whos views they agree with instead of higher rated hosts with views they oppose is not only happening, It's the norm.

And as you said... when 3 or 4 companies control all of the market and are "close to a monopoly", it's Dangerous.
 
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Redwingfan9

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Here is a real world example.

Progressive Host Thom Hartmann was rated #8 for 2019 in Talkers Magazine top 100.
Thom's show is Broadcast on 80 Stations Nationwide

Conservative Host Glenn Beck is rated # 10, two slots below Hartmann, and His show is broadcast on over 400 stations.

Conservative Host Hugh Hewitt, is rated all the way down at #18, 10 slots below Hartmann, yet Conservative Station owners consistently choose to put his less popular show on over 400 stations than the consistently higher rated, Progressive Host Thom Hartmann.

Michael Savage is all the way down at #20, and is also on 400+ stations....

Ownership decisions to run lower rated hosts whos views they agree with instead of higher rated hosts with views they oppose is not only happening, It's the norm.

And as you said... when 3 or 4 companies control all of the market and are "close to a monopoly", it's Dangerous.
How are you determining these rankings? It isn't through ratings, it's through industry preferences. These preferences include such nebulous terms as courage, impact and potential. It's not that Hartmann is the 8th highest rated show host, it's that the people compiling the list prefer him over Beck Hewitt and others. In other words, the list is completely subjective.

Objectively, in the talk format conservatives out perform liberals. That is a matter of the preferences of listeners. Radio, after all, is notoriously finicky and don't stick with personalities or formats that aren't bringing in ratings.

We can see this in sports radio as well. Big liberals like Bomani Jones and Dan LeBatard don't get good ratings, the former lost his ESPN show and the latter was recently dumped by ESPN. (LeBatard has more success with a podcast) FoxSports doesn't focus on leftwing politics and their hosts tend to do better. Clay Travis gets good ratings, he leans libertarian.

My theory is that liberals aren't listening to talk radio, in part because they're already dominant in the culture. Nearly every DJ is liberal, nearly every pop musician is a liberal. Could it be liberals are spending their time listening to other shows while conservatives congregate in big numbers around the one area of media that isn't openly hostile?
 
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parousia70

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It's not that Hartmann is the 8th highest rated show host, it's that the people compiling the list prefer him over Beck Hewitt and others. In other words, the list is completely subjective.

Then Head to head ratings in specific markets should tell the tale.....

Objectively, in the talk format conservatives out perform liberals.

Source?

Of the 80 markets Thom Hartmann is broadcast in, how many of them does Hugh Hewitt outperform Thom Hartmann in head to head ratings?
20?
40?
60?
0?
 
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Redwingfan9

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Then Head to head ratings in specific markets should tell the tale.....



Source?

Which Markets does Hugh Hewitt outperform Thom Hartmann in head to head ratings?
I've never heard of either of these people until today and I'm struggling to come up with any reason why I would research their head to head ratings. I just don't care that much on an individual level. Broadly speaking, conservatives do well on radio and liberals have not done as well. It's not that they haven't been given a chance, Air America being the prime example. Radio is a bottom line industry, if progressives made stations a ton of money they would be on the air.
 
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parousia70

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I've never heard of either of these people until today and I'm struggling to come up with any reason why I would research their head to head ratings. I just don't care that much on an individual level.

My apologies... it seemed like you were speaking from a place of knowledge about these things.

Broadly speaking, conservatives do well on radio and liberals have not done as well. It's not that they haven't been given a chance, Air America being the prime example.

The failure of air america a dozen years ago is hardly relevant to the state of Progressive talk radio today, yet you keep bringing it up like it's your golden scepter! - That the owners of Air America were terrible businesspeople a decade ago has no bearing on the popularity on the ground today of Progressive talk.

Radio is a bottom line industry, if progressives made stations a ton of money they would be on the air.

But that is demonstrably untrue, as I have been saying.

Progressives stations DO make a ton of money and ARE on the air.

But the consolidated ownership of 500+ radio stations to 3 or 4 companies who prefer a conservative view be espoused on them, regardless of ratings, is a demonstrable fact.

Sirius XM has given progressive voices a tremendous boost in the last decade however, and as a subscription service that offers ALL views, it has more of a level playing field, though limited only to folks who can afford it.... however we can see, when given the same access to the same platform, progressives hold their own quite nicely and more often than not, exceed their conservative counterparts in listenership.
 
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Redwingfan9

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My apologies... it seemed like you were speaking from a place of knowledge about these things.



The failure of air america a dozen years ago is hardly relevant to the state of Progressive talk radio today, yet you keep bringing it up like it's your golden scepter! - That the owners of Air America were terrible businesspeople a decade ago has no bearing on the popularity on the ground today of Progressive talk.



But that is demonstrably untrue, as I have been saying.

Progressives stations DO make a ton of money and ARE on the air.

But the consolidated ownership of 500+ radio stations to 3 or 4 companies who prefer a conservative view be espoused on them, regardless of ratings, is a demonstrable fact.

Sirius XM has given progressive voices a tremendous boost in the last decade however, and as a subscription service that offers ALL views, it has more of a level playing field, though limited only to folks who can afford it.... however we can see, when given the same access to the same platform, progressives hold their own quite nicely and more often than not, exceed their conservative counterparts in listenership.
If there was a major market nationwide for progressive talk it would exist. It may be that the market for it only exists in major cities, which is why they have fewer affiliates. It could be that talk radio listeners skew older and that peogressives are more focused on younger audiences who may be more interested in pod casts. Believe me, if there was money to be made in liberal talk the stations would be all over it.
 
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iluvatar5150

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What big tech is doing right now is incredibly dangerous. This isn't about Trump, this is about supression of anyone who does not express opinions that the big tech companies approve of. These companies are conspiring to shut down places where Trump fans and conservatives speak, be it forums on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit or conspiring to destroy Parler, whose great sin is that they allow free speech and apparently host a lot of Trump fans.

Rather than cheering all this on because we don't like Trump, everyone should take a step back and think deeper and more broadly about the ramifications of what is taking place.

False equivalent. Bakeries are a dime a dozen whereas 2-4 tech companies control not only the entire social media world but much of the access to the internet. Furthermore, no one is forcing a tech company to make a product that they are opposed to.

My argument all along has been that conservatives need to get off these social media sites and create their own. If that means they also have go create access to the internet, so be it. Monopolies don't have to be destroyed by the state, they can be destroyed by customers ditching them for a better product or service. That's the free market at work.

Having said that, the sudden deplatforming of conservatives is never the less dangerous in that these tech companies have taken it upon themselves to decide what opinions are acceptable and which are not. Since they are a borderline monopoly, that's where the danger lies.

Conservatives could've avoided all of this by not engaging in terrible behavior and/or by not tolerating it in their midst. Every time conservatives have tried to create their own alternatives, they've turned into cesspools of terrible behavior and/or quackery.

Rather it's the desire of the ownership of the stations not to broadcast it... Conservative owners will broadcast a conservative radio program with a lower rating than a progressive one in a decidedly progressive leaning market, or even change the format to a lower ratings sports or music format, if they don't like the message of the progressive programs, without batting an eye.
They would rather make less money on the conservative program, to promote their agenda, or less money on creating a 5th sports channel in a small market that struggles for market share, than make more money on a stand alone progressive channel that will dominate the ratings... which is totally within their rights.

But it should come as no surprise that after decades of conservative talk radio ownership domination, that any attempt at a progressive foothold would be automatically throttled.
It's not for lack of progressive listeners, its for lack of progressive station ownership.



Sure it is... they are both about the rights of private companies to broadcast/host only views they agree with.

You're either for it or you're against it.

Here is a real world example.

Progressive Host Thom Hartmann was rated #8 for 2019 in Talkers Magazine top 100.
Thom's show is Broadcast on 80 Stations Nationwide

Conservative Host Glenn Beck is rated # 10, two slots below Hartmann, and His show is broadcast on over 400 stations.

Conservative Host Hugh Hewitt, is rated all the way down at #18, 10 slots below Hartmann, yet Conservative Station owners consistently choose to put his less popular show on over 400 stations than the consistently higher rated, Progressive Host Thom Hartmann.

Michael Savage is all the way down at #20, and is also on 400+ stations....

Ownership decisions to run lower rated hosts whos views they agree with instead of higher rated hosts with views they oppose is not only happening, It's the norm.

And as you said... when 3 or 4 companies control all of the market and are "close to a monopoly", it's Dangerous.

How are you determining these rankings? It isn't through ratings, it's through industry preferences. These preferences include such nebulous terms as courage, impact and potential. It's not that Hartmann is the 8th highest rated show host, it's that the people compiling the list prefer him over Beck Hewitt and others. In other words, the list is completely subjective.

Objectively, in the talk format conservatives out perform liberals. That is a matter of the preferences of listeners. Radio, after all, is notoriously finicky and don't stick with personalities or formats that aren't bringing in ratings.

We can see this in sports radio as well. Big liberals like Bomani Jones and Dan LeBatard don't get good ratings, the former lost his ESPN show and the latter was recently dumped by ESPN. (LeBatard has more success with a podcast) FoxSports doesn't focus on leftwing politics and their hosts tend to do better. Clay Travis gets good ratings, he leans libertarian.

My theory is that liberals aren't listening to talk radio, in part because they're already dominant in the culture. Nearly every DJ is liberal, nearly every pop musician is a liberal. Could it be liberals are spending their time listening to other shows while conservatives congregate in big numbers around the one area of media that isn't openly hostile?

Then Head to head ratings in specific markets should tell the tale.....



Source?

Of the 80 markets Thom Hartmann is broadcast in, how many of them does Hugh Hewitt outperform Thom Hartmann in head to head ratings?
20?
40?
60?
0?

If there was a major market nationwide for progressive talk it would exist. It may be that the market for it only exists in major cities, which is why they have fewer affiliates. It could be that talk radio listeners skew older and that peogressives are more focused on younger audiences who may be more interested in pod casts. Believe me, if there was money to be made in liberal talk the stations would be all over it.

As noted, those rankings are subjective. And even when you look at the more objective ratings, some of them are skewed by Sirius and/or podcast audiences, rather than radio listeners.

Redwing is right - liberal radio has always faired poorly and it often doesn't do well outside of urban areas. OTOH, liberal radio does exist and it often does quite well in urban areas, but is almost non-existent outside of them. Public radio typically leans liberal (in themes, if not necessarily in their factual reporting) and it's not hard at all to find a good public station in a large urban market (I have a couple to pick from here in Baltimore, and did in Boston as well), but good luck finding one out in middle America. If you're lucky, you'll get one station that syndicates NPR's news and PBS' classical music.

But they're different products - liberal radio sells a lot of factual news, deep reporting, and long-form interviews. Conservative radio sells a lot of long-winded commentators who, for the most part, get people angry. Psychologically, that one-man-bloviation-show plays to a more conservative leaning audience, but it's also much easier and cheaper to produce, so you can pump it out to more stations that don't generate a lot of revenue.

I never found out if this was true, but I read a long time ago that part of Limbaugh's success may have come from handing out syndication licenses for cheap or even free and then making money by jacking up advertising rates on his now-inflated audience base.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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The platforms are private capitalist enterprises, go make your own.
They are operating as publishers now, and should be regulated as such, if they choose to venture into that business.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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What the tech giants are doing is dangerous but it doesn't need a government response. What it needs are conservatives willing to invest in their own social media sites and internet access sites.
This too. The big money needs to enter this arena since it is apparently a free-for-all.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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What [Christian Bakeries] are doing right now is incredibly dangerous. This isn't about [Gay weddings], this is about supression of anyone who does not express opinions that the [Christian Bakeries] approve of.
False equivalence. There are not two or three massive bakeries that control all baked goods and who may provide them.

Besides that case had zero to do with anything but the fact that the Masterpiece Baker chose not to do certain EVENTS, like Halloween parties, divorce parties, and same sex weddings (which were not even a legal thing at the time). He declined to provide his artistic services for EVENTS in which he did not wish to participate; he never declined to sell cakes or pies to anyone at all.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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Are you therefore arguing that the internet is part of the commons? That internet access is a civil right? From the little exposure I've had to your views, this would appear to be a 180 degree departure.

A principle is either applicable consistently, or it cannot be said to be a principle at all.

You are either supportive of Big Government requiring private business to provide a platform for people to express views they disagree with, whether that platform is an internet server, or the blank frosted top of a generic wedding cake, or you are opposed to such Government regulation of Private Business.



Christian bakeries are not forced to make a product (wedding cakes) they are opposed to either, but it seems you support government forcing them to supply that product as a platform for the expression of views they disagree with.


I can't disagree... but it's weird to me that you are also arguing the exact opposite...
Why not, since it appears you are arguing that internet access is a civil right, why not have government create and maintain a free and open platform that cannot be censored? Seems like a simple solution.



Didn't you just say monopolies aren't more powerful than the free market?
Whether internet access is a right is currently being discussed. Many think yes, it is the new public square. Of course those who control it don't want to give up their massive control. Is internet access a human right? | Adam Wagner
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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These platforms are private businesses, and as with any business, in person or online, they reserve the right to refuse business...it's as simple as that.



Yep, and yep!
IF you refuse to stand up for the right of expression of those with whom you don't agree, your own right is in danger as well.
 
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