Garling Gauge

Who Rules the Radio?

Who are you listening to? Conservatives.

The Center for American Progress and Free Press have issued a joint report entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, in which it reports that conservative radio dominates the airwaves.

An article on their website about the report notes the following:

“Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.

Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk—10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.”

While not surprising, the numbers are still daunting.

The report concludes “that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system,” and that ” Ownership diversity is perhaps the single most important variable contributing to the structural imbalance based on the data.”

With the country split so evenly along idealogical lines, there is a clear disparity between what Americans think about issues and what perspectives are available on the radio.