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Title: The Only Thing Talk Radio Learned From 2006 Mid Terms is That They Didn't Learn From 2006 Mid Terms
Source:
Huffington Post
URL Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve ... -thing-talk-radio_b_34598.html
Published: Nov 22, 2006
Author: Steve Young
Post Date: 2006-11-22 11:43:10 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 78
Comments: 3
Mistakes and failures can be positive happenstance, but only if one chooses to learn from them. But before you learn, you must reassess to find out what went wrong. The Lords of Loud mouthpieces of the White House and GOP were instrumental in helping the GOP score Bush another term in 2004. Probably even more so than not-Governor Blackwell. But even with their soft-ball interviews and private White House meeting with the President, along with an almost entirely right wing media day just prior to the election, the GOP's talk radio arm failed miserably in turning in another victory for their masters. Of course, Sean Hannity will be the first one to interrupt you that he did not concur with every decision the President and GOP made over the past two years. Then again, a broken clock is wrong 8,638 times a day (23 hours, 59 minutes and 58 seconds). Sean's best pitch was basically that the Republican Party did a piss poor job shirking their responsibility to Americans, so...reelect them. But what was the difference between winning 2004 and losing 2006? Was it Bill O'Reilly spending more time creating secular progressive bogeyman to sell Bill O'Reilly books and Factor gear? Was it Laura Ingram's suggestion to clog the Democratic voting phone lines? How about Limbaugh's flailing about like a wounded duck? All those certainly turned off a few who might have pulled a GOP lever or two, but I think the purest example of failure came from Hannity's tired anti-Democratic litany getting even tired'r. And it's not because Hannity's fans stopped listening to him. I believe that actually started listening more intensively. Sean wanted them to believe that Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco values would inflict Satan's genes into our children. But Pelosi's San Francisco values didn't let credit card companies write the bankruptcy bill or pharmaceutical corporations write the drug bill or energy companies develop energy policy. Sean holds up Hollywood as limousine liberals whose lack of virtue are infesting the minds of our kids. But Hollywood didn't place our kids in the middle of a deadly Iraqi quagmire. Sean replays Howard Dean's "scream" as an symbol of a sick party. But Dean didn't scream us into unaffordable healthcare for the truly sick. Sean paints and repaints an unhinged Hillary Clinton, but Hillary didn't unhinge FEMA by hiring Michael Brown. Sean demonizes George Soros as the money man behind Air America but Soros or Air America did not get paid off by Jack Abramoff. Sean blames John Kerry's inability to deliver a joke about Bush as a slam of our troops. But Kerry didn't make Republicans cut Veteran's benefits. Sean's list, repeated ad infinitum, was an attempt to brainwash his listeners. Instead, it made them painfully aware that Sean didn't seem to connect the actual failures, many of them deadly, to those responsible. Nothing turns off a working brain more than being insulted with obvious bullshit. For some brains it might take more time than others for the smell to register, but it seemed to click for enough to make Sean's water-carrying efforts a real detriment to the GOP this past election. Plainly, the Right wasn't as stupid as Hannity or O'Reilly or Limbaugh thought they were. Not this time. But the Lords of Loud still haven't learned their lesson. Sean's newest litany attacks the Democratic control of Congress that has about two months before it has any control, as a failure. It may pacify the few fans who don't yet realize that Sean only feeds their post-election wounds for the benefit of his humongous financial return. But, as long as he and the rest of the Right's noise machine don't realize their tired tactics are getting very tired, the hole in their logic will be large drive a 2008 Democratic victory truck through.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
RAW STORY Published: Friday June 30, 2006 Print This | Email This Many well-known right-wing media figures -- including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly -- are losing their Internet audiences, according to an analysis of Web site ratings by IPD Group and U.S. Politics Today. On the other hand, traffic for http://Moveon.org has risen. On Thursday, Shakespeare's Sister checked other sites from the right and left at the same tracking service, http://Alexa.com, used in the analysis. According to the blogger, Free Republic, Hugh Hewitt, World Net Daily, and Pajamas Media have all suffered at least a 19 percent decline, while the traffic at Raw Story, Crooks and Liars, and Think Progress has risen. A release issued by IPD Group reads: # An odd thing seems to have happened to mighty right-wing talking head media juggernaut. They are still talking, but fewer people seem to be listening -- at least on the Internet. http://Alexa.com, which is owned and operated by http://Amazon.com, tracks online usage for all Web sites, large and small. At http://Alexa.com, you can check a site's activity up to the minute, or follow its trail back for many years. At U.S. Politics Today, we thought it might be interesting to see how the right-wing media machine was doing. Not well, it turns out. During the past three months, for instance, Rush Limbaugh's, traffic ranking has declined 18 percent. He still huffs and puffs away daily on radio, but advertisers might want to double check the size of his audience. If the bottom has dropped out on him online, it likely has had a similar trend line with his radio show. Even Fox News, that gold standard of right-wing media, is down 13 percent. Here are the numbers. Ann Coulter is coining money by attacking widows and orphans -- a new game for her since she's run out of Democrats, living and dead, to defame and verbally pillage. You would think with all of the attention the promotion of her new book has given her would raise visitor numbers at her Web site. Nope. Traffic there is down 10 percent. The audience chart reversal seems to be common across the entire right-wing side of the Internet viewing board. http://Billoreilly.com has dropped 40 percent in the past three months. http://Townhall.com, that once popular center for right-wing news and commentary, has fallen by 24 percent. The Washington Times Web site is down by 27 percent. And Matt Drudge, once the hottest right-wing name in Internet sites? http://Alexa.com says http://DrudgeReport.com is down 21 percent. Could it be that Internet users are getting tired of political sites in general? Maybe so. But http://MoveOn.org is up 13 percent in the same period. President Bush's fall from grace has been well documented by poll-after-poll. The unpopularity of Congress may not be at historic lows, but those 20-something level of support numbers can't be comforting to those who manage things on Capitol Hill. It seems logical that with enthusiasm draining from the right- wing movement that put the president and the current Congress in place, the media chorus that has lavished praise on them all these many years would be affected by the change in fortune. And so it seems, looking at the http://Alexa.com numbers -- if they are to be believed. Those graph lines may not directly parallel the decline in GOP poll numbers, but they are all heading in the same direction -- down. the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
Today 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change N/A* 116,030 65,682 +37,579**** * Daily values are not available for sites ranked outside of the Top 100K. Reach for http://freedom4um.com: Reach per million users: Today 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change 4.5 / 5/ /6.95 /+45% Bravo - well written!
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Right-wing pundits in Internet ratings freefall
#2. To: Brian S (#0)
Traffic Rank for freedom4um
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Just as there is no money in peace or freedom, there is also no money in a healthy Amerika - - IndieTX
#3. To: Brian S (#0)
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