The Impossible Dream

Like many people, I’ve been amused by Leftists all over the U.S. squealing about how they need to combat “right-wing” podcasters like Joe Rogan by setting up competitive podcasts which express those views of the Left (as though the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune,CNN, CSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC weren’t sufficient outlets for Leftist agitprop  already).

Clifton Duncan has one such take on this silliness:

They can never build “their own Joe Rogan.” The notion is ridiculous–not just because it evinces their tendency toward top-down control, but because their cult renders intellectual, political and philosophical exploration outside of narrow ideological parameters impossible. These people have psychotic meltdowns, blacklist peers, and cut off relatives over politics. They’re incapable of empathizing with anyone outside their congregation. For all their fetishizing of credentials, their masturbatory exaltation of their educations, they’re violently allergic to intellectual curiosity–how on earth COULD they “build” their own Rogan, or a Lex Fridman, whose curiosity and openness are part of their brand?

Well, yes;  all that’s true, and more besides.

But beyond their genetic inability to create a competitive “voice” lies one inescapable truth:  they can create all the podcasts they want, but they’ll only ever generate an audience of a few hundred thousand people (roughly, the equivalent of the NYT subscription base and/or CNN’s viewership).

I remember when Rush Limbaugh died, the Left was ecstatic because, they thought, the field was now open for radio shows like the leftist Pacifica to capture the radio audience for the Left.

Never happened, did it?  Because most Americans don’t buy into their shit.  Want proof?  Of the top dozen or so talk radio shows in the U.S., Sean Hannity alone has just over 14 million weekly listeners, and a huge percentage of the talk show audience listens to the likes of Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dana Loesch, Mike Gallagher, Glen Beck, Brian Kilmeade and Mike Berry at their various time slots during the day and night.  (You can’t combine them because there is considerable overlap in the conservative audience, who might listen to four, five or more shows during any given week.

The sole Left-wing radio host in the top dozen is Tom Hartmann (of Pacifica) whose midday show attracts some 7 million listeners per week, compared to his midday conservative competitors Dana Loesch and Dan Bongino, whose combined audience is more than double that, at nearly 17 million.

And just to be clear on the numbers:  Nielsen/Arbitron admits candidly that their numbers severely understate rural listenership, and always have.

Somehow, I suspect that farmers and country folk (mostly conservative) greatly outnumber any hippie communes out in the sticks.

So yeah, while the Left may have a systemic problem in putting together a non-traditional media voice, the principal reason they’re always going to fail is that Leftism per se  is hugely disliked by and abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans, FJB’s 81 million “voters” notwithstanding.  And the social adjuncts to Leftism (high taxes, gun control, uncontrolled illegal immigration, LGBTOSTFU and Big Government, to name but some) are each individually just as unpopular as Socialist government in toto.

Long may it ever be so.