Today, July 10, marks the first anniversary of my radio program.
I set two goals a year ago: To be syndicated to 20 markets and to have achieved a significant share in the hyper-competitive 6 to 9 a.m. Los Angeles market. The show is now heard in more than 40 markets, including coveted morning drive slots in Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle and Tucson and communities as diverse as Boston and Louisville, Honolulu and Tampa Bay. Starting with an almost zero existing audience in Los Angeles, the program is now the second-highest rated talk show there in the morning, and the ratings have far outpaced even the most optimistic projections.
Success is never random, but as the old saying goes, it has many fathers, while failure is an orphan. If I am correct about the primary reason behind the growth, however, there are implications beyond the offices of program directors and general managers in radio stations across the U.S.
It’s a given that media success requires communication ability, and I have got that. Guests matter as well, and my regular contributors – Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, Virginia Postrel and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, Terry Eastland, Erwin Chemerinsky and John Eastman to name just a few – guarantee the listeners sharp and informed insights into national politics. Folks do care about what the government’s up to, so a weekly visit from the Chair of the House Rules Committee David Dreier provides that, as have the parade of electeds from the GOP. A sprinkling of lefties like my old friend Bill Press adds salt. I have added regular features on news from the spheres of religion, literature and, of course, the movies, in order to report on all facets of American life. And our addiction to the often-horrific music of the late ’60s and early ’70s does draw in the crucial radio demographic of adults aged 25 to 54. (Those who have never heard the show will not understand producer Duane’s and engineer Adam’s
unique roles in this regard.)
The product, then, is very good. But many good products do not succeed. Why has this one? Two crucial reasons.
First, the collapse of credibility in American media has left the field open to those who will honestly announce their points of view and fairly present their perspective. The sophistication of the American
consumer when it comes to the news media is not to be underestimated. There is a reason why the big three networks have lost their collective grip on the news business, and it didn’t start with calling Florida for Gore, though that may have put a period at the end of the long, rambling sentence that a Rather
broadcast has become. There is a reason why American newspapers are widely ridiculed. And there is a reason behind the rise of the Fox News Network.
More than half of America does not trust the news media. They believe it – accurately – to be filled to the brim with agenda journalists who will not only shade the truth, but who will also almost inevitably distort it, ignore it when inconvenient, and sometimes outright trample upon it for the purpose of advancing the causes of the left. On issue after issue, including the most obvious ones of reproductive rights, environmental protection, defense preparedness and campaign finance, the agenda of elite
opinion-makers is fixed firmly in the camp of the left side of the left leaning Democratic Party. This is a given, and not even much debated anymore. But the effect of this decline by media elites into boosterism for liberals is the triumph – now unfolding – of the market in matters related to news consumption.
Credit must be given where huge credit is due. Rush Limbaugh was the pioneer, the broadcast journalism equivalent of Lewis and Clark. His double proposition – that politics mattered deeply to huge numbers of people and that the center-right was unrepresented on the airwaves has been proven
beyond doubt in the only measure that matters in the media marketplace, audience size. Limbaugh is the most influential journalist in America, period.
Roger Ailes was watching, and this entrepreneur of ideas provisioned a wagon train to the center-right called the Fox News Network and the ratings success in the world of cable could not have been more dramatic. CNN had anchored itself on the left side, and went from the Clinton News Network to
the Collapsing News Network. CNBC and MSNBC somehow convinced themselves that Chris Matthews and Tim Russert (a former Tip O’Neil and former Mario Cuomo aide respectively) could earn the trust of center-right America, and threw in Jonathan Alter to keep the way-left happy. Ailes must scratch his head some nights, wondering how long the television gods will favor him with mule-headed ideologues at the competition’s helm.
My program’s launch and take-off has been powered by the same dynamic. Rush works different hours from me, and Hume, O’Reilly and Hannity work nights. When I attend to the center-right, nobody else in America is doing so. A monopoly on an approach in a time-slot is a very good thing to have.
Now to the second key. I am a skilled editor because God has blessed me with a pretty rare quality: News judgment.
There are vast numbers of Americans who care passionately about the news and their country. But they are pressed for time, and awash in a sea of choices. Most newspapers are hopelessly late in a news cycle that never ends, and many of them (think the Left Angeles Times) are just laughable on matters of importance to the center-right.
(An aside: The Times ran a full page ad this week trumpeting the paper’s three new opinion columnists, Peter King, John Balzar and Steve Lopez – the Huey, Dewey, and Louie of the left. This trio joins Sacramento-based Slumberin’ George Skelton to guarantee Times’ readers 14 versions of the same thing each and every week, proving conclusively not only everything I have written above, but also this paper’s collapse into a House of Mirrors for a frightened and aging crowd of ’60s crusaders, who
collectively seem to believe if you talk to yourself long enough, that must mean nobody else matters.)
So what are these information-hungry news consumers doing? They are selecting new editors. It’s as simple as that. My ratings are surging because I am both a pretty good commentator and a pretty good editor.
Virtually unnoticed by the viziers of the opinion elite, an unstoppable threat to their information hegemony has arisen on the radio and now on the Web. Others have found a way of communicating with the public about the priority that stories and perspectives ought to be given. The Left has mistaken Rush as a commentator. He is that, of course, but he is also an editor. So is Brit Hume. So is Tony Snow on Sunday morning. And since July 10 of last year, so am I. And America wants new editors, to quote the vice president, “big time.”
On my list of favorite websites, there are two that represent what I am talking about. Reason magazine editor-at-large Virginia Postrel runs Vpostrel.com. Intellectual-at-large and utility infielder of the center-left Mickey Kaus runs Kausfiles.com. Postrel and Kaus have become – for me and for other visitors to their sites – editors of a huge, indeed unquantifiable torrent of news and information, all of which has been made available to every computer owner via the Web. So, for that matter, have Drudge and Andrew Sullivan, the “best of the web” feature of the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal and Lucianne.com. There are scores of others. Traffic cops with commentary added in, you might easily mistake these sites as indulgent “me-zines” but they are really just the first wave of Ube-editors to claim this role. Yes, they give their own two-cents worth, but they are primarily interested in sending you to the “good stuff.”
Another category of websites, including of course WorldNetDaily, as well as RealClearPolitics.com and Free Republic are staffed by more than a single pair of hands, but these sites too are quickly establishing themselves as alternatives to news room and network hierarchies when it comes to directing America’s collective attention to this or that story.
Eventually, a new elite of Web and radio editors will emerge, and their collective impact will be as great as that of the big bosses at the New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They will begin to set the news cycle, to cue the horde of worker bees in the world of journalism, to drive the stories. And they will do so because the staffs of the newsgathering organizations will have to listen or be left behind.
My show has enjoyed a wonderful inaugural year because I have earned the trust of my audience not only as a commentator, but also as an editor. That elusive gift – news judgment – is the key to all media. Are you reporting or commenting on the stories/ controversies/ issues/ events/ hobbies about which large numbers of Americans have an interest? Do they trust you to anticipate in their curiosity? And do they trust you to lay it out fairly, and to announce your opinions as just that, opinions, and not facts.
The old elites have substituted their political enthusiasms in the place of news judgment, and they gave up on fairness long ago. My audience trusts me to pick the stories that matter, and to present them with my commentary and with various viewpoints – and humor – mixed in. It seems to be working.
