NYTimes.com

 Just because we won the election and President-elect Obama would like us all to just  get along, doesn’t mean the fight is over.  

Conservative talk radio appears to be alive and well and planning to stick around.  This strange phenomenon is quite possibly responsible for a lot of the weird anecdotes you hear out there – like people you know personally or friends of friends who say they believe Obama is a Muslim terrorist anti-christ who wants a new flag, etc. –  these odd ideas probably originate on conservative talk radio (okay and FOX News and Drudge).  Perplexed progressives continually scratch their heads over this: Where do people get these ideas?


Amid all the pressures on the radio industry, news-talk stations see an opportunity — and his name is Barack Obama.

After eight years of playing defense for President Bush, the conservatives who dominate talk radio are back on offense.

Hours after Mr. Obama’s election, the country’s most popular radio host, Rush Limbaugh, was talking about the “rebirth of principled opposition.”   Sean Hannity, the second highest-rated host, quickly cast his afternoon show as the home of “conservatism in exile.”

Radio, at least for now, still acts as a national megaphone for influential voices. This year, news talk ranked as the most popular radio format in the United States, surpassing country music for the first time ever. Forty stations have added news talk in the last year, for a total of 2,064 that use the format, up from about 1,500 a decade ago, according to the trade publication M Street.

That means 2,064 stations need 24 hours of programming every day. Stations with tight budgets increasingly rely on programs from Premiere Radio Networks, ABC Radio Networks and other syndication companies. Five of the most popular syndicated names in news-talk radio — Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham — signed new contracts in the last 12 months, all but guaranteeing that they will be rallying listeners for the duration of Mr. Obama’s four-year term. Mr. Limbaugh’s landmark contract, announced in July, promised a total of $400 million through 2016.

One television talker,
Joe Scarborough, is starting a radio show….  Mr. Scarborough expects his program to provide more political balance than some others.  “We have been in an era where….a lot of conservative talk show hosts decided that if they just read Republican talking points, they’d get a big audience. I think that world is coming to an end. You’re going to have to be entertaining like Limbaugh, but also allow people of all political stripes on the show.”

(Click here to read the entire article).

What You Can Do:
Take action.   If you have a spare minute or two, you can contact your
local Limbaugh-carrying station (they’re everywhere – you have one…)
and ask them what other political talk programming they are airing for
the purpose of balance and fairness.  If they are stumped, you have an
opening to suggest DemocracyNow! or the Stephanie Miller Show or Air
America Radio or something else.  This is a simple, effective grassroots media reform
action that we all can do.