Silliness. Commercial talk radio like any commodity is intended to MAKE MONEY or, as in the case of NPR, at least break even. If you have a successful Lib talk show you will get sponsors. The truth you claim to want made public is that socialism, like Lib talk radio, is an abject failure. Get off your butt and help pull the train ... there's a lot of peeps riding it who genuinely need our help.![]()
I have yet to see you address the question but it's looking like you believe the purpose of radio is to sell things.*
We already know the purpose of advertising is to sell us things we don't need (things we do need, we're already seeking). Therefore in your view radio has no purpose but advertising, which is to say, you apparently believe radio has no constructive purpose at all.
And if that's the premise, then content on that radio is irrelevant, except as it serves ratings. And ratings measure attention, not assent; and attention is won by controversy and drama and strong emotion -- certainly not by rectitude or accuracy. Therefore ideology is irrelevant. It's all in how the message is framed, i.e. the style. If one treats radio as nothing more than a commodity, then what "sells" that commodity is not liberal talk or conservative talk or sports or any genre of music ---- it's how well the psychological manipulation of attention-seeking is executed.
In other words when Lush Rimjob declares his "talent on loan from God", he doesn't win listeners for his alleged "talent" -- he wins listeners for his overabundant arrogance. And that's got nothing to do with his subject matter; it's personal.
*(Not that I agree at all with that assessment of the purpose of radio; I think it hopelessly boxes itself in with a slavish commodity mentality -- a Ferengi world where everything has a price and must be transacted in order to have validity. "Flop", after all, derives from a world of top 40 music radio --- a world where art is reduced to a commodity for sale. And that's the problem with the whole pretense of the question; it's invalid. Discourse is not a commodity.)
You've certainly seen my description of radio's purpose (post #168) but you seem more interested in ignoring it and putting your words into my mouth. I assure you, to the owners of radio stations their asset exists to earn money but just to show what a good sport I am, even in the fact of willful obstinance, I will repost:
"The market determines the utility and value of products ... Radio's utility has been info and entertainment. Talk radio is a mixture of the two. Get it right and you have a successful show. Get it wrong and you have Lib talk radio."
You continue to dance around a definition without giving one. Describing what happens if you pick from Column A and what happens when you pick from Column B, is NOT a definition.
You seem to assume above (and of course I can't put words in your mouth but it's implied) that the purpose of radio is to "sell things". Not sure why that's such a bugaboo to answer but there it is -- and to follow the statement out to the end, it also seems you see some correlation between accuracy and ratings response. And I defy you to demonstrate where that theory has any validity at all.