Kudos to Hugh Hewitt for his thoughtful apologetic on Political Talk Radio in an April National Review piece. Some excerpts:
Ratings for political talk are surging, partly because my colleagues and I are attracting new listeners and partly because the old ones are being counted more accurately.
In an age of fractured media, the new Peoplemeter-driven data tell advertisers who need to reach business owners, professionals, married couples with children, and “influencers” generally, where they can find them. These folks are listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, the titans of the industry; to my colleagues and me at the Salem Radio Network — Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, Albert Mohler, and Janet Parshall; and to Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Dennis Miller.
We are very much aware that every day some listeners are sampling our product for the first time, brought there by a deep concern that MSM is in the bag for the popular new president whose path to victory it smoothed by abandoning every standard of political journalism that was established in the past century. The MSM’s fawning coverage of President Obama has left even many of his supporters wondering where they can turn for a useful dose of perspective and constructive criticism. There are millions of moderate Democrats, including those who voted first for Hillary and then only reluctantly for Obama, who no more trust the MSM to report on the administration than conservatives do.
Fifteen-hour-a-week broadcasting allows for many more subjects and much longer conversations than any other platform in the media. Talk radio is prospering because it is the last place for extended, serious discussions with policy experts who are not part of the MSM’s dominant worldview. I spent a decade as a news anchor with the PBS affiliate KCET in Los Angeles, so I know as well as anyone about public television’s strong leftward tilt. I can say from experience that the only broadcast space that will carry long conversations with folks such as classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson or Iranian experts Michael Ledeen and Claudia Rosett, or extended interviews on Israeli elections with the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens or Commentary’s John Podhoretz, is talk radio.
(Rush and Oprah Winfrey are the country’s two greatest communicators, a simple truth to which their ratings attest.)Here’s the secret to our success: Our shows are the last places in America where genuine, sustained, intelligent debate actually occurs on-air, where Left and Right — whether guests or callers — meet, argue, and listen. Americans since the time of the Revolution have always enjoyed — strike that, loved — political debate. And they like it hard-hitting, but not vulgar; pointed and passionate but not extreme or bigoted.
Thanks Mr. Hewitt; I heartily agree.