Why is no network willing to take a chance on liberals?

[Killarney]

Why don't we have our own FoxNews? Or at the very least, our own show with a liberal host on CNN or MSNBC? Tucker in talks with MSNBC has me thinking. There is not one show on cable news with an outspoken liberal host. Sure, the right claims we have Olbermann and Matthews, but let's be honest here. Matthews stated publicly that he voted for Bush in 2000. Olbermann is fair and is most certainly no fan of the right-wing, but he has stated publicly that he did not vote in this election. These guys are not our equivolent of Hannity and O'Reilly. We have no one on our side hosting their own show. And we obviously don't have our own FoxNews.

Why not?

From a business perspective, this is a huge opportunity.

Market size? Try half the country. Half the country has no show to watch, no cable network. If we were given our own Faux, we would watch and we would be loyal.

Could it compete with Fox? You bet. Democrats on average have more education than Republicans and a higher IQ, so we naturally gravitate more to intellectual conversation, debate shows, etc. Most of the Republican base is watching Paris Hilton shovel shit on her latest show while a small percentage of their base is watching Fox. The highest rating is O'Reilly with 2 million. Do you think if we were given our own Fox, more than 2 million of us would watch at a time? You're damn right we would.

Would a liberal-minded news network be profitable? You're damn right. Not only would ratings be high, but they could easily attract advertisers because of the base of people watching. Democrats on average not only have higher education than Republicans, but have higher household income and higher discretionary income to spend on products you want to advertise! It's an advertisers dream.

Come on businesspeople. You want a market opportunity? Here it is. Just find your balls and make it happen. Half the country is aching for their POV to be shown on cable news. It is not happening now. CNN is not the "Democrats" network. CNN is Fox-lite. They have failed as a network. The opportunity is there. Take it.

[itzamirakul]

1. The corporations and entities that own these stations

want to own even MORE public airwaves. So they do not WANT a liberal voice that might question the way they are getting the FCC to give in to their demands. By controlling the airwaves they control the information that we are privvy to - so in the long run they can do what they have already done to half of the country that listens to FOX and to Rush.

As far as our dollars are conerned, they aren't really concerned. They own most of the products that we find to be necessities in life. They own the foodstuffs, the transportation, the property...so we have to do business with them whether or not they support our particular viewpoint.

[Sara Beverley]

2. They are all owned by RW fat cats who love the status-quo

And it looks like at least half the voting public likes the status-quo also.

[leftyandproud]

3. the left is authoritatian on economic/business issues

so they obviously aren't going to dominate the business world.

if they did, they would be conservative.

Lets be honest about this.

You are never going to have a national media outlet with the main on-air personalities calling for more media regulation and higher corporate taxes.

[jobycom]

12. I don't agree. You have all networks currently pimping for a party that

consistently drives the economy down and devalues the dollar. You are talking about perception, not reality. The Democratic Party is clearly better for the economy, and thus for business. It is only the constant barrage of propoganda that makes people believe otherwise. Having a network spew pro-Democratic stuff all the time could help to change that perception, especially since it is so at odds with reality.

I don't believe it would work for other reasons, as I'll post below.

[Killarney]

13. Good point. I'm sure corporations did better in the 90's

when we had a Dem in office than now.

Bush is really screwing his base (corps) with his fiscal irresponsibility.

[tsuki]

4. You cannot attract a "librul" to the news room if they are always

getting beat up. You have to have an agenda, not a knee-jerk reaction to the Republican message.

The smart arm, as they tell us, the DLC, need to start framing messages and stop attacking their own party to get headlines.

[Danocrat]

5. Did the Soviets ever have a voice in Pravda?

[newportdadde]

6. I'm right there with you but...

it is going to have a hard time happening. I live in KCMO, we have absolutely no talk radio that is center much less liberal.. and although we went Bush the last two times, we also went Clinton before that. So that tells me there is an audience for it especially in Jackson county, one of the only counties that did go blue this year in the state.

It never happens though, it would be a revenue gold mine but nope. I guess here like most the country the folks that are in the business are Republican and therefore there own ideological views are enough to lure them away from untapped revenue(which is amazing in itself if it can fight that ingrain greed).

[displacedtexan]

7. Cold Hard Facts and Brutal Reality don't sell advertising minutes...

the way that salacious innuendo and sensational real-life crime dramas do.

[KarenS]

8. Ed Schultz keeps talking about this, too.

'Everyone' said that Liberal Talk Radio would not make it, but it is,,,,

Com'on George Soros ~ please help the cause.

[Killarney]

10. Exactly. How many times were we told AA would fail?

How many times did the right-wing media pronounce that Air America would fail? That it would never get past three stations. It has grown faster than right-wing radio did when they started.

And never get past three stations? Hmm...
Nationally:
XM Satellite Radio - ch. 167
Sirius Satellite Radio - ch. 144
West
Albany/Corvallis, OR - KTHH 990 AM
Eugene, OR - KOPT 1450 AM
Phoenix, AZ - KXXT 1010 AM
Portland, OR - KPOJ 620 AM
Riverside, CA - KCAA 1050 AM
Sacramento, CA - KSQR 1240 AM
Santa Barbara, CA - KTLK 1340 AM
San Diego, CA - 1360 AM KLSD
San Luis Obisbo, CA - 1340 AM KYNS
San Francisco, CA - 960 AM KQKE
Seattle, WA - 1090 AM KPTK
South Lake Tahoe, NV KTHO 590 AM
Central
Albuquerque, NM - KABQ 1350 AM
Ann Arbor, MI - WLBY 1290 AM
Columbus, OH - WTPG 1230 AM
Denver, CO - KKZN 760 AM
Madison, WI - WXXM 92.1 FM
Minneapolis, MN - KSNB 950 AM
Petoskey, MI - WWKK 750 AM
Santa Fe, NM - KTRC 1260 AM
East
Asheville, NC - WPEK 880 AM
Atlanta, GA - WWAA 1690 AM
Boston, MA - WKOX 1200 AM and WXKS 1430 AM
Chapel Hill, NC - WCHL 1360 AM
Charleston, SC - WSSP 730 AM
Key West, FL - WKIZ 1500 AM
Miami, FL - WINZ 940 AM
New Haven, CT - WAVZ 1300 AM
New York City - WLIB 1190 AM
Northampton, MA - WHMP 1400 AM
Philadelphia, PA - WHAT 1340 AM
Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT - WTWK 1070 AM
Portland, ME - WLVP 870 AM
Providence, RI - WHJJ 920 AM
Rochester, NY - WROC 950 AM
West Palm Beach, FL - WJNO 1290 AM
Alaska and Hawaii
Anchorage, AK - KUDO 1080 AM
Honolulu, HI - KUMU 1500 AM
Maui, HI - KAOI 1110 AM
Kauai, HI - KQNG 570 AM

[VaYallaDawg]

9. My opinion is that many Americans

don't want to process any thinking that can't fit on a bumper sticker. And that's the way the RW media work. Short sentences, one-syllable words and a hee-hee-hee mentality that then moves on to the next disaster.

[LisaLL]

11. a credibility station

I think a better idea would be to have a station built on credibility, accuracy, fact-checking, and substantiation--and promote it as such.

A big part of selling the Conservative agenda is deception. Setting a high standard of truthfulness and teaching the public how to tell the difference between truth, spin, and lies will allow us to return to honest debates about goals and policies. This benefits all of us.

[ScaRBama]

14. I agree....

We need hard hitting news that's not afraid to show what really is going on in this world. Don't kiss ass on either side of the isle and get to the real deal. I get so tired of the labels and tags people carry around on their sleeves.

[jobycom]

15. Because "liberals" wouldn't agree with each other enough to watch it

There is no one liberal viewpoint that would sell. If we had a network with a pro-Democrat slant, it would piss off the far left, anti-NAFTA, no compromise crew. If we went with the far left wing, we'd lose the mainstream of the party. If we tried to please both, we'd be a bland compromise less exciting than the Weather Channel. Any way, we'd get only part of the liberal audience, and the other part would be too pissed off to listen.

Read any third party thread and see how widely disparate the views of the party are, and of liberalism are. Half of DU, even, feels that the other half is the enemy, and vice-versa. We'd wind up with a network attacked more by other liberals than by the conservatives.

And unless we chose the mainstream liberal route, we'd never attract non-Democratic voters, anyway. We aren't going to get Bush's voters all the way over to the far left in a single bound. We have to pull them to the middle first, and then show them the rest. And a network that did that would be called a liberal sellout, and it wouldn't maintain an audience share long enough to work.

Liberals are too spoiled to get their own network, we're too spoiled to win. We don't want to win badly enough yet. We aren't truly hungry. Bush doesn't piss us off enough, yet. That's why we still argue amongst ourselves about third parties and why Daschle was a sellout, instead of supporting anyone who can win with a D in front of their name. Republicans don't have to tear down our party, we do it ourselves, and a network would only expose that more. When we get hungry enough to win, we will.

Then there is the question of sponsors. Most major corporations have a conservative bias because they care more about tax cuts than about improving the economy. It's the Lee Iacocca syndrome. Lee believed that you run a business by the quarter, not the long term. If the business was down that quarter, you did what you could to fix it. Corporations are run by short sigthed business schoolers who believe that tax cuts help their companies, because of the sudden influx of money. They don't see the destructive effect they have on the economy. Thus, they will sponsor networks that help them get those tax cuts, and not networks that call for more responsible government economic policies.

[forgethell]

16. I don't know if it would

be profitable. I'd like to see it happen. But I think your "half the country" demographic is way off. Yes the most intelligent and educated people are Democrats, but so are most of the undereducated. The later probably watch a lot of television, but I doubt very seriously it is news that they are watching, let alone the type the smarter Democrats like to watch. And do the smarter Democrats watch that much TV to begin with?? I don't know, but I would guess they didn't get smart just by watching PBS. My thought is, and I know 'cause I've got one, a Ph.D. requires more than brains, it requires a hell of a lot of work and 'stick-to-it-tiveness' and downright stubbornness.

Finally, common sense says that if it were profitable, it would already have succeeded by now. Wasn't it Lenin who said something like the capitalists would sell you the rope you hanged them with??

Still, I would be happy to be proven wrong on all counts. I haven't been following their fortunes because I don't have a station than carries them, but how is Air America doing?

[Killarney]

17. How AA is doing.

We were told that AA would sink within months. That AA would never get past three stations. It has grown much faster than right-wing radio did when it began. It has corporate sponsors, so corporations are not scared nor averse to advertising on liberal airwaves. And about that 'it will never get past 3 stations' thing that the Republicans repeated like a mantra... here's where AA stands now:

Nationally:
XM Satellite Radio - ch. 167
Sirius Satellite Radio - ch. 144
West
Albany/Corvallis, OR - KTHH 990 AM
Eugene, OR - KOPT 1450 AM
Phoenix, AZ - KXXT 1010 AM
Portland, OR - KPOJ 620 AM
Riverside, CA - KCAA 1050 AM
Sacramento, CA - KSQR 1240 AM
Santa Barbara, CA - KTLK 1340 AM
San Diego, CA - 1360 AM KLSD
San Luis Obisbo, CA - 1340 AM KYNS
San Francisco, CA - 960 AM KQKE
Seattle, WA - 1090 AM KPTK
South Lake Tahoe, NV KTHO 590 AM
Central
Albuquerque, NM - KABQ 1350 AM
Ann Arbor, MI - WLBY 1290 AM
Columbus, OH - WTPG 1230 AM
Denver, CO - KKZN 760 AM
Madison, WI - WXXM 92.1 FM
Minneapolis, MN - KSNB 950 AM
Petoskey, MI - WWKK 750 AM
Santa Fe, NM - KTRC 1260 AM
East
Asheville, NC - WPEK 880 AM
Atlanta, GA - WWAA 1690 AM
Boston, MA - WKOX 1200 AM and WXKS 1430 AM
Chapel Hill, NC - WCHL 1360 AM
Charleston, SC - WSSP 730 AM
Key West, FL - WKIZ 1500 AM
Miami, FL - WINZ 940 AM
New Haven, CT - WAVZ 1300 AM
New York City - WLIB 1190 AM
Northampton, MA - WHMP 1400 AM
Philadelphia, PA - WHAT 1340 AM
Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT - WTWK 1070 AM
Portland, ME - WLVP 870 AM
Providence, RI - WHJJ 920 AM
Rochester, NY - WROC 950 AM
West Palm Beach, FL - WJNO 1290 AM
Alaska and Hawaii
Anchorage, AK - KUDO 1080 AM
Honolulu, HI - KUMU 1500 AM
Maui, HI - KAOI 1110 AM
Kauai, HI - KQNG 570 AM

[forgethell]

18. Very impressive.

Thanks for the info.

[Killarney]

20. You're quite welcome!

There are ratings info out there somewhere, but it's city by city. They're doing well. Franken beats Limbaugh in the blue states. Not bad for brand new stations competing against well-established FM stations!

[Patiod]

19. I get furious when I hear "there's no market"

Someone said that Friday on "NOW".

I tend to agree with the folks here who say
1) that the owners don't share the liberal point of view
2) that not enough sponsors share the liberal point of view
3) that those that might are lily-livered, and would never stand up to inevitable protests and boycotts that the Rushes and Hannitys of the world would demand it a liberal network ever got some teeth.

As for AA, they're doing great, but I'm frustrated that in the 5th largest market in the US (Phila), they're only on noon - 7pm (just Franken and Rhodes)