NYT "Talk Radio Is Turning Millions of Americans Into Conservatives
The medium is at the heart of Trumpism
https://nyti.ms/2SFJqYc
At least 15 million Americans every week tune into one of the top 15 talk radio programs. They are not monolithically conservative, but they are overwhelmingly so. A dozen of the top 15 shows feature conservative or libertarian hosts — with devoted followings like Rush Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” or Michael Savage’s “Savage Nation” — and only one leans left.
Talk radio may face an aging audience, a decline in ad revenue and competition from new mass media forms like podcasts, but there are still millions of Americans whose politics are shaped by what they listen to on talk radio all day, every day. Fox News gets more of the attention for shaping conservative opinion and for its influence on the Trump administration, but we shouldn’t overlook the power of conservative talk radio.
The conservatism of talk radio only partly overlaps with institutional conservatism, that of right-wing Washington think tanks, magazines and the Republican Party itself. By the early 2000s, it had embraced a version of conservatism that is less focused on free markets and small government and more focused on ethnonationalism and populism. It is, in short, the core of Trumpism — now and in the future, with or without a President Trump.
Talk radio’s power is rooted in the sheer volume of content being produced each week. The typical major talk radio show is produced every weekday and runs three hours, so just the top 15 shows are putting out around 45 hours of content every day. Even setting aside hundreds of additional local shows, the dedicated fan can listen to nothing but conservative talk radio all day, every day of the week, and never catch up.
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(this is an "of course it has...where have you been" op ed to me. it's called propaganda and brainwashing)
= new reply since forum marked as read
it happens in all fascist/dictatorial countries.
enough to make me 
...Of course it's propaganda and brainwashing, and it's been going on since at least 1988 when Rush's show started.
....And this happened because of the elimination of The fairness doctrine in 1987.
"The Fairness Doctrine introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the FCC's view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in 1987.
I won't get into my rant regarding my belief that the elimination of this policy has been a major contributing factor that got us to where we are now.
