Obama Effect:
Talk Radio Rises

By Todd Seavey

For a while, it seemed as if terrestrial talk radio was on the wane as cable news, satellite radio, and the Internet gobbled up audience share.

Not this year. President Obama has meant a big boost for broadcast ratings, especially for talk radio.

During a year in which Obama has lambasted Rush Limbaugh as the real head of the Republican Party, Limbaugh’s listeners have only grown in number — as have the listeners of other conservative radio personalities.

The ratings service Arbitron reports that Limbaugh’s numbers rose by up to a full share point in several major markets in August, the peak of the townhall fervor, giving him from 5 percent to 10 percent of all radio listeners in those areas for his time slot.

Limbaugh has averaged about 15 million listeners in 2009, up from about 13 million two years ago, according to the radio industry trade magazine Talkers. Second-place pundit Sean Hannity is up from about 12 million to 14 million listeners during that same timespan.

With Bible-based financial advice guru Dave Ramsey dropping out of the top 10 talk-radio hosts this year, the list has become even more solidly political and conservative. The top 10, in order of descending popularity, are Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher, and William Bennett, according to Talkers.

Most of these talk-radio hosts have seen their audience increase by about one-half million to 1 million listeners over the past two years.

The two most rapidly rising stars have been Glenn Beck, who started out at about 5 million regular listeners and rose to about 8 million during the past two years of the Obama candidacy and presidency, and Mark Levin, who has risen from about 1 million to 6 million — all the while denouncing Obama, and liberalism in general, as “tyranny.” Indeed, Levin’s latest book, Liberty and Tyranny, has been atop The New York Times best-seller list since it debuted there in March.

Although no serious effort has been made to restore the Fairness Doctrine, the rise of conservative radio has cultivated an inclination to restore the mandate for equal broadcast time for opposing political views among Democratic politicians.

Obama’s White House says he opposes the Fairness Doctrine but may embrace other initiatives that achieve the same goal — such as “localism,” which limits the amount of syndicated programming a radio station can air. Talk radio supporters are bracing for the worst. Obama may be getting his ducks in a row at the Federal Communications Commission before he makes any move. He has tapped hardcore leftist Mark Lloyd to be the commission’s diversity chief.

As originally published in Newsmax magazine.