A Busful Of Right-Wing Clowns

Friday the American Federation of Teachers kicked off a multistate election bus tour in Cincinnati, which traveled up to Toledo and Cleveland. The "Your Vote-Your Right-Their Futures" tour is on the way through the Northeast and down to Florida and is meant to build excitement around re-electing Obama and other pro-worker candidates. The AFT is highlighting the on-the-ground organizing, volunteer mobilization, member-to-member communication and get-out-the-vote efforts. But the AFT bus isn't the only one campaigning up and down the highways of America. The Romney campaign has a clown car bus.

You probably read how Romney credentialed lunatic fringe conspiracy nut Jerome Corsi for his official press plane last week but if you missed it, Rachel did a story last week:



Unfortunately, Romney doesn't have room for all the kooks and nuts who are flocking to his campaign in the final weeks of his public career. In fact, they've loaded up a pack of right-wing comedians and Hate Talk radio hosts onto a bus and have them criss-crossing the country. The clowns get to tell jokes about lady parts and make up lies about... well, everything. “Dennis Miller is a funny guy, but he understands that the challenges facing our nation are no laughing matter,” said Mitt Romney... "As I travel around the country explaining my plan for a stronger middle class, I am happy to have Dennis Miller on my team.” And Miller isn't the only Hate Talker spreading misinformation for Romney/Ryan. Insider Radio hipped us to the right-wing bus tour.

Radio talk personalities often motivate people to go out and vote, but the presidential election is motivating some hosts to get out of the studio. Salem talent will go out on a six-state tour, while Dial Global’s Dennis Miller is hitting the campaign trail with the Romney-Ryan campaign.

After entertaining the crowd at a debate-watching party last night in New York as part of a three-day, $50,000 a person fundraiser, Miller will appear at rallies scheduled for this week in the battleground states of Virginia and Florida. Miller also entertained high-end donors last month at a Romney fundraiser in Los Angeles, after which the nominee said Miller’s humor was “uplifting” and “encouraging.” Dial Global says Miller will host his radio show from the road while campaigning.

Meanwhile, Salem Radio Networks says hosts including Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt and Mike Gallagher will appear in nine cities across six states in the coming weeks. The “Battleground States Talkers’ Tour” will also feature actor Jon Voight to energize conservative voters. Salem Radio president David Santrella says the free events will also “encourage informed participation in the democratic process.” The Salem tour will include stops in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Colorado, including some markets where Salem owns stations. “These events will be a terrific complement to the positive impact they have been making day in, day out throughout this cycle,” SRN president Greg Anderson says.

Radio industry columnist Jerry Del Colliano understands that these Hate Talk Radio businesses have to do something to get some attention. Overall, they're losing impact-- and losing money. The Hate Talk Radio format, like it's listeners, is dying. "The numbers are old-- too old," writes Colliano, "to be attractive much longer, and advertisers are spooked. And there are no reinforcements in sight. But that’s not all. For the first time the radio groups that have been propping up talk radio are beginning to show signs that their attitudes are changing now as well." And it isn't just Salem Radio Network, virtually an integrated part of the Republican Party now, that's floundering and desperate. Limbaugh's in trouble again and Cumulus' signing of deranged sociopath Michael Savage's Savage Nation is, according to Colliano, "a predictor of things to come for talk radio and it’s not very pretty." Part of that is because normal people have been searching out honest, civil talk from hosts like Michael Smerconish over angry rants of the Limbaughs, Becks, Ingrahams and Savages whose listeners are deserting them.

Analysis of industry data shows that in market after market, Rush’s ranking has declined decisively over the past five years among advertisers’ coveted 25-54 age group. For example, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rush fell from sixth to 12th between 2005 and 2010. In Portland, Oregon, he fell from fourth to eighth. In San Francisco, he’s seen a similar decline. Among listeners 65 and older, Rush remains No. 1. He can sell bedpans and resentment forever. But the demographic trend is not his friend.

It’s not that “the angry white guy conservative political talk format”-- as consultant and former Clear Channel talk radio programming director Gabe Hobbs calls it-- is over. It’s just got little room to grow, going forward.

“Rush has been around for 23 years. They’re not necessarily making new Ditto-heads. You have to fish where the fish are,” says Hobbs, who helped launch the radio career of Glenn Beck, among others. “We’re singing to this choir, that’s great, they’re worth a lot of money and they do a lot of wonderful things, but boy, there’s a lot over here we could do.”

“This civil and smart approach-- like [John] Batchelor and Michael Smerconish and some other shows-- to me is kind of a ‘duh,’ '' adds Hobbs, indicating that it should have been obvious long ago. “The numbers that NPR is drawing clearly portends to something. I’ve seen it myself in research. It’s the tone; it’s the approach. Some people don’t want to be engaged at that loud, angry level-- that hard right or left ideological approach where it’s my way or the highway.”