LIBERADIO(!)

Okay. Kleinheider’s analysis of the futility of our recent testimony in front of the FCC is bugging me. Here’s why: liberal talk radio isn’t a failed experiment in Middle Tennessee; it’s an experiment that’s never had an appropriate catalyst. Adam Smith’s invisible hand, strong as it is, can’t high five every consumer under the sun to congratulate them on another successful purchase without first using market research to determine what they want. Yes, conservative talk radio demonstrated its success in the marketplace in the post-Limbaugh era without having to bootstrap a là Air America. But that followed on the cult of personality established by Mr. Limbaugh. Al Franken could’ve done it the slow way, too, but he wants to run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota and needed a national microphone to make putting the effort into his show worth his time.

In the case of the Nashville radio market, we’ve heard time and again that the assumption is that advertisers are conservative. Less frequently, we’ve heard that radio listeners who might share a higher degree of political affinity with us than Messrs. Valentine and Gill wouldn’t stick around (similar to Kleinheider’s notion of intellectualism in listenership). But I suspect that in a city that trends Democratic in its voting patterns as strongly as Nashville does (such as this year’s record Democratic margin in the Senate race) might yield enough liberal consumers who would spend enough dollars in the stores and for the services of enough advertisers that we could make a serious go of a show on a commercial station.

You don’t think that there’s a chance that local talk radio station owners and programmers are just a wee bit conservative? And that their advertisers might also skew conservative? You don’t suspect that if you looked at the membership of the NFIB and chambers of commerce around the country, that the people making the decisions to join those organizations might also trend conservative? My evidence is only anecdotal, but I’ve participated in local chamber events and know a bit about what makes the NFIB tick because a lot of their content is managed by a local business, and I’d have to say: small and medium-sized business owners who advertise on radio are often conservative.

Obviously, it’s in the best interest of a conservative business person to take money from a liberal consumer. But the data from radio advertising is terrible. You can get aggregate listenership numbers from Arbitron, but stations have to do their own polling if they want to give advertisers demographic information. And forget conversion data, unless it’s done roughly through the use of on-air promos. If there’s any reason we should skip radio and stick with the Internet, it’s because we could demonstrate conversion data much more effectively using statistics garnered from the Web.

Bottom line: I think there are times when the market isn’t supplying something, but people would buy it if it did. Just look at Fox News. It probably could’ve been successful any time after the Reagan revolution, but it wasn’t available, so who could watch conservative news? Here in Nashville, the market has never corrected for an overabundance of liberal talk radio because there’s never been anything to correct. Now that there’s a supply (albeit limited), we’re experiencing market growth.

So the challenge incumbent upon me and Mary with our particular product is to demonstrate to potential advertisers, many of whom I suspect will not balk at our personal politics when we gear up, that we can add value to their business. The response we’ve demonstrated to ourselves thus far — from callers; emails; subscribers to our email newsletter, podcast, and blog — has been positive enough to keep us going. And that’s the market suggesting to us that we’ve found a valuable niche.

And we’re building incrementally. We’ve found an audience on college radio. We’ve built an online presence with our own time and energy. And now we’re signing up advertisers. When we’ve got enough to cover our costs, we’ll go on the air. See you on a clear channel (but probably not Clear Channel) someday soon!

For the record, I think Kleinheider’s secondary point, that radio is dying, is also a non-starter. Why else would satellite radio have started? It’s yet another non-demand (as opposed to on-demand) broadcast technology requiring special equipment. Yet Sirius and XM have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into getting it going (just ask Howard Stern). Old, successful technologies are sticky. Sure, newspaper readership might be declining, but alt-weeklies and free dailies are growing. People will stick with paper and broadcast as long as it’s free. And they’ll pay for premium content, especially when it’s on-demand. So I’ll gladly take my 2 hours to speak my mind while the radio tower still has its signal.