The influential Talkers Magazine has released its annual “Heavy Hundred” ranking of radio talk show programs for 2012. This list is commonly dominated by conservative shows due mainly to the fact that right-wing radio syndicators and station groups refuse to schedule liberal programming on their networks. Nevertheless, a few liberal programs manage to break through and prove that the radio audience is not a Great Wall of Tea Party rightists.
The most significant shift in the rankings is the precipitous drop of Glenn Beck. In 2011 Beck came in at #3, but with this year’s list he nose-dived to #9. That decline is surely the result of the cancellation of his Fox News program last summer. By denying him that platform he has been unable to sustain his position. Either that or it was George Soros dispatching his socialist goons to pressure editors at Talkers Magazine to fudge the list.
During the same time frame, Ed Schultz rose from #9 to #4 on the list. Stephanie Miller rocketed from #21 to #11. And Thom Hartmann (#8), Joe Madison (#10), and Alan Colmes (#15) all held steady.
Conservatives have been arguing for years that the reason liberals are not more successful on talk radio was because the market rejected them. That is demonstrably untrue and this new ranking is evidence that progressive talk is in demand. Whether that has any impact on the commercial operations of the conservative-run radio companies remains to be seen. But if they were to be honest they would have to start employing more liberal talent because that is what the marketplace is demanding.
As for Beck, he is currently begging his supporters to buy tickets to his upcoming “Restoring Love” event in Texas on July 28. It is being held in the 100,000 seat Cowboys Stadium which Beck is desperate to sell out. Tickets go on sale to the public tomorrow and Beck warned his listeners that they will probably be gone the same day. Somehow, I doubt it. With his popularity plummeting, his audience crumbling, and his credibility in tatters, I would expect that Beck will be preaching to an abundance of empty seats.
Remember, Beck couldn’t get 100,000 people to show up for his Washington, D.C. event when he still had Fox News to promote it. These are the End Times for Beck, and the darkness he so often predicts for the world is closing in around him now. Look for his next project to be a new communal survivalist colony in Guyana.
Uh, surely anything Beck touches won’t be “communal” in any way- he can merely rely on his rugged individualism. Ayn Rand would be appalled by the suggestion.
Wandering alone in the jungles of Guyana seems like a fitting end for his story.
I know trends are more significant than numbers, but if merit were a measure #9 is still far higher than Beck deserves.
I look forward to the year when Beck drops off the list entirely. The descent can’t be too precipitous.
I have also read that a very possible reason for success of conservative talk hosts vs. liberal is merely demographics. Liberals are less likely to listen to talk radio, while older, whiter conservatives are more likely to listen to talk radio. That’s a rejection of the argument that liberal talkers are untalented or are failures; it’s an argument that there is simply a smaller overall market.
Guess what? Beck only had single tickets left after the first 5 minutes of ticket sales. What part of a positive event like Restoring America do you not understand? Do you actually listen to his show or just read talking points of people who despise him as Mark does?
it sold out in less than an hour. only single seats were avail 5 mins after tix went on sale. LOL
Oops…
Guess all that “beggin” paid off…LOL.
And just for the Wash DC event ,…the National Parks service est it @ over 300K,so I dont know where you are gettin your numbers but perhaps you should talk to the people who actually hosted the event..
Jeez…you lefties and your propaganda.
Bottom line..GB sold out…you lose.
I think check or ancy reported 87k at the time, which was laughable. I was there. the crowd extended under the trees in width and cleared the Washington Monument in length. It was clearly more than 87k, yet years later, hacks like this guy are still believing convenient fallacy. And we see it is to their own peril, a commitment to their own ignorance, bc today they are still blind to the power if the movement Beck is encouraging.
l will admit even I am a little surprised at the ticket results today. It’s true Beck doesn’t have a cable news show. It’s true that people invest $10 a month to replace advertising. And its true Dallas is in a more sparsely populated area of the country with fewer major cities close to one another making transportation to the event more difficult.
It didn’t matter. 100k with seats in under 60 minutes, and millions more will follow and volunteer that weekend across the country in their communities. That’s incredible. How could any good person be against that?
Should have bought the 4 tickets so you could go.
Do you good to get off the Lib reservation and hear something other than the socialist party line.
Or will they let you…?
Most communist countries dont allow their citizens to travel freely so they cant see the other side….I was thinkin maybe the Progressive party had the same restrictions…?
If it will give you any incentive…I was a card carrying IBEW member for 14 years and a true blue Lib for twice that amount of time until I started my own business and got my eyes opened.
Let me tell you,it was not easy to accept and realize that all I thought was right and true was not.
I have not looked back since…I now try to conveet all the misguided I can as a penance for my 30 years of stupidity..
Churchill said it best: “If you are young and not a liberal you dont have a heart….if you are 40 and a liberal ,you dont have a brain.”
How true..
sorry for autocorrect error
check or ancy was CBS or ABC
The highest independent estimate of the attendance at Beck’s Restoring Honor event in D.C. was 96k. The only sources for numbers higher than that were from Beck or other partisans. And I should note that Beck may not be using the entire stadium. It is not uncommon for events to lease only 10 or 20 thousand seats. So a sellout would be far less than the 100k capacity. That’s something we don’t know at this time.
Also, I just now went to the Ticketmaster site for Restoring Love and entered a request to purchase 4 tickets. They were available all together, in a prime location. (Click image to enlarge)
Maybe Beck should rename his event Restoring Lies.
Actually, you don’t know because you listen to division merchants. He is using the entire stadium. He said so, again, on his show today.
And the rest of your post is simply factually untrue. It’s common knowledge, and again repeated here, the park service estimated 300k. As for the other, Beck would say on his show, live, that the event is sold out why? So people wouldn’t buy tickets?
Dude, you are so invested in your ignorance. And why? So people will be discouraged to rally around the concept of individual charity? What’s the matter with you? You don’t have to try so hard. You are sure to keep it. The rest of us, our eyes and hearts are wide spanking open.
I know its a collosal leap for you to accept the premise Americans are great and don’t need government to give of themselves. We don’t need an intermediary to launder stolen money to the poor or to give of our time. So its true I ask your problem in jest. I know the reason for all your machinations.
However, its happening, again…and watching your head explode, while endlessly rewarding, won’t even approach the empowerment we feel when we all roll up our sleeves and do this thing.
Your defeatist, progressive vision is dying a horrible,.excruciating death because the battle waged is in spirit. Here we are. Deal with us. We stand for goodness and giving, love and liberty. You can fight those ideals or join in celebrating them.
Look, I appreciate your coming here to engage in debate, but can you please try to be factual? Do you have a link to Beck’s claim that the event is sold out? Do you have a link to your claim about the Park Service crowd estimate?
In fact, the Park Service provided no estimate at all. They stopped doing so years ago. Beck had acquired a permit for up to 300,000 before the event, but that’s very different from an estimate post-event.
And if you think that Beck is telling the truth about the event being sold out – and that I’m lying – why don’t you go to the Ticketmaster site and see for yourself (since my screen cap wasn’t sufficient). You’ll see that your hero is the one lying. Tickets are still readily available.
Finally, you ought not to judge people (the Bible even warns against it). Liberals like myself are very open-hearted and we even appreciate the good works that conservatives engage in. We just don’t buy into former shock-jocks, phony self-promoters, and wannabe political-evangelists like Beck.
“…launder stolen money to the poor..”? Are you writing this from your underground bunker?
o
perhaps, in a manner of speaking, bc this stuff happened today, as it did two years ago, yet yall are still surprised. So either we are underground or you are under a rock.
That’s a very measured response, Mark, but what’s communicated is clear. Neither one of us is going to convince the other of anything. And that’s ok. So just sit and watch what happens. You should be used to that.
Steve, I’ve heard that quote too and its clever, as so many of Churchill’s were. (My fav is ‘if you are going through hell, keep going.) I’m not sure its true tho that if you are young and not liberal you have no heart. After all, if there a is anything Beck epitomozes it is that you can be conservative and still dream. Do you know of a bigger dreamer than Glenn Beck or one more youthful in spirit?
Beck is a flimflam man. He is selling you what he made believe you needed. There had been history like him throughout history. He sells to the gullible what they want to hear. He, just like fox news shuts down your curiosity and a desire to use your human curiosity to delve into searching for the truth to expand your own mind. After his conspiracy theories became too bizarre for roger ails, beck shifted to to comfort of religion aimed at people who are in fear of change, and the world is changing, marching ahead through scientific exploration and a natural acceptance that people are becoming more tolerant, so he pulls them back to the comfort of the authoritian of religion. Bigotry is not that the bigots oppose everyone who doesn’t look, think, believe and act like them….it’s just that god does. You are taken for a ride, my fellow Americans, a ride along with others that fear a black intelligent president, who has the audacity to live in your whitehouse and the knowledge that between the Hispanic and black and liberal populations according to the last census will soon become the Majority in this country. Birth control must be cut off, along with abortions, higher education must become available only to the wealthy, education must continue to decline. Have you ever noticed that everything that the wealthy, who made their millions on the infrusture and education and military protections and laws and regulations of our ancestors and previous generations investments in this country, plus all the innovations that were funded by tax payer dollars then turned over to private industry to profit from have decided that they owe nothing to the future society. Everything that the wealthy, who, thanks to the democracy of this wonderful country enabled them to accumulate such wealth, everything that is unessery to the wealthy and that they personally never use such as SS, medicare, public schools, pell grants, clean water, environmental damages, help in any way for the middle-class or the poor…they want to do away with.
Beck in interested in money and you his devoted followers are all too happy to oblige. The GOP have caused Americans to hate each other, we are devised, those who we disagree with are our enemies, not someone with different viewpoints that we disagree with, but unenlightened idiots, dangerous enemines who must be destroyed. Look look over there at that person who is not like you…..he is the problem, now if you would just open your wallet and slip beck some greenbacks….he will tell you just what you need to hear.
Well….guess the question of how many seats were sold has been answered.
All people with tickets who are not going to come are being asked to contact them so they can be traded or sold for those who are looking..
Saw a great bumper sticker yesterday: “If you voted for Obama to prove you werent a racist,vote for someone else this time to prove you arent an idiot.”
Why don’t you bother to document what you say? I have no evidence that what you’re saying is true. On the other hand, I just went to the TicketMaster site and was able to find a ticket for the event:
Section C113
Row 5
Seats 13
Price Level 2
Club Level
So it is still not sold out. And since this article was posted it has been reported that Beck is only contracting to use about 30,000 seats in the arena, so his bar is much lower than originally thought.
And the only person who would put that bumpersticker on their car is an idiot. Good luck ripping it off.
Mark, you are right and we are wrong. No one is gonna end up going to this thing. Nothing to see here.
Look at you all! Bickering over how many tickets Beck has sold – Pathetic! Why don’t you all get a life and do something constructive like trying to bring people together to help those in need as Glenn Beck is doing. Like him or hate him for his politics, but what on earth can you people (and I use that term loosely) be against with respect to “Restoring Love”???
Beck is bringing people together???
He is the most divisive, hateful person in the media today. He does nothing but insult and demean anyone he disagrees with. He’s an arrogant, judgmental, narcissist. He’s restoring about as much love as a plague-infected rat.
Beck makes 30 million a year, he doesn’t give a shit about the human condition. He is in it fcr himself. And I believe the crap that he spews. It is all about the bucks. He is taking you for fools and you deserve it for being the mindless idiots you are.
It’s just how they operate, incomm. They have isolated themselves within their us vs them, end justifies the means method and commitment to their ideology. This means no good can come or therefore be enjoyed when spearheaded by the ‘them’. It keeps them from coming together. It keeps them even from the reward of being americans and this display is an apt illustration. I held out hope for while. After all, Joe Leiberman doesn’t share Beck’s politics either but found something for which he could unite with him. And you are right. How objectionable could love, charity and service be regardless of one’s political beliefs. However, when it becomes evident you are talking to a wall, you either stop talking, or resign yourself to the fact you are the kind of idiot who talks to walls. Why I gave up.
More, after I thought about it, i realized that if such commitment is desired to maintain the us vs them dynamic, it actually benefits us that they chose to dismiss Restoring Love. As was once stated by the corrupt catholic church of Martin Luther, “Small fires are easily quenched.” We all know how that turned out. So, by all means, let them bury their heads in the sand. It’s only going to make the metaphorical kick in the ass that much more unexpected.
All anyone can do, (us or them) is the next right thing. It’s up to each individual to determine what that thing is. Enjoy the rally if you are going.