Limbaugh on Blogs

Back in the early nineties - when email was still pretty exotic for most people, and the web was still a filing tool used in research labs - Rush Limbaugh emerged as the most computer-savvy person on the radio. He was the first major talk show host to pimp his email address on the air, and use email as part of his show. He was the first major syndie to have a website, and to drive a lot of traffic to the website as part of the program. And he was the first I'm aware of (I had stopped following talk radio on a semi-pro basis by this point) to try to turn his website into a revenue generator.

So to call Limbaugh an old-fashioned dinosaur is stretchy; Limbaugh has been a leader at incorporating the Internet into his program.

Instapundit has a series of excellent links on the topic of Limbaugh's dismissal of bloggers (part of which is quoted here from Instapundit, from Limbaugh's site):

"I treat you to my analysis of pollster Dr. David Hill's column headlined 'Bloggers Won't Match Limbaugh.' A blogger is a citizen who gets a website and just opines on various topics unrealted to politics. A friend of mine defined the term, derived from 'web log,' as 'a nerd with a journalist degree and no social life who spends most days and all nights writing e-mails to himself and his friends in hopes of attracting attention from traditional media outlets.' Andrew Sullivan is perhaps the best-known political blogger"

Leaving aside Limbaugh's friend's character analysis (as Reynolds notes, "I don't know if Sullivan has "no social life" -- seems to me I've heard some controversy about his having too much of one"), he's got a point.

Blogging is very self-referential. A lot of bloggers are descended, intellectually, from the people who used to sit up all night posting elaborate screeds on Usenet. Many of us are people who'd like to be columnists, but don't have the option of starting our careers over as copyboys; some of us would like to be talk show hosts (or, in the case of Lileks and, well, me, used to be talk show hosts) but can't start over as disk jockeys in Havre, Montana and begin the process of eternal relocation, butt-smooching and relentless self-dedication that it takes to become a major talkradio personality. Blogs provide that outlet, and they do it for free, from the comfort of your den.

From there, of course, natural selection is as tough as it is in radio; getting a blog out of the "30-hits a day, most of them friends and relatives" ghetto is nearly as hard as getting a shot at doing a talk show. The free market rules who succeeds on the blogosphere, every bit as much as in radio.

So how does this relate to Limbaugh, and especially his attitude about bloggers?

Reynolds says:

What's funny is that Limbaugh obviously feels the need to put down blogs, and to build himself up at their expense. What's he scared of? Blogs surely aren't cutting into his market share.

They're certainly not.

I can think of three possible answers to this:

1. It's the Radio Law of the Jungle - Limbaugh started out as a disc jockey. When you work in music radio, you learn quickly; anything that siphons off listeners is something to jump on and extinguish. Music radio people endlessly analyze everything about their programming, looking not only to draw listeners, but eliminate anything that might cause them to tune out - how station jingles will segue into the intros of songs, or how many people tune out when DJs talk over song intros (versus the number that tune out when the DJ stops and the song intro takes time to pick up steam), or how many ratings book entries a DJ's air name will generate or lose - things so anal-retentive they'd make an IRS auditor shake her head and think "someone needs a laxative". They also think in terms of how they can counter their competition; "If WXYZ tends to play Christina Aguilera's new song coming out of the first commercial break in rush hour, maybe we need to end our break a minute earlier and play Christina first.

   Seems like a stretch? It does, even to me. But remember - this is part of Limbaugh's psyche. That's how radio is, and it's how Limbaugh earned his living during his formative years; it's not much different than how he earns it now.

   And while blogs don't siphon off listeners in any meaningful way (I've listened to Limbaugh while blogging, occasionally), if your outlook was formed in the music radio business, you regard any competition as bad.

2. For Ten Years, He's Been the BMOC - For a decade now, when the media talks about "the conservative street", the account usually began or ended with a reference to Limbaugh. Whether Limbaugh had any intellectual reason to want to be regarded as the voice of "the conservative street" or not, there is certainly a commercial imperative; every mention in the press is a bit of free publicity, the kind of thing that promotions people and PR agents slave at getting.

   Now, a decade into the game, Limbaugh is getting competition; when the press talks about the "conservative street", names like Sullivan and Kaus and Reynolds and Lileks are popping up more often. Think the competition for mentions, or for the sort of mindshare that accompanies constant repetition doesn't matter to Limbaugh? See #1, above.

3. Pre-Emptive Strike - And while you're seeing #1, above, remember this; there are talk hosts on the market now that do leverage blogs, and are in tune with how this medium works. Hugh Hewitt's show calls on bloggers (and blogosphere staples like Mark Steyn) for a very large part of his program's content. His show almost sounds like an audio blog; de-centralized, skipping about between issues during the course of an hour, as heavily oriented toward guests as any blog...

   ...which is very much in counterpoint to Limbaugh's style; Rush is the only voice on his show (barring the very rare interview). The genre of talk that's built up around Limbaugh, ranging from the sublime (Jason Lewis, Michael Medved) to the ridiculous (Michael Savage) focus on the topic and, even more so, the personality of the host. The format of a Limbaugh or a Lewis or to a lesser extent a Medved show owes a lot to television; the hour, or the show, is a self-contained unit, produced to present the host and the content (in that order) as attention-grabbing-and-keeping units. Blogs - and shows like Hewitt, or as Lileks mentioned the other day, NPR talk shows - meander about, at the whim of whomever writes the material or stacks the 'cast. It's up to the reader or listener to decide if what they're reading or hearing grabs them enough to make them want to stay.

   Is Limbaugh worried that Hewitt and the like are going to put him out of business? Of course not. Does he want to contest every listener who might find her loyalty divided? See #1, above.

Rush Limbaugh reminds me of Bill Kling, founder of Minnesota Public Radio. In a way, their stories are analogous; both started in the provinces, and through skill and an overdose of entrepreneurial talent (Rush's in the private sector, Kling's straddling the non-profit and public) built the most successful games in town.

And the similarities don't end there.

A few years ago, the FCC started proposing granting low-power FM radio licenses, to allow people to set up tiny radio stations for as little as $1,000. It's as close as radio gets to Blogging; these little stations would allow almost any community group or school or organization to start a radio station with a range of a few miles.

Who led the opposition? Even though such stations would do a lot to evangelize the notion of "public" radio? That's right - Bill Kling, who saw these stations as potentially taking listeners, and money, away from big established Public Radio.

Does Limbaugh see blogs as a threat? Of course not - no more than Bill Kling can feel low-power FM will drive Garrison Keillor off the air.

Will Limbaugh fight, tooth and nail, to keep blogs (and blog-like media) from picking away the ratings and fiscal crumbs scattered about the edge of his juggernaut?

See #1, above.

Posted by Mitch at August 9, 2003 09:54 AM