What influence radio has on our lives and our politics is thanks to those who impart to it an importance it really hasn’t had since the early 1950s. Were it not for TV and its need for material Rush Limbaugh would be living in a studio apartment in Hoboken.

News channels think he’s important and talk about him. Potential listeners hears this and go check him out. Most get turned off. A few stay and become fans. In the long run there’s enough of an audience to support Rush in the style to which he’s become accustomed. But…

It never really gets to be as big as his influence would seem to suggest.

Doesn’t have to. The economics of radio broadcasting are such that even a moderate audience is not necessary for a station to turn a profit. So folks such as Limbaugh can afford to cater to a narrow demographic. Add in the fact they are syndicated to networks with effective monopolies in many radio markets, and you get a situation where the station carrying the show has no need to compete with other stations in the same area, and so can focus on a small segment of listeners.

Thus you get the same situation you get with any other monopoly, a limited set of poor quality choices.

The owners will claim that they provide variety. If you don’t like the music on one station, you can tune to another. Trouble is, there’s no real choice in any musical genre, no real choice in talk. With no competition stations can more narrowly focus on a target audience, whereas with competition it becomes necessary to provide variety to gain a larger audience, and so greater ad revenues, than the other guys.

I could get into the whole fragmentation of society thing, but I shall refrain.

And that is why Clear Channel’s dumping of Howard Stern is a bad thing. Has nothing to do with free speech and a lot to do with business practices and bad decisions at the government level.

Besides, if there was real competition in the major radio markets someone like Stern with his LCD targeting really wouldn’t last that long. His style of humor would drive too many listeners away and cost any station airing his show too much in advertising revenue.

Alan Kellogg: agreed.

OT: You live in Hoboken, vidiot? I rented a 700 sq ft three-bedroom apt. uptown on Park Ave. from 1986-97. Five-story railroad walk-up, cold water, gas-on-gas. It was $600 when I moved in, which was considered extortionate at the time. With rent control I was paying only $700 when I moved out. How much does a place like that go for nowadays, $2500?

I sure miss that place, but I suppose what I miss about Hoboken no longer exists.

Which is why I’m in a non-hip borough. (Quizeens repraZENT!)

I always thought that if I had to live in NYC, I’d probably want to live on Staten Island. How stupid am I, in a general sense?

Staten Island sounds good, but it’s a bit remote…a friend who used to live there liked the suburban feel, but hated to wait for 30+ minutes for the ferry when returning home late at night.

I’ve fantasized about living on Roosevelt Island, a long, narrow (800 feet or so) island in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. It’s the only place in NYC so far that actually reminds you that the city is essentially an archipelago. Plus I could take that cool tram to work.

Now, he plays for $1 at the campus courts any time he feels like it.

I do not think there is enough money in the world to coax me to live in the heaving mass of humanity that is the most egotistical city in the US.