Monday, Feb. 2, 2009 | I’m surprised that voiceofsandiego.org found local talk radio worthy of being a story. Odder still is that they didn’t chew the meat from this story’s bones which is that the local talkies aren’t necessary for radio networks to make money — the national ones are.
As radio downsizes and specializes, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the other mouthpieces for conservative ideology are the real economy-sized moneymakers. Radio’s minor league benchwarmers, like Roger Hedgecock, Mark Larson and Rick Roberts are merely afterthoughts — second stringers useless to the product line. But there is hope; in the future, the young may not turn on, tune in and drop out their brain cells en masse to these apparatchiks from the trickle downside like the old timers did, since the laptop/Wi-Fi generation has so many more audio options available.
It will be a great day for civilization in the United States when radio follows network television into the trash bin of history.