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By Dr. Robert E. Balon
There was quite a bit of hue and cry last week when our recent poll on the relationship between talk show hosts and voting behavior was released to the press. To summarize, we reported that 84% of respondents from our national sample of news and talk listeners stated that talk hosts did not directly influence their votes during the recent primaries.
Soon after that, some were saying that the fact that John McCain won in the Florida primary in spite of the exhortations of many conservative hosts was an indication that conservative talk radio was loosing its clout. But that’s not really what our research said at all.
Conservative talk radio has never been stronger or more poised for a significant contribution to the national political dialog. What we tried to point out was that that the “bully pulpit” that some hosts feel they have with regard to influencing a vote has never really existed.
People come to talk radio for a variety of reasons: for entertainment, information, confirmation. The fact that most felt that talk hosts don’t directly influence their vote was not a repudiation of any talent on the conservative or liberal side; rather, it was a reflection of just how complex and ego-involved attitudes about voting are. The message here is really quite simple: talk hosts should think about entertaining and informing their audiences, not about exhorting them toward certain political behaviors.
I restate: there’s nothing wrong with conservative talk radio or its audiences. And in the long run, ratings matter much more and are the only arbiter of success. Heavy-handed attempts to influence a victory or defeat are almost always unproductive and as listeners told us, tedious.
--Dr. Robert E. Balon is CEO of Austin-based The Benchmark Company. He can be reached at bmark@flash.net.
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