Weekly Standard: Dean Barnett: The Truth About Talk Radio

Weekly Standard: Dean Barnett: The Truth About Talk Radio

Dean Barnett on the power and limits of conservative talk radio: "[A]nyone who thinks talk radio leads public opinion also probably believes that trees push the wind.... We're factors in the conversation, but we don't lead it. The interests and concerns of the people lead the conversation. It's truly a bottom-up phenomenon." Via Hugh Hewitt, who adds, "[T]alk radio matters primarily because it brings information to the attention of the audience, information presented with good humor and great timing.... Listeners tune them in for information and entertainment, not for marching orders."

Barnett also writes: "What's more, every talk show host knows that if his show fails to entertain, it will also fail to find and keep an audience. Or at least every successful talk show host knows as much.

"There are some local guys who will spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon carrying on an endless monologue about secular humanism and then head home and angrily ask their wives, 'What's Sean Hannity got that I don't?'"