Liberal Talk Radio Continues to Fail

Over at The Radio Equalizer, Brian Maloney notes a couple more stations abandoning Air America due to paltry ratings.

Already, left-wing activists are crying foul and cooking up particularly kooky conspiracy theories to explain away the bad news.

Making the moves particularly hard to swallow for so-called "progressives" is the fact that both markets are considered to be very liberal, with Madison about as far to the left as a city can be.

If the format isn't viable in these places, then where can it work?

Some in the Wisconsin capital city are pointing to recent ratings gains scored by WXXM-FM, but one can imagine the station's owners expected it to fare far better than eleventh place in such a hotbed of liberalism.

This comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody.

Liberal talk radio fails for a myriad of reasons. The media is already saturated by the left, their talent base is pretty weak, and they simply are not entertaining.

The Left will never quite grasp why conservative talk radio succeeds: it's entertaining, informative and funny.

Air America will continue to pour money into the sinking franchise, but it never will challenge the dominant names in the medium. The Democrats may manage to win some elections now and then, but they will never win the battle of the radio airwaves.