Report: Major Groups Ready to Bail On Talk Radio

Jerry Del Colliano

This week radio and media gadfly Jerry Del Colliano writes he has seen ‘startling new indications that some important radio groups are preparing to drop their talk radio formats”.  He writes change is coming sooner than originally expected.

“We're watching the end of right-wing conservative talk radio," says Del Colliano, publisher of the radio-industry tip sheet Inside Music Media. (Subscription: Click Here)

"The genre is dying among ratings and dying among advertisers ... Rush is at the end of his career. His constituency is all wearing Depends. And he's getting himself into trouble he doesn't need. So can you put Humpty Dumpty back together again? They have been able to improve their advertising picture, but they have not been able to come back."

"Sandra Fluke was simply the lightning that struck and hit an old building that collapsed," Colliano says. "She didn't do it. She helped to bring it down at the end, but it was falling apart on its own."

But the larger issue he writes is the declining demographics of the right-wing talk-radio racket. 

“Look at the millennial generation,” says Colliano. “There’s 80 million of them coming of age. They don’t see color. They don’t see gender. And they’re civic minded: they don’t like bloviating. They don’t like yelling and screaming. So you tell me: how’s right-wing talk radio working for them?”

Del Colliano is a recognized expert in media, broadcasting and the music industry.

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