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It’s the radio stupid. Democrats need offense. Talk radio must be digitized ASAP. [1]

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Date: 2024-07-02  

The stupidity, incompetence, and irresponsibility of ignoring Republican talk radio is astounding. No one even polls for it.

I’m not talking about individuals or individual organizations. The stupid is collective and institutional, and considering the time lost on reducing global warming alone it’s the biggest political mistake in history. Add to that 3 massive SCOTUS decisions.

James Carville said “It’s the economy, stupid” and he was wrong. 1500 radio stations have a lot to say about how the economy is doing and what the priorities are. That giant megaphone is going to keep convincing a lot of people and media that that the price of eggs is more important than climate change, reproductive rights, and fascism. TFG can say with total certitude that the economy is the worst ever and he will fix it because it fits perfectly with what 1500 radio stations keep repeating.

However much significance you put on the Biden debate performance it showed how fast unexpected events can shift momentum. Whatever happens with Biden, it will be stupid not to immediately begin using modern tools to digitize Republican talk radio.

With so much at stake and a candidate who will do anything to get back in the White House and stay out of jail we can expect a lot of desperate tricks from Republicans. They expect to be able to use the massive messaging advantage they have with 1500 coordinated unified and unchallenged radio stations to support them without limits. They know they can spin any major event in their favor. Its going to work hard to sell “Biden must drop out” as consensus public opinion and the buzz is so loud and untraceable MSN can report it as if it is legitimate.

Those stations can be locally coordinated to add volume to any election crimes they’re planning. They can be used to threaten election officials and inspire protests.

The Republican talk radio monopoly is the ONLY unique and significant advantage they have, and Democrats have been ignoring it for 35 years. When Republicans repeat proven lies with certitude it’s because they know those lies have already been repeated over and over, unchallenged, on 1500 radio stations.

Fixing that mistake is easy now.

The technology exists to automatically digitize, quantify, and analyze that repetition without listening to it. Until that begins the Democratic Party cannot say it is getting its candidates’ backs.

Way the hell back in 2019 MIT researchers prototyped a system for doing that for 2.8 billion words of talk radio for apolitical purposes — RadioTalk: a large-scale corpus of talk radio transcripts.

Thom Hartmann repeated some simple math from fakenewsradio.org. At $1000/hr, 1200 Republican radio stations x 15 hrs/day are worth $90M/week or almost $5B/yr. That is basically FREE for Republicans. That’s an average of $100M per state, FREE, every year for 35 years. How does that compare with the tens of millions of dollars in donations that Democrats have been crowing about?

Donations, GOTV, honesty, and sanity are not enough.

How many Republican Presidents, Senators, and Congresspeople will win because Democratic and progressive leadership continue to ignore the massive Republican radio advantage? Even if you think it’s a minor influence, how many close elections do we have every cycle? Neither Bush Jr nor TFG would have gotten near the WH without it. Without that massive advantage Republicans will become perennial minorities again, like before the Republican radio monopoly made the difference.

All Democrats have to do is use AI and other tools to digitize, analyze, and quantify the repetition so it can finally be factored in with other media. It is inevitable. It needs to happen ASAP.

The Republican radio monopoly cannot survive if the duped companies, universities, and pro sports teams that it depends on find out what their ‘brand’ is being associated with. How many would want to be associated with a radio station whose major national radio blowhard Mark Levin a few weeks ago on hundreds of major stations called Biden a fondler of children and a rapist whose accuser had to escape to Russia (where else)? If he can say it, how many other radio blowhards will feel they can repeat it? Are they and how often? I’ll doubt they let Levin say that on Fox.

If the Democratic Party or some allied organization announced in a press release tomorrow that it was going to dedicate resources to digitizing talk radio or at least exploring the possibility, the reaction from Republicans would tell them whether it was a good idea or not. Republicans will freak out.

Live and retroactive analysis will expose it as the major media factor in the radicalization of the GOP. It has been used by Republican think tanks for 35 years to create made-to-order pro corporate authoritarian-leaning constituencies for any occasion. With an average of 30 radio stations per state, no other major media offers more effective geographically targeted messaging.

I believe retroactive analysis will show the Kremlin began using Limbaugh as far back as 2008.

As much as it pains me to see them, this is TFG parading the moral and intellectual leader of the new Republican Party very shortly after the Mueller report came out, making sure no Republican politician would side with Democrats.

There is so much repetition there would be no need to analyze all of it. Smart sampling will do it. Most major and some local hosts have libraries of podcasts of previous shows.

At a time when media pundits seemed particularly vocal in calling TFG a branding genius I sampled a few Limbaugh shows and he was repeating the name “Trump” nearly 50 times an hour.

Analysis will show that it is the single most import media component in this MAGA Putin assault on democracy. The GOP didn’t go fascist because of organic changes in public opinion. Those 300 or so think tank managed talk show hosts hiding behind call screeners and enjoying a 95% monopoly don’t reflect public opinion, they create it.

When the radio advertising industry get wind of it they will have to reconsider how they treat those radio stations, which are generally not big money makers. Republicans freaking out will make it worse.

Those stations are endorsed and supported by hundreds of universities (87 listed at fakenewsradio.org) and pro sports teams, and thousands of national and local businesses. Their advertising agencies will no longer be able to tell their clients those stations are operating in the public interest and merely doing political entertainment. They may broadcast weather, traffic, sports, etc and some local hosts may do innocuous local interest programming, but the advertising agencies will no longer be able to ignore and hide from their clients that they are supporting a purely partisan Republican lie machine bent on destroying democracy.

A mass desertion of advertisers and sports teams would be something the radio advertising industry would have to prevent before it gets going. If they want to keep using those radio stations they will have to begin forcing stations to change programming and start breaking up the Republican talk radio monopoly.

You want authoritarianism — keep ignoring Republican radio.

One of MSNBC’s regular go-to experts on authoritarianism, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, was just on and she pointed out Republican authoritarians have been very successful because of their messaging control.

Here are TFG and Limbaugh Christmas 2019 about the time Limbaugh would be getting briefed on COVID and possible consequences if nothing was done, such as millions of deaths, emergency powers, cancelled elections. So Limbaugh called it a hoax etc. as long as he could and 1500 radio stations followed suit, just as they did with global warming denial. How many hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID deaths did they cause?

Messaging control?

Consider the DITTOHEAD EFFECT: They put Limbaugh on 600 radio stations 15 hrs/week. Very few of his fawning listeners could call him or the other national Limbaugh-wannabe talk show hosts (Hannity, Levin, etc), who all parroted Limbaugh on major issues, so they called the local shows and kept everyone on the same page. All the local radio host has to do was introduce a topic, like Hilllary’s emails, and the callers would then repeat the national talking points.

Limbaugh is gone but the messaging control is still there.

Democratic leadership must STOP IGNORING REPUBLICAN TALK RADIO. It gets to take free unchallenged potshots at Democratic ideals and and candidates all day long.

Those stations will be essential for implementing Project 2025 and now with the Chevron SCOTUS ruling and the immunity ruling causing the Orange Shitwad’s court cases to be passed down through more and more courts and appeals those locally and nationally coordinated radio stations are going to be even more important tools for the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, and Putin. Whether it’s for getting corporate and fundamentalist judges elected, swiftboating good judges, threatening and intimidating judges, polluting jury pools, or pushing or stopping legislation ignoring that massive messaging power is dumb.

Thomas and Kavenaugh are there in large part because Democrats allowed Limbaugh to attack their accusers, Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford, for weeks with no defense or pushback while he and his parrots generated outrage and calls to political offices. No Republican senator could possibly vote against them. Ford even said Republican Senators told her privately they believed her.

Why do Democrats keep losing on issues that they have massive support on? It’s the radio stupid. Yeah there are a lot of other factors but the only one that’s completely ignored is the radio.

Ending this mistake will return to Democrats the massive advantage they have on most major issues. If started soon neither the White House nor Congress nor Senate would be a problem for Democrats.

Within a couple of election cycles major reforms are possible, including adding to the supreme court.

Using AI and other modern tools to expose that talk radio monopoly is a no brainer. Continuing to ignore it in this election with the massive locally coordinated lying that is happening and is sure to come is stupid.

Putting Republicans on notice that their lies are going to end up in print could make the next 4 months a lot more fact-based and make Republican politicians much more likely to do the right things.

Modern computer tools and AI make it much cheaper and easier to automatically record, transcribe, and analyze large samples of talk radio before the next election. The MIT Media Lab prototype is now 5 years old. 5 years later tech advances must make that much easier, and on a larger scale.

On a smaller scale, software exists that allows anyone to pre schedule simultaneous recording of multiple talk shows. Transcription is much better and cheaper now from companies like Otter.ai (eg. 20 cents/hour at $20/month). If someone can develop software that can automate recording, transcription, and analysis, supporters and activists could easily keep ahead of how their local and state radio stations are being used to oppose their objectives and candidates.

Such software may be very useful for pro democracy activists and organizations to monitor anti-democratic use of talk radio in other countries as well.

Talk radio is the most important tool TFG and his supporters have. That is why TFG (Russia?) got Sam Nunberg to listen to “thousands of hours of talk radio” in 2014. They are used to using it for free and unopposed and for whatever they have planned it will play an important part in their success and getting away with it, as long as it is invisible and a few hundred professional liars continue to be mistaken for legitimate public opinion.

Digitizing Republican talk radio is the easiest way to stop this authoritarianism. We are seeing the consequences of not doing it getting worse every day. For Democrats to finally challenge and expose the Republican free $90 million per week messaging advantage will shock them, and Democrats need offense.

Someone said recently he’d take a frail Roosevelt over a robust Hitler any day. Whether Biden is the candidate or not, for the Democratic Party and progressive organizations to keep ignoring Republican radio is really stupid and continues the biggest political mistake in history. Demand action from your reps and the Democratic Party orgs.

Over the years reading D Kos it is clear there are people here who can do the technical part of this and want to do it. There’s no excuse.

The biggest political mistake in history. It's the radio, stupid.

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