Longtime radio programmer Darryl Parks has been saying for several years that conservative talk stations will have a big problem on the day after the election: their audience will still be shrinking, old, male, and basically dying off — and they have no one to blame but themselves.
The truth is that those stations and hosts don’t have nearly as much influence as they believe they do. Of the last 6 presidential elections, the candidate they endorsed only won twice (and it was Dubya). In that time, despite the protestations, obfuscations, and pontifications of those right-wing loudmouths, Obamacare became law, same sex marriage was legalized, and marijuana is on its way to mainstream acceptance.
My only disagreement with Darryl is that those are political and cultural losses at the national level. Meanwhile, statehouses have turned much more red, abortion rights have been diminished in too many places, and the truth has become obscured by their constant amplifications of non-facts — all of which led to Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. But he’s going to lose, just like Romney, McCain, Dole, and Bush 41, all of whom were championed by those conservative talk hosts.
Worse for those radio righties and their stations is the simple problem of demographics. As Darryl writes:
America is changing and conservative talk hosts believe they can stop it. They can’t. It is no longer the world of aging, white Baby Boomers, which I’m one. Our destiny is now in the hands of the Gen X’ers and Millennials. American society reflects their believes and desires. Conservative talk radio should be reflecting and speaking with the younger generations to survive, but have mistakenly chosen to double-down with an aging demographic providing no future for the format, that if done correctly would be viable. And conservative talk radio hosts, for no other reason than he’s running as a Republican and after vilifying him during the spring primaries, are defending the indefensible comments and behavior of Donald J. Trump.