RADIO TIDBITS

Gasbag radio may be on the downslope. blatherWatch reports:

LA talker, John Ziegler of KFI writes in the new Talker's Magazine that more specifically it's support of the Iraq War by talk hosts accounts for at least some of the softening of the numbers- including his own.

Ziegler, who was the subject of "Host," David Foster Wallace's epic 2005 Atlantic Monthly piece on talk radio, writes that he talked to a name brand national host who'd done some research on the subject and had come to that conclusion.

"There is perhaps," Ziegler writes, "no greater indication of the dramatic free fall of the support for this once highly popular war than the reality that we were even discussing the possibility that hosts who back President Bush on this issue may be losing audience shares because of it."
He says there's also evidence- galling to the hard-assed libertariocon- "that talk hosts who have turned against the war have actually benefited in the ratings from their flip-flop."

Ziegler admits that while "my ratings are still very solid, there is plenty of evidence (which is not in my self-interest to discuss in this forum) that my career may have been at least temporarily harmed directly because of my strong defense of this war."


Talking Radio has some tidbits about Fats Limbaugh:

- Sources in the PI business have told Talking Radio that they are paying half of what they paid ten years ago for a national spot on Limbaugh’s Show.

- Bill Handel, the number one local talk show in the country, told a group a radio execs at the recent R&R Talk Radio Seminar in Los Angeles that “Rush’s ratings [on KFI in Los Angeles] are one third what they were ten years ago.”