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How many people actually listen to Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk titan White House officials have spent the past week characterizing as "the head of the Republican Party"?
According to what Limbaugh delights in calling "the drive-by media," the number varies wildly. Is it 30 million (Pat Buchanan on MSNBC), 20 million (Time magazine, ABC News), 19 million (Fox News), 14 million (CNN), or "14.2 million to about 25 million" (The Washington Post)?
Answer: Maybe.
Limbaugh is widely acknowledged to be the most popular talk-radio host, as evidenced by the record $400 million, eight-year contract he signed with his syndicator last July. But estimates of Limbaugh's nationwide (and overseas) audience are exercises in guesswork, slippery methodology and suspect data. Limbaugh himself has muddied the water with the claim that he reaches 20 million people a week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030603435.html
Yesterday, for some reason or another, I was curious to see how Glenn Beck had been doing in the ratings department...so I collected the ratings for each and every one of his TV broadcasts since the premiere of his show on Fox in January, 2009.
Next, I calculated the average audience size for each week that the show has been on the air, and put the numbers into a chart. (To be fair and balanced, I excluded the weeks of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's holidays, each of which artificially depressed Beck's numbers.)
The chart revealed something of a surprise: since Glenn Beck's ratings peak during the week ending January 22 (the week of Beck's special "Revolutionary Holocaust: Live free or die" broadcast), Beck's ratings have been on a steep slide, dropping nearly 50%.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/4/8/855357/-Glenn-Becks-ratings:-Not-as-meteoric-as-people-think
Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for April 14, 2010
P2+ Total Day
FNC – 1,173,000 viewers CNN – 368,000 viewers MSNBC – 426,000 viewers CNBC – 221,000 viewers HLN – 361,000 viewers
P2+ Prime Time
FNC – 2,347,000 viewers CNN – 563,000 viewers MSNBC –1,019,000 viewers CNBC – 256,000 viewers HLN –739,000 viewers http://tvbythenumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2010.01.31-Average-P2+-590x455.pnghttp://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/01/31/fox-news-vs-cnn-vs-msnbc-5-11pm-cable-news-ratings/40629
The point is this. this is not a huge group of people and perhaps, just perhaps it is the media's (and frankly MSNBC's) obsession with them that make them seem like a huge segment of the portion of the population has been radicalized. It simply is not true.
And to be more blunt about it our echo chamber is listening too much to their echo chamber,
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