Republicans got pasted on Tuesday night. The midterm election results showed a butt-kicking from start to finish, and voters made their message loud and clear. Americans don’t like Donald Trump, and they don’t like the people who sat by and did nothing about him. For news/talk radio hosts and programmers, that message demands attention.
I’ve been on the record for a long time saying you shouldn’t go all Trump, all the time anymore. However, the results show something deeper that deserves analysis. I noted the same thing about the Fox News ratings slump. Americans are tired, man.
They’re tired of getting nickel-and-dimed at every opportunity, and they’re tired of politics. They’re tired of war. Frankly, they’re tired of being tired.
Furthermore, this isn’t a partisan complaint. It’s a business observation. Audiences vote with their remotes, presets, and podcast downloads. And they’ve been voting for a while now. Tuesday simply gave the trend a louder megaphone.
Don’t Shrink Your Own Tent
That’s why news/talk radio has an opportunity. If you only appeal to people who voted straight-ticket Republican on Tuesday, you’re intentionally narrowing your reach and influence. I’ll never understand why anyone would choose that path.
Sure, it makes perfect sense to have an angle and a political position. But if you’re not welcoming as many people into your tent as possible, you’re doing your show, your station and your company a disservice.
Likewise, if you’re talking 100% politics 100% of the time, you’re leaving audience on the table. Tuesday proved that plenty of voters sit outside any one lane, and those people hold radios too.
Ratings don’t care about your talking points. Consider the math. Every listener you push away costs you folks you’ll likely never recover. Moreover, advertisers notice when a station’s audience shrinks to one narrow slice. Meanwhile, cume and time spent listening reward programmers who give people a reason to stay, not just a reason to agree.
Two Options, One Obvious Choice
Realistically, you have two options. You can keep pounding the all-politics-all-the-time drum, watch the audience diminish and hope listeners come back later. Or you can expand your horizons and your content offerings. Otherwise, you’re betting your ratings on a mood that voters just rejected.
Of course, I’m not saying you need to debate how butter temperature changes your chocolate chip cookies. Still, constant political and culture war talk isn’t the play right now. If your job is to play the hits, then telling listeners how great Republicans are and why the conservative position is the right course isn’t the wisest move, from where I sit. The Democrats didn’t really have much of a platform other than “We’re not going to do what they’re doing”, and it led to a dominant victory. To tell the voting public that they were wrong and conservatives were right isn’t going to land right now. It just isn’t.
History backs this up. Talk radio thrived for decades by entertaining people first and persuading them second. Great hosts told stories, took calls about everyday life and made listeners laugh. As a result, the political content landed because the relationship came first.
Pick Up the Message and Run
The electorate sent its message, whether you wanted to hear it or not. Therefore, the smart move is to pick it up and run with it.
Programmers, that means auditing your clocks. Count the hours devoted to a single topic. Then ask whether a midday break from the outrage cycle might help your ratings. Hosts, meanwhile, can lean on personality. Your listeners already trust you, so spend that trust on something more than another round of the same argument.
Instead, talk about the grocery bill, the gas pump, the local high school team and the weird story everybody’s texting about. Meanwhile, keep your point of view. Just let it breathe. Don’t mistake this for surrender — it’s smart positioning. The host who sounds like a human being, not a press release, will earn the next listener.
In the end, the message is simple. Stay true to your point of view, but stop treating politics as the only thing worth discussing. The audience is waiting, and it’s ready to listen to someone who gets it.
Listeners are tired. Give them a reason to show up anyway.
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