Radio Content Analysis

Occasionally the tone of the talk-radio programs we heard had an edge that also brought to mind blogging. The words were uncompromising, blunt, often suspicious. This wasn’t just opinion. This was a kind of grievance.

KSEV’s morning show in Houston was again illustrative. Chris Begala was sitting in for the regular host, Edd Hendee, and his main topic was a state tax bill, supported by Lt. Gov. David Duhurst, that would change the school tax. The State Senate had approved the bill in the wee hours of the morning. Begala was crystal clear in his views of the lieutenant governor and the idea of raising taxes:

“Duhurst wants to take away our school exemption. Duhurst would raise $482 million in new or higher taxes and property tax relief in 2007. Don’t believe it. It’s bull crap. A bunch of bull .”

Begala then suggested that the coverage in the Houston Chronicle that morning, which suggested that the bill was “revenue neutral” was also nonsense.

“That’s wrong. Of course it is not (revenue neutral)… David Duhurst has gone mad, and any Republican who supports it has gone mad too. . . .”

In Milwaukee , the tone on WTMJ’s morning news was not so harsh. The subject was the possible renaming of Marquette University ’s sports teams. But the message was similar. Something was wrong. The university had made a “mess” of things. But rather than angry, the tone was more ironic, making fun rather than fuming.

Ken Herrera: I don’t think anyone on the board expected the feedback to be so overwhelming [sic] negative.

John Jagler: I think you’re absolutely right about that. And what are they going to do? I don’t know. You mentioned going back to the Golden Eagles. I just don’t think they’re going to do that.

Listen to WTMJ Morning Hosts Audio Clip (Get Quicktime® Plug-in)

In the end, Jagler would conclude: And the one thing for folks . . . for alum holding out hope, nothing’s been finalized. I mean they’re not the Gold yet. They haven’t taken to the field or the court or anything ... They still have time to fix the mess they created a week ago. I just don’t think they will, but you never know.

Beyond the general characteristics of the different program types, there were also differences in the characteristics of what a listener could get in a city generally.