To be successful in talk radio, you have to have a conservative audience as well. Not enough liberals listen to it.
I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25.
I've always sort of been at odds with radio programmers.
Every time I went on the radio, I would take the crummiest radio station, the station that was like a toilet bowl. I would go on there and build up the ratings, so you couldn't do any worse.
I didn't start talk radio until '95 in L.A. The show was very successful, and they actually tried to syndicate it nationally, but I couldn't get stations. It was like, "We don't care that she's funny and she's got great ratings. She's liberal!"
First of all, very few people listen to Hugh Hewitt, radio show, that's the good news. Check out the ratings.
One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials.
The state of radio is not great. It's like playing the lottery. The chances of hitting are mind boggling slim.
The thing that interests me least about the radio business is the radio business. But I've had to learn a little bit about it. It's not rocket science: You get ratings, that's good.
Air America has tanked because it features a bunch of talentless, angry demagogues who wouldn't know how to entertain a radio audience if their lives depended on it.
