Limbaugh's 20 mil listeners and Hannity's 10 mil.....

Can someone explain this to me? My understanding is that both of these numbers are higher than Howard Sterns. Now say what you will about Howard Stern but pure pop culture instinct tells me that his show not being a political show and mostly being a comedy/irreverant show would have a broader appeal than simply partisan right wing political talk.

Howard Stern has had best selling books AND a popular movie AND television shows.

By most objective standards it would seem that love him or hate him that Stern is a pop culture icon.

Are these numbers fixed in some way as to pump up the perception or are they somewhat accurate? Is it because there are people like the many on here who listen to Limbaugh even though they hate him?

because I thought it was necessary to keep track of what my enemy was doing. But now, I have too much trouble controlling my gag reflex and I don't want to spew all over my steering wheel.

Read or heard not too long ago that the typical Limpballs listener was male, over 50, and sitting at home with nothing to do. This is for real, I just don't remember the source.

I have seen 50 WMs at 1:00PM EST sitting in their car listening to him. So sad.

of the US population, and therefore 5 million would be approx 1 1/2%, not that big a listening audience at all. More watch American Idol! LOL

Edited to reflect your figures 20 mill equals 6%

...I know we don't get Howard Stern here, but we sure get those freaks...along with several others like them.

I guess if you listen to his show for 5 minutes a week you are one of the 20 million.

And anyway, why are all those conservatives listening to the radio instead of working?!?

Lazy bastards!

their buys on. The audience seems to be reflected in strong Republican election turnout recently.

that the turnout is still exceptionally close - tossup in 2000; near tossup in countless congressional races in 2002; the difference in some states in 2002 - was depressed dem turnout (in Fla and Ga in particular).

The Limbaugh/right wing radio listeners vote, probably close to 100%. In spite of that, elections have been extremely close. They are throwing all they have at it and are bearly winning, or resorting to theft to win.

What we need to do is energize the tens of millions that do not listen to Rush and do not vote.

Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo.com some months ago wrote about a GOP operative who jammed the phone lines of Dem get out the vote offices in more than one state.

the GOP paid young african american teens to hold up signs along major roads in the community - on election day stating "Senator Landrieu what have you done for me lately" Of course in the days preceding the election there was a major mobilization of voters in GOTV efforts within the African American community... and the rest - was history.

If we can mobilize MORE folks rather than less to the polls - we win. Simple.

What role does rush play in this? His omnipresence on the airwaves (several stations in a single market in many areas) and others creates a sort of echo chamber that project a very pro GOP/Conservative message that gives the impression - due to its omnipresence that the views are universally accepted. That helps depress the vote - leaving some less politically active saying to themeselves "it futile, my vote really doesn't count".

I believe the 20 million figure is the overall listenership (the number of people who tune in each week)..the actual number of listeners at any given time is closer to 5 million.

I think Stern has just over 8 million listeners (I'm not one of them--I personally can't stand the guy). The fact to keep in mind is that Stern is on 30-50 stations whereas Rush is on over 600. So Stern's individual numbers in each market he is on is much higher than Rush's individual market numbers. The only reason Rush (Hannity and others) have what appear to be high numbers is because they are on a large number of stations and each station doesn't need a lot of listeners for them to accumulate millions of listeners overall.

Don't know (or particularly care) about Hannity's but Limbaugh's been using that same 20MM per week for over 10 years now.
Soooo, assume that the average Didiot tunes in every day and, presto, he's just become 5 listeners. Kinda like Freeping the ratings, don'tcha think?

ON EDIT: Glad to have ya here, Trent!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I like this place so far. :)

Is it all a guess. Appears to be a lot of room for error.

The numbers come from Arbitron which sends out paper diaries and asks people to write down evey time they listen to a radio program. They pay you something like a buck or two when you send the diary back.

Close to 40% of the people they ask to participate don't want to. The ones that do often write down shows or stations they like rather than actually carry the diary with them and write down every time they listen to a station.

Arbitron then calculates the number of listeners per average quarter hour (AQH) during different day parts, and that is where they get the ratings from.

partly because he appeals to a wider age demo(his listeners include much younger ones than the RWers) and because he does better in wealthier markets ( NY, LA, Boston etc)

I'm one of the more loyal listeners

alot of his listeners only get to listen to half the show or less though, because he is a drive-time show. His main audience is probably people waking up, doing there morning routines, and on the way to work, wich is proabbly 2 hours at most.

Where as Limbaugh and Hannity are in the middle of the day or afternoon, and most of there listeners are probably people who can listen while they work, like truck drivers, deliverymen, cops, construction workers etc.

two days ago. i've been asked to keep a ratings diary for a week. i always wondered who the hell the people were that did that kind of stuff. i always assumed the ratings households were make-believe

..doesn't break triple digits.

Howard is only on roughly 50-60 stations at most. He also charges stations a large sum of money to carry his show, which hinders his growth, yet fills his pocket.

Fatboy is on well over 300. Seems you can't go anywhere in the lower 48 states without being out of earshot of his show (unfortunately). He offers his show on a partial-barter status, I assume (cheaper for stations to carry, because he sells more national spots).

That's one of the reasons why a morning guy like Imus is on more stations than Stern. He comes cheap. Nevermind he gets terible ratings in every market he's in (and often on bottom-feeder stations). This also explains Bill O'Really's part-time job.

Hannity is also on many stations, but is mostly tape-delayed. The local affiliate here in Milwaukee airs it at night.