Every news outlet has programming for conservative viewers. They are the primary demographic. Fox was just the first to figure it out and take advantage of it. I don't know if 50% of the population is left and right. We're left and right depending on what the situation is. We are the sum of our experiences...

Yeah, so once the old guard is out, that is a valid concern.

Of course they are.. everyone has some kind of programming for conservatives. For MSNBC, it's Morning Joe for instance. By my logic, there should be a lot more news outlets competing for conservatives. It wasn't a decades own plan.. once CNN started 24 hour news, and we had whatever that conservative movement when Gingrich took over the House, that's when stuff like Fox News had a chance. Same thing, in the early 90s when the fairness doctorine was repealed, conservative talk radio took off. Like I said, conservatives love talk radio, and speaking truth to power.

I'm not sure you've addressed anything I'm even talking about. We're like talking about two completely different things. I made the point that conservatives are a market and that businesses like to cater to them because they are generally older and have money. (they also have more free time) All of those are quite intuitively true. I never talked about spending by liberals or koch brothers or whatever. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. They may all be true. I'm just telling you what makes Fox and others successful in a media market.

as in Right wing? or something else?

I think you're making an unintuitive leaps of logic. Your mistake is that you're still defining political buckets for those who are exploiting them. There is no political bucket, it's just business. The conservative demographic is much more likely to open their wallets than liberals because liberals tend to be younger and have less money.

It's content that makes something worthwhile, if you dress it up in fancy "21st century technology", you've only changed the packaging not what people read. Your most valuable resource was those writers and editors.

Very sane post. I loved this criticism of Democrats:

"The Democrats tend to create social programs, then forget to check up on them to see if they're actually working as intended, and just assume that they are. The Republicans also tend to not check up on them, but complain that they're not working as intended, even if they are."

I don't mind social programs. But they need to be checked. There are a lot of unintended consequences that happen with them and they can both be abused or micromanaged. I tend to prefer giving money to people who know how to do it correctly and from a local perspective. I would totally gut the welfare state and start over.. although not now, too many crazy conservatives around. It's important that we have a very large middle class while making sure people don't slip into poverty. If we want to have healthy small businesses or even be able to create small businesses that is where it needs to be. We need to de-emphasize large corporations.

That's because we've created a bunker mentality on both sides. One side has gotten so extreme that every one of these things has turned into a war of ideas. The media has encouraged this because it drives people to watch and watch their ads. The media is neither right wing or left wing, they are simply people interested in peddling fear, uncertainty and doubt as a business model. That is exactly what Fox is. They picked the conservative part because you know that's where the money is.

Stop watching 24 hour news, watch your local ones. Stop giving money to large corporations using your eyeballs. Hell, just quit watching cable, that's another place they are fleecing. This entire country is wired to watch television. I wonder with all those millions of dollars of political buy ads, that are put on the TV, where does all that money go?

Again, conservatives are loud and they have money.

I don't listen to NPR for the political commentary. Mostly stuff like Car Talk, and some of the insightful pieces for instance on Katrina or things that national media have stopped focusing on.

Fleecing conservatives of their money is in fact a market. Those guys will open up their wallets if you say all the right sweet things. Even better they'll go around repeating it. There is an entire eco-system in right wing political systems doing this. Since a lot of these people trend to being older, they are both susceptible to fear and they have money. The young, can also be susceptible, but they don't have money so there is no market.

They need to create an index for conservatives.

Naw someone took the rap, (e.g. Jesus part deux, electric bugaloo)

It won't work out that way in the U.S. Plus central control of the company is still in the hands of the Japanese.. You won't see Sony outsourcing its CEO to an American for instance.

That's because you guys managed to get Harper re-elected again.. You need to make sure he is gone next election.