Murder By Numbers
May 1st, 2003 - 9:59 am
Drudge has the story. Bill O’Reilly sucks on radio:
Just released ARBITRON radio ratings show FOX NEWS CHANNEL’s Bill O’Reilly in near-collapse — just one year after launching a nationally syndicated rival to Rush Limbaugh.
It’s been years since I listened to talk radio of any kind, but this news pleases me. I watched O’Reilly a bit during the 2000 election cycle, and found him, at first, quite entertaining. But watch him enough and you’ll realize he’s just a few years away from going Full Foaming Buchanan.
It’s still too early to be hopeful, but could this be the start of the meltdown?
UPDATE: James Joyner has the best line of the day with, “Let us hope. O’Reilly is even more annoying than Bob Novak, who can at least write.”
Let us hope. O’Reilly is even more annoying than Bob Novak, who can at least write.
I like O’Reilly just because he holds all of his guests’ feet to the fire, no matter who they are. Opinion-wise, I find him to be slightly left-of-center with a strong dose of populist nonsense. As far as being Buchanan, he is a strong advocate of defending our borders militarily, but I dont’ see much resemblance outside that.
I like talk radio in general, and have given O’Reilly a whirl, but find his show dismal. Indeed, I am not much of O’Reilly fan, regardless of the medium.
He also fits well into the discussion of ideology above–many think O’Reilly to be “conservative” because he is on Fox and is often pro-Bush, but really he is more a populist (as Nick notes) and really lacks a well-developed ideological perspective (in my humble, yet professionally justified, opinion (which really isn’t all the humble, now that I think about it
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Nick, I once watched O’Reilly interview Buchanon and I’ll just say it was just shy of a love fest. He certainly didn’t put his feet to the fire. And Buchanon was giving his whole racists Euro-American Culture spiel. O’Reilly is definately a populists (though, I’d argue, a right-wing one). He really is Buchanon-lite. He has a disjointed obsession with Hollywood sins (and I’m not talking the sin of stupidity either). He thinks Eminem will destroy “The Children” (talk about tying together 2 posts).
Sorry, I’m over the O’Reilly thing. He did good work on the charities after 9/11 and is certainly talented at marketing himself, but if he gets blown off talk-radio, then that’ll be fine with me.
As for talk radio in general, I enjoy sports talk, but Neal Boortz, whose a fire-breathing libertarian, is also a local (and nationally syndicated) fave.
I find O’Reilly to be a shallow bully much of the time. I’ve blogged last year about his offensively stupid attacks on defense attorneys.
Boortz really needs his own show but he has a face for radio. Then again that didn’t stop Alan Colmes. Boortz hosted TalkBack Live for a week and it was great.
O’Reilly isn’t the Buchananite, that’s Michael Savage. O’Reilly’s views don’t really have a label. Anti-death penalty, pro-environment, etc.
Yeah, its bad enough that we conservatives get lumped in with the paleos like Buchanan, who at least can be honestly labeled a conservative, albeit one who is increasingly irrelevant and unapealing. O’Reilly, on the other hand, is just simply a half baked populist. When he’s labeled a conservative, its insulting to him and conservatives. Of course when the competition is Larry King and Connie Chung, and PeterTomDan, thats a whole lot better than nothin.