Talk Radio Study Demonstrates Misuse Of Public Airwaves From Huffington Post, June 22, 2007 By Dave Johnson Free Press and The Center for American Progress have teamed up to produce a report on talk radio that is very interesting. The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio. Some excerpts from the summary: Among radio formats, the combined news/talk format (which includes news/talk/information and talk/personality) leads all others in terms of the total number of stations per format and trails only country music in terms of national audience share. Through more than 1,700 stations across the nation, the combined news/talk format is estimated to reach more than 50 million listeners each week. And what options are presented to the public by these stations? * Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive. * Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk-10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk. * A separate analysis […]