General Discussion

part of these people is not about competing. It is about control. As you point out about talk radio it is and has been for a very long time dominated almost entirely by right wing nutjobs. The message remains the same no matter the channel is the aim of these people.
MSNBC used to have more liberal voices during the daytime. That changed even before the last few years of consolidation.

Ask yourself this question. If we were back in the early 2000's and the Republicans and W had been successful in gutting PBS don't you think that Phil Donahue or others would have had on the producers of series like "Frontline", "American Experience", "NOVA" etc. and done a show about what the budget cuts meant, the efforts to pressure them to alter or not do certain stories? But here we are today with a full blown FCC Commissioner echoing calls for censorship of political criticism and talking about "investigations of media people" and the loss to informing the public that is represented by cuts to those programs gets barely mentioned as a topic if at all let alone a whole show.

Years ago, and still, it was not unusual to go half way across the country and never hear anything different on AM radio than the same right wing whacko messaging no matter which channel you tuned to in any area. It wasn't about ratings. It was about the message.