"Because Hightower's problem, among other things, is that advertisers would be a lot less interested in his show than in Limbaugh's, even if they have similar ratings, because of what Hightower is saying"
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McChesney’s line has the clipped, prosecutorial feel of someone pointing at the missing motive in a supposedly neutral system. The jab isn’t at ratings culture in the abstract; it’s at the polite myth that media markets reward popularity alone. By pairing Hightower with Limbaugh and then instantly disqualifying “similar ratings” as irrelevant, he exposes the real currency: ideological comfort for sponsors.
The key move is the phrase “because of what Hightower is saying.” McChesney doesn’t bother to litigate the content in detail, because the mechanism is the story. If Limbaugh represents a brand-safe kind of controversy - outrage that flatters consumer identity and keeps the existing order intact - Hightower suggests something advertisers historically treat as toxic: critiques of corporate power, deregulation, or the very structure of commercial media. That’s not “political” in the cute, cable-news sense; it’s political in the balance-sheet sense.
Subtext: the marketplace isn’t a referee, it’s a participant. Advertisers are not simply buying ears; they’re buying an environment where their products, and the economic assumptions behind them, go unchallenged. The sentence quietly reframes censorship as something cleaner and more efficient than government suppression: a filter built from incentives, risk management, and brand protection.
Context matters here: McChesney is writing out of the media-reform tradition that treats commercial broadcasting as structurally biased, not accidentally lopsided. The point isn’t that conservatives “win” radio because they’re better entertainers. It’s that the business model tilts the playing field toward voices that don’t threaten the people paying for the microphone.
The key move is the phrase “because of what Hightower is saying.” McChesney doesn’t bother to litigate the content in detail, because the mechanism is the story. If Limbaugh represents a brand-safe kind of controversy - outrage that flatters consumer identity and keeps the existing order intact - Hightower suggests something advertisers historically treat as toxic: critiques of corporate power, deregulation, or the very structure of commercial media. That’s not “political” in the cute, cable-news sense; it’s political in the balance-sheet sense.
Subtext: the marketplace isn’t a referee, it’s a participant. Advertisers are not simply buying ears; they’re buying an environment where their products, and the economic assumptions behind them, go unchallenged. The sentence quietly reframes censorship as something cleaner and more efficient than government suppression: a filter built from incentives, risk management, and brand protection.
Context matters here: McChesney is writing out of the media-reform tradition that treats commercial broadcasting as structurally biased, not accidentally lopsided. The point isn’t that conservatives “win” radio because they’re better entertainers. It’s that the business model tilts the playing field toward voices that don’t threaten the people paying for the microphone.
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| Topic | Marketing |
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