This article at First of the Month sees Glenn Beck as the logical, cultural result of the evolution (or perhaps devolution) of the radio personality from the Top 40 DJs of the 1950's who set the world on fire through the infamous Disco Record Burning that turned in to a riot at Comiskey Park in 1979 to the arrival of the shock jocks in the early 1990's.
I can't decide if this argument makes sense or is a load of cow pies.
Part of the reason I don't quite accept this entire line of argument is that the evolving nature of on-air programing on radio calcified so much in the mid-1980's that talk radio - whether of the political sort exemplified by Rush Limbaugh, or the early-morning drive talkers like Howard Stern or Indianapolis's Bob & Tom - may seem as huge audience draws; in fact, however, they merely stopped the bleeding of audience away from commercial radio. Their continued attraction belies the dearth of really creative programing by radio, any willingness to stake a position that might be taken as risky.
Of course, there are the twin, related phenomena of the Internet and Satellite radio, which, while perhaps playing to smaller, niche audiences, chip away at commercial radio's hegemony. The simple reality is that Beck, like Limbaugh and Stern and Bob & Tom, are not so much exemplars of a brave new era as the final result of the collapse of commercial radio, an evolutionary dead-end exemplified by the fact that one thing all of them have in common is a really limited audience. People who listen to Rush Limbaugh, say, aren't going to listen to Bob Dylan on XM Radio; people who sit and laugh during their morning commute with Bob and Tom aren't going to get in to the Hip-Hop program on Sirius Satellite Radio.
While it may be true that Glenn Beck is the natural result of the slide of radio in America, it is a slide downhill from importance and cultural significance to the sidelining of a media that, right now, is nearing senescence (like print). It might well be that Beck's "popularity" is attributable to the kind of demographics that give other radio gabbers Arbitron numbers necessary to stay on air. It might also be noted that these numbers really don't mean all that much precisely because they don't take in to consideration the reality that there are so many choices - not the least of them being simply switching the damn machine off and firing up the iPod.
I'd also be more impressed with this genealogy of the radio personality if it didn't take the infamous "Disco Sucks baseball riot" quite so seriously. Comparing it to a book burning is grotesque. Disco may or may not have sucked (like any musical form, it had its highlights and really low lights), but it was hardly killed off by one silly stunt, or even a kind of music-industry revulsion. Even the Bee Gees, who seemed to have difficulty during the mid-1980's getting anything like a record deal, spent most of the decade as quite successful producers of other people's material. Dance music in general never really went away; much of today's hip-hop, techno, and even house music is so similar to some of the best Disco had to offer they are virtually indistinguishable.
Furthermore, it is difficult to make people aware that the fracturing of the kind of national audience that seemed to arrive with the early rock-and-rollers in the 1950's, became a definite cultural/demographic event with the arrival of the Beatles, and seemed to ossify in the mid-1980's with the promotion of mediocrities like Journey, Loverboy, and REO Speedwagon has actually been a good thing. Even in the heyday of the swing era, the sense of generational solidarity was largely artificial, bracketed as it was by strict segregation. Tearing down the racial barriers in the 1950's helped create a large audience for a youth-oriented music; playing to the largest and wealthiest generational cohort in our nation's history certainly helped as well.
The fracturing of any sense of some kind of broad national appeal for any kind of music is actually a good thing. The arrival of talk radio should have clued in radio programmers not that something had arrived that would attract audience; rather, it should have clued them in that the emperor of a single national audience was now stripped bare for all to see. Like those Chicago southsiders who stormed the field at Comiskey Park thirty-one years ago, Glenn Beck's audience may, indeed make a lot of noise.
But in this case, Shakepeare's "tale told by an idiot" is a far more accurate description of what is happening.
Virtual Tin Cup
