Nova-M Radio, the radio syndicator for Randi Rhodes, crashed and burned to the great delight of a gaggle of right wing talker fans everywhere. Moe Lane at Redstate took mock credit for its demise, claiming an appearance by “our own Mark Impomeni…shut it down cold.”

The #tcots on Twitter were all a-twitter too. Free Market At Work, they crowed. And they’re right, but its not because there’s a lack of appetite in the country for liberal ideas or thoughts, it just there’s a lack of demand for it over old delivery methods.

The correct paring of medium and message was one of the main reasons for Rush Limbaugh and neocon-talk radio’s rise in the first place. When Limbaugh began doing his brand of political talk, old pickup trucks still had AM-only radios.

Let’s digress a moment, and quote Wikipedia’s entry on buggy whips:

Though similar whips are still manufactured for limited purposes, the buggy whip industry as a major economic entity ceased to exist with the introduction of the automobile, and is cited in economics and marketing as an example of an industry ceasing to exist because its market niche, and the need for its product, disappears. — Wikipedia on Buggy Whip & Coach Whip

The buggy whip didn’t disappear overnight. There was this period where whip manufacturers were failing, and those most successful in staying in business hewed to markets where their product was still in demand, and they did what they needed to be premier in that market.

It would be as if a smart buggy whip manufacturer would identify the Amish market and do what ever it took to best serve their needs. Even naming themselves—in a not so subtle nod to their remaining market—Ordnung, the German word for order.

Ordnung, if you’ve been keeping up with your Mennonite apologetics, is the Amish name for their set of rules for living. What a great name for a whip, if you’re Amish!

So take no joy in watching libtalk radio go over the cliff, righties. It was just the weakest buggy whip company in the business: it deserved to die. But the lesser Rushbos aren’t far behind.

Synergy. Whole greater than the sum of the parts. That’s when things are good.

Let's stop bowing to our behemoths

Too big to fail. National resource. That’s when things are bad.

Suddenly, we’re no longer bowing to the god of “size matters.” Today’s bailout of Citibank suggests that, and the coming crash in legacy broadcasting and satellite will be more proof.

Just today, in the [City Near You] Business Journal, Lew Dickey, Jr, CEO of Cumulus Media opines that in the next 36 months, half of the companies in the radio business will be gone.

Mike Elgan at Datamation is getting mass redistribution with his article that sticks a fork in XM/Sirius, and at Daily Kos, Jerome a Paris (who could spend a year just writing “I told you so” diaries) tells us what we should have been doing with banks which is extensible to broadcasters. There was a reason for ownership caps. Ronald Reagan forgot them somehow, but then as we discovered when he left office, Reagan forgot a lot.