David Pakman: Sam Seder's with us, host of Majority Report with Sam Seder, www.Majority.fm
is the website.
How's everything going over there, Sam?
Sam Seder: Thinks are going pretty good, David.
A little chilly this time of year, but things are... things have been actually really good.
We launched the show... or relaunched, I guess, this version of the show, which used to be
on Air America, a little over a year ago, and our audience is growing significantly,
particularly over the past three, four, five months.
David: I've found that it's often good to relaunch shows, you know, as many times as
you need to until it becomes really popular.
That seems to be a good strategy.
Seder: We do it on a monthly basis.
David: So you guys... actually, it's interesting, because you have a similar model to us, where
you have a lot of the broadcast show that it's free, people can access it, you know,
on YouTube, the podcast, and then if people like the show enough, or if they hate it enough
where they feel they need to monitor what you're doing in a more extensive way, they
can sign up and pay, you know, a fee, and they get access to extra stuff.
Do you get people that criticize you and say if you were really for free speech, you would
have everything for free, which shows they fundamentally don't understand the First Amendment,
or what do you get from people?
Seder: I don't allow people like that to listen to my show, so I don't get those type of comments.
And we do 40 minutes, maybe a little bit more, every day for free.
David: Right.
Seder: And we stream the whole show live for free.
And then if you want the second half, or what we call the "better half" of the show, a whole
team of marketers came up with that for me, if you want the better half of the show, you've
got to... you pay.
And it's been... it's been good, you know.
You know, we put out a lot of free content, and for the most part, we're just now starting
to dip into rebroadcasting the show on terrestrial radio.
So it's a little bit tricky, because I want, obviously, more members, because that's 95%
of our revenue, but you know, I also want the audience to grow, and so I want to give
a substantial amount of content away for free so that more people will try out the show.
So you know, it's finding that balance, and so far, it seems to be working.
David: Yeah, we were talking earlier on the show about Fox News's ratings.
While they still dominated in 2011 in cable news, they actually were the only major cable
news outlet that lost viewers during that year.
You see, you know, the kind of increasing irrelevance of whether you're on a 25,000-watt
or 35,000-watt station because of the increased kind of wide access to the internet that there
is.
Do you think eventually it's just going to be irrelevant what cable channel or radio
station you're on, and it'll really be what's on the internet, if you have internet in the
car, it almost doesn't matter whether you're on broadcast stations, or is that still going
to be kind of a big media factor?
Seder: I mean, it depends on what your horizon is.
I think, you know, I don't think that that age that you're talking about will really
come about fully for another five to 10 years, but... because certainly, if I had taken this
show and launched it the day after, let's say, Air America folded, I would have a lot
more people, but it's, you know, it's... the challenge now is a marketing challenge.
David: Can you even imagine, and I've talked with Craig Aaron, and actually Josh Silver,
the former and current presidents at Free Press, about this, if cable companies actually
let you pick channels a la carte, which really would be the worst nightmare, right, because
the way that they package a lot of these things is yeah, we'll give you the Food Network,
which a lot of people like, but then you've got to take Home and Garden 6 and who knows
what else.
So with shows like yours, people can actually say well, I just like this one show, and I'm
going to pay for this one program.
That's the worst nightmare for big corporate cable companies, isn't it?
Seder: It is, and you know, the... you're already seeing... look, you saw this in the
music industry, and to a certain extent, you've seen it in the television industry, the way
that their distribution mechanisms change their content.
You know, the... when you started to have the dissolution of fin-syn rules and we started
to have things like, you know, DVDs or downloadable shows, the idea of selling a television show
into syndication lost a lot of its luster.
You just don't see those big payoffs anymore.
So you see networks now instead of getting with studios and, you know, working this model
where the studios would put the shows into syndication and that's the way they would
make all their money, you're starting to see networks and studios essentially share the
revenue from the first time it broadcast.
That's why you see a lot more reality television.
David: 2012 election.
We saw the Iowa caucuses.
It's not clear whether they matter at all.
We're getting into New Hampshire and South Carolina.
We've got Bachmann out, Perry for all intents and purposes is no longer a factor.
We now have...
Seder: I'm not sure about Perry in that regard.
David: You think he's still a factor?
Seder: Well, look, you know, and I don't even buy the idea that the Iowa caucuses mean nothing.
They may mean nothing insofar as, you know, only 5% of Iowa voted in the caucuses, but
you know...
David: Well, I was thinking more in the sense that the winner, the person with the most
votes, historically does not end up being the nominee in many cases.
Seder: Right.
I don't know that that's going to happen this time, but certainly it matters a lot to Rick
Santorum, at least in the short term.
And you know, I think what's interesting is this weekend, this past... the weekend before
the New Hampshire primaries, you're having a bunch of conservative leaders, many of whom
are Evangelicals, meeting to decide who they're going to pick as their anti-Romney, or whether
or not they're going to just sort of decide that it's OK for them to have a Mormon president,
presidential candidate.
And I don't mean that, you know... I don't take that lightly, I do think there's a massive
problem in the Republican Party for them to vote for a Mormon.
You know, our Senate leader, Harry Reid, is a Mormon.
It's not a... it's not a problem that I think is one that goes across the country, I think
it's just one with Evangelicals, and...
David: Yeah, well, it's not even being discussed.
People say, when you look at those entrance polls, if you ask people are they born-again
Christians or Evangelical, the number one vote-getter for those people was Rick Santorum,
and he's the guy.
What's not being mentioned is that the number two vote-getter was Ron Paul, who has not
actually... he's gone out of his way, other than that one ad, where is ex-patients say
oh, he's such a great pro-life guy, he's kind of considered not the Christian right-wing
guy, but he's the second guy behind Santorum who got the born-again vote.
Seder: That is because his operatives went to over 300 Evangelical churches in Iowa over
the past four or five months and pitched Ron Paul heavily.
You know, what is little-discussed about Ron Paul is that he has a very strong relationship
with the Christian reconstructionist movement.
And so he's not the first guy you think of when you think Evangelical, but he is definitely
up there, and it's not just because of his anti-choice positions, it is because his brand
of so-called "libertarianism" is not libertarianism in the way that an academic or a European
would think of it.
David: See, when you say that to his supporters, they'll say well, but then he's just running
for president, he's not running for governor of those individual states, so what do you
expect him to say?
But you have to take that into consideration.
It seems short-sighted to me to say well, he's not going to get involved in it.
Seder: Well, no, but he is going to get involved in it, because if he was in a position to
do so, he would prevent the federal government from going in and protecting the civil liberties
of individuals.
So in other words, when you see something like the Voting Rights Act, for instance,
or, you know, the idea that back when Southern states didn't want to allow black students
into their colleges or into their schools and the federal government stepped in, Ron
Paul would have none of that.
David: All right, Sam Seder, Majority Report with Sam Seder at www.Majority.fm is the website.
Great to talk to you, Sam.
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