How can you tell The Hollywood Reporter isn’t serious about drawing up a "35 Most Powerful People in Media” list ? When it leaves out Rush Limbaugh. (Perhaps they composed this when they thought Sandra Fluke and her censorious enablers would ruin his radio show?)
Then check out who did make this list, and therefore is more powerful than Rush: Howard Stern? Kelly Ripa? Jimmy Fallon? Wendy Williams? Not to mention CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC stars like Rachel Maddow and Joe & Mika...
There’s nothing wrong with picking the network TV news executives and anchors because of the size of their audiences. But Limbaugh’s influence isn’t less than the cable-news channels that consistently lose badly to Fox News Channel. Here’s how they describe the news side of their list:
In addition to its primary function of keeping viewers informed, entertained and moved to action, TV news continues to mint superstars: Matt Lauer (THR's cover subject, who just signed a new Today deal that will make him the highest-paid anchor in history), Diane Sawyer (her news bona fides are so well-established, it’s hard to imagine she was ever viewed as a beauty-queen lightweight by Wallace, no less), Anderson Cooper (his globe-trotting humanism and unflagging energy have led to not one but three jobs) and Bill O’Reilly (his independent streak has kept him atop the cable-news ratings for 125 consecutive months).
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are “voices of a new generation,” and David Letterman is an “incisive” interviewing genius:
And, of course, in this era of political skullduggery and death-match campaigning, the satire of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert has earned them both unparalleled influence (215,000 people attended their 2010 rally in Washington) and status as the incredulous and absurdist voices of a new generation. Meanwhile, David Letterman continues to conduct among the most incisive interviews of every political season, asking questions his peers in TV news dare not.
Bizarrely, THR thinks this Letterman question is so much more "incisive" than what the regular news media asks:
"It seems like everyone's gone wacky in the Republican Party," he said to John McCain during a January Late Show appearance. "Is it the influence of the Tea Party, or am I over-examining this?"
That's pretty much exactly what the TV-news folks ask.
Perhaps THR would argue that this is a list about where guests would appear (and they rarely appear on the Limbaugh show). Their subhead suggested “If you’re a ruthless tyrant, an American hero or a star with a story to tell, the must-stops for getting your message out are right here.” But still, does any publicist think you’ll get huge national attention by talking on the Wendy Williams show?
[Hat tip: Dan Isett]
