Why do people listen to talkback radio?
Listeners of talkback radio are a diverse bunch who are often quite different to those who call up and give their opinions on air.
AUT Lecturer Maureen Sinton (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki) researched the audience for her doctorate, to find their motivations for listening to talkback radio and what they liked and didn't like about it.
"One of the reasons people think of talkback listeners as sad old lonely people is because of the people who often call in to give their opinions,” she said.
“People assume that the listeners must be like the callers - but this is often not the case."
There are only a few hundred callers, and the hundreds of thousands of listeners often do not hold the same views as them, she said.
So why do people listen to people they don’t agree with and who they may find infuriating? Dr Sinton says that the main reason is entertainment.
“Talkback is a spectator sport, and the listener is the spectator. There is a game on between the host and the caller, and if everyone agrees then it wouldn't be much fun. Peace and harmony wouldn’t be an entertaining listen at all,” Dr Sinton said.
Many talkback radio listeners actually want to listen to the thoughts and opinions of those they don’t know and often don’t agree with.
“If you are listening to talkback and you disagree with a caller, then it actually vindicates your own point of view.”
Another reason people listen to talkback radio is for companionship, Dr Sinton says.
"The listeners feel that they are part of a community. They don’t meet or talk to each other, but I don’t think that is a sad thing. I think it's quite nice,” Dr Sinton said.
"Talkback has a large audience, but it is stigmatised. It’s hard to find someone else who admits listening in."
Dr Sinton is a former talkback radio producer, now teaching Māori media in AUT’s Te Ara Poutama, our Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development. Her doctorate is called Sounding Out the Long-time Listener: A Study of the Talkback Radio Audience That Doesn’t Talk Back in Aotearoa New Zealand.