Salem knows its conservative audience and is sticking to it. | POLITICO Screen grab A new power in conservative media

A player in Christian and talk radio stations is buying up popular conservative websites — moves that could make Salem Communications the next big thing in right-wing media.

The California-based company has recently gobbled up sites that reach millions of readers, like Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy.com, the Eagle Publishing group which is home to RedState.com, HumanEvents.com and the conservative publishing house Regnery. The Salem empire already includes more than 100 Christian and conservative talk-radio stations and several Christian-themed websites, as well as HotAir.com and TownHall.com.


Though Salem doesn’t appear to be planning major changes to the sites, media experts say the move represents a bid to consolidate the huge conservative market and power up the company’s effort to reach beyond its core conservative Christian devotees to possibly become more of a powerful political force on the right. The consolidation Salem is undertaking is unlike anything seen on the left, where media efforts are generally much more individualized.

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With the expansion, Salem is well-positioned to expand its audience - and its conservative influence - by tapping a new group of listeners and readers described by one media observer as those who are “the sister or cousin” of the hardcore Tea Party member who’s already tuned in.

Adding Twitchy into its portfolio, Salem called itself “the largest social media driven conservative platform on the Web with nearly 10 million unique readers and over 100 million page views each month.” The expansion also brings some of the bigger names of conservative blogging, like Erick Erickson and Mary Katharine Ham, under one roof. And Salem has the funds for a substantial platform: In 2012, the publicly traded company generated $108 million of gross profit on $229 million of revenue.

Since going public in 1999, Salem has gradually evolved from Christian-only media to include right-wing political talk and non-Christian hosts like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. Jonahtan Garthwaite, the founder of Town Hall and now vice president and general manager for Salem’s political web businesses, said Salem understands the value of digital properties and plans to continue to grow its holdings in that area.

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“It’s fair to say that we are not done,” Garthwaite said. “We are always looking to grow organically and through acquisition. We’re always looking for opportunities, personalities to fuel that growth. Websites can build up personalities, groom people for prime time. It works really well in that sense.”

One of the personalities who may be in line for a higher profile on Salem’s extensive network of radio stations is Erickson, the editor-in-chief of Red State who appears regularly on Fox News. In fact, he tested out his radio chops over the Christmas holiday as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh.

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Salem was founded more than 26 years ago when CEO Ed Astinger and his brother-in-law, chairman of the board Stu Epperson, combined their radio assets to create a for-profit Christian media company. Epperson and Astinger, both devoted Christians, have also been involved in politics for years, supporting conservative causes and candidates. Astinger and Epperson, along with a close political ally, poured some $780,000 into promoting the 2000 “California Defense of Marriage Act,” according to a 2005 Mother Jones profile. In 2004, Atsinger donated heavily to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and co-chaired Americans of Faith, a church-based get-out-the-vote campaign, promoting their efforts on Salem radio stations. In 2005, Epperson was named one of Time Magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

The websites Salem is picking up are hitting a “sweet spot” of accessible content in the world of right-wing media, conservative media experts said. Sites like RedState and Twitchy occupy a the middle ground between the high-minded voices of The Weekly Standard or National Review and the more viral Breitbart or The Blaze.

“The sweet spot should be snarky sincerity,” said Tim Graham, the conservative Media Research Center’s director of media analysis. “I think some of these sites are so hot that the sale of them causes other sites to say, ‘We have to be more like these.’ Accessible? Absolutely. Everyone in the conservative media world wants to be accessible. Everybody wants to create the conservative Upworthy.com,” a reference to the popular progressive news aggregation site that’s known for its clicky headlines.

Graham calls Twitchy, a right-leaning Twitter and social media curation site, “in the moment right now” with a “popcorn quality.” There’s a trend in conservative media, Graham said, to get beyond the fervent Tea Partier by reaching his perhaps less politically engaged but still right-leaning “sister or cousin.”

“(Salem has) created a stable of sites with different flavors. I don’t feel like it has changed the character of these sites, obviously some of the purchases are very new, but I don’t think anyone expects dramatic changes. When you buy a site like this your recognize it’s successful.”

That philosophy might work for the niche market Salem serves, but the appeal is limited, said Eric Boehlert, a senior writer for the liberal-leaning Media Matters.

”There’s a reason (these websites have) been independent for a while. I don’t think they offer the most tantalizing business prospects. It is what it is, it’s a niche business,” Boehlert said. “There’s clearly a market for that and if you can super serve it you can make a good living but this is not main stream content with main stream advertisers.”

However, Glenn Reynolds, founder of the conservative blog InstaPundit, said that Salem’s acquisitions are a smart way to serve and grow their audience.

“I think Twitchy was a brilliant move. A lot of people hate Twitter but still want to know what’s going on,” Reynolds said. “They picked up that niche of finding out what the big stories are without having to be on Twitter themselves. I think that’s clever.”

Scott Baker, Editor-in-Chief of Glenn Beck’s news website The Blaze, also pointed to Salem’s consolidation of parts of the conservative audience.

“I’ve long believed if you look at all political orientated sites, they’re all sort of sharing the same basic audiences…this gives Salem a chance to consolidate and really lock up some of that,” Baker said, calling Salem’s acquisitions “a great combination of properties.”

One thing is for sure, Salem knows its audience and is sticking to it.

“We have a philosophy of super serving a few specific audiences that we are good at,” Garthwaite said. “We’re really good at super serving (the Christian space) and on that conservative political space we have found a lot of success in catering to the center-right American news junkie.”