Peter holds 1st and 2nd place:

With Mike Malloy and his wife and producer of his show, Kathy Bay, off on holiday, Mike asked Peter Werbe to host his show. Peter did an extraodrinary job and now has the unique honour of standing in both 1st and 2nd position in this week's Liberal Talk Show Hosts ratings.

Ratings for the week ended 2nd December 2005:

1. Mike Malloy Show hosted by Peter Werbe ***** 5 shows a week


2. Peter Werbe ***** 1 show a week


3. Laura Flanders ***** 2 shows a week


4. Ring of Fire (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio) ***** 1 show a week


5. Ray Taliferro ***** 5 shows a week


6. The Rachel Maddow Show **** 5 shows a week


7. The Stephanie Miller Show **** 5 shows a week


8. Politically Direct (David Bender) **** 1 show a week


9. Ecotalk (Betsy Rosenberg) **** 1 show a week


10. Radio Inside Scoop (Mark Levine) ***4 shows a week


11. Mike Webb *** 5 shows a week


12. John Rothmann *** 2 shows a week


13. Thom Hartmann *** 5 shows a week


14. Morning Sedition (Marc Maron, Mark Riley) *** 5 shows a week


15. The Young Turks (Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz and Jill Pike) ** 5 shows a week


16. The Randi Rhodes Show ** 5 shows a week


17. Bernie Ward ***** 4 shows a week


18. Nate Clay ** 1 show a week


19. The Majority Report (Janeane Garofalo, Sam Seder) ** 5 shows a week


20. Revolution in the Air (Lizz Brown) ** 5 shows a week

Unrated this week:

• Springer on the Radio (Jerry Springer) 5 shows a week


• The Al Franken Show, Al Franken 5 shows a week


• Ed Schultz 5 shows a week


• Guy James 1 show a week - (No show last week)

You would have noticed a sharp drop in the standing of Bernie Ward. That is because he got caught in local issues which had no bearing on his international internet audience. Bernie spent a lot of time pushing his charity drive and then spent a far from balanced amount of time gloating over the fact that he had achieved his target and more. Bernie went so far as to tell some of those who complained about his over-exposure of this subject by telling his listeners that he would refund those who did not like him spending so much time talking about his achievement. One actually took him upon this challenge.

Thom Hartmann still pushes his theory about the fact that US has the right to withdraw from international treaties unilaterally, just as Bush has withdrawn from many such treaties. Thom seems to be gloating about the glory days when the US was raping the rest of the world as he sees the local manufacturing capacities vanish from the US. He blames this on treaties rather than the present indolent American psyche.

I drew his attention to a completely more reasonable position of the new German Chancellor, Merkel, who said that Germany had no reason to fear the countries with low priced labour.

By wording his discussions in a very clever, but disingenous manner, he seems to draw a lot of support for his totally unreasonable attitude. He is certainly making his international audience doubt his genuinity as a Liberal Talk Show Host with any true background in economics to support his views.

Thom's economic theory, if illogically extrapolated, would mean that he is saying that it would be best if slavery was brought back to the US!

Not much change in the remaining positions in the ratings.