The real problem with talk radio

Holy mackerel, American conservatives are fighting over talk radio now. See here and here. And others to which I won't link, or I'd be here all day.

I won't say anything about that in particular. I will say that I find talk radio irritating, since any half hour of talk radio consists more or less of:

• five minutes of news;
• five minutes of rock music transitions between commercials and the show (country music for Hannity's show);
• ten minutes of the show, of which at least five minutes is the host or a caller self-congratulating on the group's apparent superiority ("dittohead", "great American", "Americans who care about their country," etc.);
• ten minutes of commercials, most of which (in this area at least) are scam artists trying to sell gold, work-at-home opportunities, or debt-reduction schemes.

Why should I listen to 30 minutes of radio for, at best, 5 minutes of actual substance? I have better things to do.

Edit: I neglected to mention that, of those five minutes of substance, even that "substance" is often filled with gross logical errors, pseudo-scientific rubbish (not including anything on global warming), and moral posturing. I may agree with a lot of it, but I don't agree with a lot of it, and even the stuff I agree with fills up so little of a half-hour that I'm happier listening to NPR.