The creator of the popular Web program 'The Young Turks' was a hit as a guest host on MSNBC and he's not stopping there in his push to 'steer the national conversation.' When I ask the Young Turk what stands as competition for his Internet video show on politics, he pauses for a beat.

"Sh," he replies. "I just don't see them yet, thank God. The competition will come at some point and we don't want to be overconfident. But at the same time, right now, we have huge market dominance."

While many others have talked about new media forms and breaking down barriers, the self-styled Young Turk, a.k.a. Cenk Uygur, has administered his own wrecking ball. His Internet video program, "The Young Turks," has become strong enough to power a small but burgeoning network of Web programs. That program's reach has given him the credibility to jump to a spot as a fill-in host on a more traditional platform, cable station MSNBC.

Uygur (his full name is pronounced Jenk U-gurr) has reached the enviable place where he wants, but does not need, expanded air time on cable television. He has shown he can match, and even outdraw, the more traditional cable television hosts he has been replacing. But he attracts enough acclaim and cash via the Web and YouTube channels he founded that he says even a full-time gig on TV would not draw him away from his new-media roots.

It's tempting to view Uygur as the prototype for a new generation of political commentators, who hone their craft with blogs and Web videos and then transition to older platforms. Political commentator and comedian Tina Dupuy calls Uygur "the Tila Tequila of political talk-show hosts." Others, no doubt, will follow.

But unlike the one-video wonders who burst on the pop music scene, it's likely that the future political talkers in the Uygur mode will make their bones more gradually. It takes more than one catchy lyric to build the world view, credibility and tone that win audiences in the long run.

Uygur has been working for a decade or more to get to his current heady place. "The Young Turks" online revenue hit the equivalent of $1 million a year in July, according to Uygur. A new "TYT Sports" channel is due to launch Wednesday. And recent ratings show that the 40-year-old host outdrew MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan on the five days he replaced the daytime host in July and August. (While Ratigan averaged 276,000 viewers in August, Uygur drew an average of 293,000.)

Cable executives hope fill-in hosts can at best hold on to the audiences they inherit. But MSNBC insiders said they believe Uygur did so well because many of those who watch his three-hour weekday Web program, (3 to 6 p.m. PDT) or clips on his YouTube channel jumped to MSNBC when Ratigan was out.

The new-media comer walks a line. He is thrilled with his cable television success and wants more air time, mostly because he says decision makers are still more likely to watch a program on cable than on the Internet. But he also says that "The Young Turks" — where he regularly dogs President Obama and Democrats, along with his usual Republican foils — is his "bread and butter."

"If they said to me, 'You can do cable, but no 'Young Turks,' I would say 'No deal,' even if they gave me a full-time show," Uygur said in a Labor Day interview. "Because it's bigger than any TV show. And I don't say that as hype. It's a reality."

Well, not precisely. "Young Turks" clips drew a total of more than 18.7 million views on YouTube during August, making it one of the most popular regular features on the video-sharing service. Although a heady number, it still doesn't match, say, the average weekly 7.6 million viewers who watch " NBC Nightly News."

The program makes about half its revenue via commercials posted with its YouTube videos, money it shares with the video behemoth. It makes the other half mostly from subscriptions (more than 3,000 pay $10 a month to get podcasts and other features.)

With revenue expanding at a healthy clip, "The Young Turks" (whose guest hosts include Ben Mankiewicz of "At the Movies" on Turner Classic Movies and Wes Clark Jr., son of the general and one-time presidential candidate) recently doubled its staff to 10 and is considering expanding out of its longtime studio on Miracle Mile in Los Angeles.

The Sports commentaries will feature "TYT" regulars but also welcome outsiders. "The whole attitude is, we don't decide what works, the audience does and we go with that," Uygur said. The new feature will join other TYT channels that already focus on movies, video blogs and interviews with newsmakers.

Program namesake Uygur, who is of Turkish descent, sets the conversational tone for the shows. The one-time lawyer and college rugby player with the faithfully liberal political bent will range away from his main topics to football, pop culture or wherever he sees promising fodder.

He has spent plenty of time lately hammering Democrats and President Obama for selling their policies so poorly and doing little, as he sees it, to remind the public that the economic crisis began during a Republican administration.

"Obama spent the first two years of his administration practicing political unilateral disarmament," he said in one salvo. "He laid down his arms to reach out to Republicans, and they ripped his arms off and clubbed him over the head with them."

He had been a Republican until President George W. Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq, Uygur said. He built his first audience on Sirius satellite radio, in large part with his adamant opposition to the Iraqi conflict.

Uygur, who grew up in New Jersey before attending the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia law school, sees Republicans as protecting rich and powerful interests. "But are you going to catch Democrats in corruption too?" he says. His answer: All the time. "What I say is 'Why would I want Charlie Rangel robbing me, instead of Tom DeLay robbing me?'"

He said he was not disappointed that the 10 p.m. EDT time slot his followers had in mind for him recently went to longtime MSNBC personality and former Capitol Hill staffer Lawrence O'Donnell. "It's all working out well," he said. MSNBC President Phil Griffin called Uygur "part of our family" and expects him to get "more and more" air time, though he declined to specify in what time slots.

Uygur said winning more time on TV matters because "I want to steer the national conversation in the right direction, from my point of view. I want to get under Robert Gibbs' skin and Rahm Emanuel's skin and Barack Obama's skin."

He scoffs at the suggestion that MSNBC can't catch up with cable-leader Fox News. "They don't mind throwing bombs and picking fights," Uygur said. "But if anyone on the other side has the temerity, they will have a great success or even greater success than Fox, because there are more progressives out there."

MSNBC has hired frequent guest commentator Cenk Uygur as a contributor and substitute anchor. Uygur, the founder of popular live web video show "The Young Turks" (Uygur is Turkish), began appearing as a regular Friday guest on the net starting at the beginning of the summer.

He has filled in for regular MSNBC staffers on "The Ed Show," "The Dylan Ratigan Show," and "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

When the Peacock cabler announced last year that it was searching for a 10 p.m. news show, Uygur tried and failed to get "The Young Turks" picked up for the 10 p.m. slot that eventually went to Lawrence O'Donnell.

"Turks" is broadcast on XM/Sirius Satellite radio.

Cenk Uygur is the bombastic host of America's longest-running online political talk show, The Young Turks (TYT for short), and he wants to start a revolution in the US. "I don't mean it like the Tea Party guys who talk about guns and violence, I mean a real political revolution," the former lawyer from New Jersey explains, referring to protests in the US by the Tea Party movement, which supports constitutionally limited government and free markets.

TYT, which came to national prominence in 2005 with a 99-hour "Live, On Air Filibuster" during supreme court nomination hearings, is also part of a media revolution. Its filibustering was quickly followed by a decision to launch on YouTube. It now averages 13 million viewers a month.

Last week, TYT announced its first sponsorship deal with Netflix, the online film rental company. It has deals with other online businesses, such as godaddy.com, SquareSpace and GameFly, in the pipeline as well. Not shy of self-promotion, Uygur, a fixture on TV in the US, says: "We are a rare online show that is profitable and expanding. We've hired three people in the last five months. The growth and the sponsors were organic. We didn't come in with a lot of money or a big sponsor. We created the show, found the audience, then got the sponsors."

Uygur conceived TYT because he believes that online TV will eclipse network programming and that Americans are starved of public service journalism. "We're looking for journalism in all the wrong places. What's the last story anyone on television in America broke?"

TYT began life as a liberal talkshow on Sirius Satellite Radio in 2002. In 2006, Uygur decided to turn down a $250,000 radio-only deal and TYT became the first daily streaming online talk show. It went from zero to 30,000 viewers in a month; in February this year it reached more than 200m views on YouTube. "Before if you got on CNN or ABC in America that was huge and that was the best thing, if you were a cable station it was great – they always bragged about 'Oh, we're in 72m homes'. Now I think, so what? YouTube is in every home."

TYT covers news and entertainment, and Uygur runs a tight ship, with just six full-time and three part-time staff and a monthly budget of $45,000. Income comes from subscriptions and YouTube revenue sharing, and between June 2008 and December 2009 it doubled to more than $60,000 a month, with margins increasing steadily since then. TYT has no advertising budget: its fans, the TYT Army, provide promotion by tweeting links or posting clips on social networking sites.

In fact, if you're looking for a job, the TYT army is recruiting. "At this point," Uygur says, "we only hire from our audience … We're trying to give you news so you're part of the process – the viewers are the Young Turks. If I get something wrong on air, I get 1,000 emails correcting me instantly and most of our story suggestions come from viewers."

The show has been able to keep pace with the mighty networks it competes with by using its popularity to book a wide variety of guests, some of whom may not return: "I heard from [US Senate majority leader] Harry Reid's office, after his interview, that we were effectively blacklisted for future interview requests. I didn't really shed a tear. We're gonna be all right."

In terms of technology awards, TYT beat the competition, including the BBC and Rush Limbaugh, the leading talk radio host, to win Best Political Podcast 2009 at the Podcast Awards and Best Political News Site 2009 at the Mashable Awards. The show was also nominated for the Audience's Choice Award 2010 at the Streamy Awards.

"We worked really hard at getting all the details right. Whether it's the tagging of the video or the thumbnail [image] ... What ultimately mattered most was that we were delivering something the American media wasn't. The American media is delivering nothing but fakeness," Uygur argues.

So how will TYT evolve? Expansion, he says. He and the team have recently launched a sister network, What the Flick , on YouTube, which is hosted by the film critic Ben Mankiewicz. He plans to build more online networks: TYT sports, TYT Moms, TYT food – "Whatever matches our brand, and our brand is just: genuine, real and generally progressive."

TYT apparently gets "a huge amount of feedback" from Britain. "We cover a lot of stories from the UK because your newspapers are more interesting – some of them are just having fun, but at least they're covering interesting stories."

When he was in London for the Changing Media Summit, Uygur was recognised a couple of times on the tube and in the street. Not bad for a American news anchor who has never had a show broadcast on TV.

THE CASE FOR OBAMA
ROLLING STONE - October 2010

For many progressives, the presidency of Barack Obama has been deeply disappointing. To hear some prominent lefties tell it, the New Jesus of the campaign trail has morphed into the New Judas of the Oval Office.

"He loves to buckle," MSNBC host Cenk Uygur declared in a July segment called "Losing the Left." "Obama's not going to give us real change — he's going to give us pocket change and hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner."

CENK UYGUR SETS OUT TO TAKE DOWN TRADITIONAL TELEVISION
FAST COMPANY - December 2009

Television studios are airport-hangar-size buildings with green rooms, overflow trailers, and people with massive salaries bustling around. I'm sitting instead in a cramped office on Wilshire Boulevard, a mile from Beverly Hills, which has been converted into a makeshift studio for the Internet-based TV talk show The Young Turks. In the control room, three staffers in T-shirts and a perky producer, Ana Kasparian, 23, man eight computer screens and clutch boxes of various Willy Wonka candies. A wall-size window separates them from a modest newscast-esque set.

Just before 4 p.m., host Cenk Uygur, 39, arrives -- "early," he says, so we could talk -- not at all fazed that his three-hour show is streaming live in 10 minutes. I've seen the show; his musings are thoughtful, insightful gems in a sea of digitized diatribes. I look around for a teleprompter. There isn't one. No writers either. Uygur watches the day's video clips for the first time during commercial breaks, seconds before he discusses them on-air.

Uygur doesn't look like a rebel, but there is something revolutionary going on here. Roughly 450,000 people watch The Young Turks on YouTube alone; thousands more in the precious 18-to-35 demo listen on Sirius Satellite Radio and through the TYT Web site, making it competitive with, say, MSNBC's Morning Joe (382,000 viewers a day in September), or CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight (616,000). And that, says Uygur, is only the beginning of a campaign "to take down television."

"When I watch TV, I see robots," he says. "We're not robots; we're people." On a show touching on health-care reform and Senator Max Baucus, Uygur proclaimed, "The mainstream media and the politicians who do these tricks and the media who cover for them -- guess what? You're fucked. We're coming for you. We're coming to your house."

Uygur is no Jim Cramer or Keith Olbermann. There are no props. He doesn't pace or throw papers. On air, he sits at a desk in a news-anchor manner, without the necktie. His style is conversational. Even from the voyeuristic distance of YouTube, he seems to be having an intimate chat with his viewers. For two hours, he comments on what interests him about each sound bite and piece of video, and talks with guests who span the spectrum from Mel Brooks to Mary Matalin. A self-described moderate progressive, he sometimes disagrees with the likes of Michael Moore. For the third hour, cohost and producer Kasparian does softer news.

The Turks' goal has always been to make a television show for the Web and build on that success. "In '97, I knew television and the Internet would merge," Uygur says. "Didn't realize radio would too." TYT was Sirius's first original programming, an arrangement that, by 2006, provided this ragtag crew with an operating budget of $250,000 a year. According to Uygur, the network wouldn't allow them to produce a YouTube video program, so they raised their own funds (mostly friends and family) and worked out a syndication deal with Sirius. The gamble paid off; within a year, revenue reached the $250,000 mark. Today, TYT takes in more than $20,000 a month from YouTube's ad sharing, plus a similar sum from 2,100 subscriptions and ads from its own Web site. Revenue has doubled in the past 18 months.

With operating costs of $35,000 a month, covering five full-time employees and rent, TYT is a lean -- and modestly profitable -- talking machine. There's no makeup person. No wardrobe budget. No craft services. No catered lunches. No grips. No unions. And no 401(k)s. "Yeah, I'm on my wife's health care," admits Uygur.

To create a single hour of cable news, "you're probably looking at a ballpark of $200,000 to $300,000," says Pixel Pictures executive producer Karen Daniel. Compare that to TYT's tidy budget and television looks like a dinosaur blissfully dismissing mammals, or newspapers scoffing at blogs circa 2002.

TYT does absolutely no advertising. Rabid fans, known as the Young Turks' Nation, are the show's most devoted publicists. "Our marketing is purely word of mouth and people linking to our videos and blogs on the Web," says Uygur. Meaning TYT has found a way to crowdsource everything, from fact checking to $10-a-month Web subscriptions to keep the lights on. "If I screw up and say something wrong, I instantly get 100 messages," says Uygur.

What's next for TYT? "Launch a network," says Uygur. "We're crazy cheap." He notes they already have the studio and the equipment to produce another show. It would just take a couple more crew members and a new producer. The model is proven. YouTube is equipped. The TYT brand is ready to expand. Uygur hopes to launch at least one new show in the next three months.

But what if MSNBC, where Uygur had talks last spring about its 10 p.m. slot, comes calling? What if a real television network wants to scoop up TYT? "It would have to coexist with what we have," Uygur says. Cable news is welcome to syndicate its content, but TYT won't shut down the YouTube channel for the old Goliath of cable news. Instead, Uygur says, "we're going to pick their pockets."

Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks is guest-hosting for Dylan Ratigan today on his MSNBC show.

Uygur topped the TVNewser poll in early 2009 when the network was said to be searching for a new 10pm host. He's appeared as a guest on a number of shows in the last year, but this is his first time hosting.

Last month, MSNBC finally filled that 10pmET slot, giving the hour to longtime MSNBC contributor Lawrence O'Donnell.

Cenk Uygur, host of the popular online news show "The Young Turks," turned his attention to Dearborn on Wednesday, asking viewers whether it was appropriate to ban the sweatshirts.

The YouTube video has more than 22,000 views and 1,093 comments to date.

While Uygur agreed with administrators' decision not to punish the students, he suggested their poor judgment should bar them from graduation.

"If you can't see how that's offensive, you shouldn't graduate from high school," he said.

Uygur also pointed out the sweatshirts didn't actually make a lot of sense.

"'You can't bring us down.' But wait a minute. You're the Thunderbird? What does that mean?"

MSNBC VIEWERS LOBBY FOR A LIBERAL HOST

LOS ANGELES TIMES - February 9, 2009

NEW YORK — Television network executives looking for new talent are accustomed to getting pleas from agents urging them to check out their clients.

But in the last few weeks, MSNBC has experienced a different kind of onslaught: a flood of unsolicited endorsements from fans of liberal radio hosts touting them as the network's next potential big star.

The grass-roots campaigns were triggered by the news that the cable channel is contemplating creating a new show for its 7 p.m. time slot, currently occupied by a repeat of "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." That prompted the launch of independent Facebook groups extolling the merits of two radio hosts: Cenk Uygur of the Internet show "The Young Turks" and Sam Seder of Air America.

The lobbying efforts have drawn thousands of supporters and led fans to pepper MSNBC with e-mails in support of their favorite personality. Hundreds of people have posted messages of support online, some even creating their own video spots. (Give the time slot to "The Young Turks," warns one, "or I'll switch back to CNN.") Liberal bloggers on sites like MyDD.com have also weighed in.

They all hope that MSNBC will choose a host cast from the same left-leaning mold as Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who have helped power the cable channel's ratings.
"You have a block with two unabashedly progressive voices that doesn't exist anywhere else on cable news," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos, who urged his readers to back Seder for the spot. "We want to take advantage of locking up that third hour, if we can."

MSNBC President Phil Griffin said he's not necessarily looking for someone who shares the political leanings of Olbermann and Maddow, but is delighted by the response.
"If people identify with us, I'm thrilled," he said.

"Obviously, we're going to have flow between our shows," Griffin added. "But it isn't going to be ideology that drives it. I want that hour to be edgy, to be smart, to be a little snarky."

At this point, the search for a new host is just an "aspiration," said Griffin, noting that the network may not even select someone by the year's end. But he said he had been floored by the reaction, which has included "dozens and dozens of phone calls from people I never thought about or considered."

"It's just incredible and just shows you where MSNBC is," he said. "We've had times when hours have been open and nobody noticed."

CAN'T GET ON THE NETWORK? GET ON THE NET

LOS ANGELES TIMES - March 19, 2006

New York — CENK UYGUR was pretty sure he had the makings of a good TV show.

Every afternoon, he and fellow liberal talk show hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Jill Pike spent three hours dishing about politics and pop culture for their irreverent Sirius Satellite Radio program "The Young Turks." They already had an avid fan base, including listeners who urged the trio to seek a larger audience.

So last year, the Los Angeles-based commentators shot a television pilot in a rented studio and shopped it to the cable news channels, buoyed by a letter-writing campaign to network executives from some of their followers.

No one bit. So Uygur and his co-hosts took the matter into their own hands. "We thought, 'If they're not going to put us on, let's put ourselves on.' "

With the help of some investors, the Young Turks bought four professional digital cameras and rented a studio space along Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile. In mid-December, they began streaming their three-hour show every weekday on their website, www.theyoungturks.com, billing it as the first live Internet talk show.

In the process, they've helped pioneer the rapidly developing field of online programming -- from webcasts to video podcasts and vlogs (the video version of a blog) -- now delivering content that traditionally would have had to survive the television development season and pass the muster of network executives to find an audience.

"Anybody can own a broadcast power now," says Jeff Jarvis, who writes about media and technology on his blog BuzzMachine. "We're going to have more and more choices. TV will no longer be one-size-fits-all."

Until recently, original video programming on the Internet has resembled homemade films more than mainstream television shows, appealing to niche audiences with pieces focused largely on youth culture, tech wizardry or quirky personal stories. On one of the most popular sites, Rocketboom.com, host Amanda Congdon delivers a wry three-minute daily newscast about new gadgets and oddball stories. The site Vlogmap.org lists more than 480 vlogs in the U.S. alone, including the heavily trafficked 64mm.com, which boasts that it's "The First and Best Skateboarding VideoCast on the Net."

PROTEST OF CNN

FISHBOWLLA - November 5, 2009

Sixty or so protesters have gathered outside of the CNN building on Sunset Blvd. They are protesting what they say is biased reporting by the news network of the debate over a public health insurance option.

CNN is expected to run coverage of the angry (but peaceful) crowd outside its doors later tonight.

Similar rallies took place outside the CNN headquarters in New York and Atlanta. The protests were organized by The Young Turks and Democracy For America.

FREEDOM FESTIVAL 09 CELEBRATES SUSTAINABILITY, LOCALISM

KERN VALLEY SUN - October 27, 2009

Kern Valley Progressive Alliance for Change (KVPAC) held its fourth annual Kern Valley Progressive Freedom Festival in Kernville last weekend, Oct. 24-25, with a music and political outdoor festival at Frandy Park on Saturday, and various workshops at the Oddfellows Hall on Sunday. The theme of this year’s festival was “The Voice of Social Consciousness,” and nationally-know as well as local speakers offered many ideas on how individuals can do their part to improve the world.

Former soldier Dwayne Hunn, now of the World Service Corp., told the story of one mother who is working to raise funds to send her son the proper Kevlar equipment that the army is not providing him, so that he will come home to her safely. Health care reform was a widely discussed topic on Saturday, with many speakers rallying for a public option.

Delores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmer Workers with Cesar Chavez, spoke to the crowd about healthcare being a basic human right at Saturday’s Freedom Festival in Kernville.

Delores Huerta, founder of the Delores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the United Farmer Workers with Cesar Chavez, has worked relentlessly to ensure farm workers’ rights. Huerta, who has been the recipient of numerous awards and holds four honorary doctorate degrees, spoke about health care being a basic human right, and not something to be denied due to the balance in one’s bank account. “We need to come together to do something to get health care for all,” she implored.

Keynote speaker Cenk Uygur of Air America’s “The Young Turks,” who has appeared many times as a commentator on CNN, spoke of ways that we can change the world. A self-identified lifelong Republican, Uygur said he became disillusioned with previous administration. Uygur added that while it is exciting that President Obama was elected, he predicts that Obama will only be able to affect a five percent change during his time in office, and the rest is up to us. Uygur had many ideas about how the common man and woman can work together to make sure that our elected officials work for the people rather than the lobbyists. He suggested that a Political Action Committee is formed, much like NRA or NAACP, to bring down one crooked politician through ads in that official’s state, so that the others will take notice and worry that they, too, will be held accountable for their actions. “Nine out of ten politi! cians are cowards; they want to please everyone and they sell out to those who can give them the highest contributions. They need to sell out to us, the voters,” said Uygur. “The way to change the world is not to rely on politicians, but to do it ourselves.”

In addition to the various speakers, there was musical talent throughout the day, including Out of the Question with a set of bluegrass and folk, in addition to a tribute by Valerie Cassity to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s Mary Travers, who passed away last month. Event emcee R.J. Eskow took a turn on stage showcasing his musical talent, as well as Dos Guys, and the women’s Celtic group Banshee in the Kitchen.

The musical headliner was Brian Vander Ark, a singer-songwriter best known as lead singer for the band The Verve Pipe. Vander Ark wrote the band’s hit “The Freshmen” and many others, and had a supporting role as the bass player in the movie Rock Star. Vander Ark sang for an hour with only his acoustic guitar for accompaniment. Punctuating his songs with brief stories about their origins, Vander Ark told the story of his step father taking his last breath in a hospital with his family surrounding him, and also shared the tale of taking his four-year-old daughter on a daddy/daughter date to McDonalds with her in her princess dress and tiara and him in a suit.

One focus that the festival organizers wanted to emphasize is celebrating sustainability and localism, which was accomplished by having all local vendors selling their wares ranging from locally hand made skin care creams, jewelry and crafts made from local materials, a square-foot gardening system, and more. Children were kept entertained with a bounce house by Kern Kids Party Rentals, bracelet and dream catcher making activities, pendulum art, peace flag decorating, and a patriotic mosaic portrait featuring the Statue of Liberty drawn by Joan Desmond, which had various 6” square pieces of a large picture to be decorated by everyone at the event. There was also a display of the Freedom Wall, which was covered with pictures drawn by local children about what freedom means to them, and included everything from (several) American flags to a girl riding her horse in a field.

The event organizers also wanted to encourage green energy, and invited KV Solar Supply to set up an information booth, as well as CA Green Team Windspire energy systems; a company that sells personal wind energy systems which powered much of the day’s activities.Dawn Jordan pointed out that the stage was made of 100 percent recycled materials, and there were recycling bins throughout the festival area so that the event would create as little waste as possible. On stage, Jordan encouraged everyone to recycle as much of their trash as they could, and that local recycling centers will take almost anything for recycling. “Ghandi’s ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’ is one of my favorite quotes, and one of the changes we want to see in this valley is more green energy and more recycling,” said Jordan.

QUOTED CENK IN AN ARTICLE ABOUT GLENN BECK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS - September 12, 2009

Glenn Beck, the hottest right-wing voice on the air, worried aloud to his listeners the other day that powerful, sinister forces trying to destroy America might soon "shoot me in the head."

But there's fear among his critics, including calmer conservatives, that the victim more likely will be one of Beck's many broadcast targets.

After a summer of mob anger at town hall meetings on health care - some of which featured gun-toting protesters - and a burst of Beck-fanned hysteria over President Obama's back-to-school speech last week, the former top 40 deejay has emerged as a goofy dark prince of the right.

His gift for spinning apocalyptic visions of the future is matched only by his melodramatic skill to gin up his listeners.

"'The world is going to hell in a handbasket' - I think that pretty much summarizes Glenn Beck," said Charles Dunn, a Regent University professor and author of "The Future of Conservatism."

"But I also think he's become the head cheerleader of getting people to respond - the tea parties, the health care town halls."

"Glenn is great at what he does," added Michael Smerconish, a conservative whose show runs in New York on WOR, the same station as Beck's show. "But I just wonder - at what cost?

"I mean, disagree with the President - absolutely," added Smerconish. "But be leery of using some of the words that have now entered this debate."

A sampler:

* Beck, 45, has called Obama a "racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" - comments that have sparked an advertising boycott of his Fox News Channel show.

* He declares the nation is headed toward a "fascist state" and that the White House is infested with "radical, revolutionary and in some cases Marxist" advisers.

* He claims Obama's entire agenda - including health care - is designed to "settle old racial scores" and that Americans must rise up to take back their nation. "The time for silent dissent has long passed," Beck warned last week in a typical call to arms.

It's an us-versus-them view of the world, with Americans' freedom and very lives in imminent peril; a foreboding, racially polarized vision of America under siege by a conspiracy of liberals, "anti-capitalists" and other players in an Obama "thugocracy" who must be stopped at all costs.

Ron Kessler, author of "In The President's Secret Service," notes that although it is impossible to single out Beck as a cause, threats against Obama are up 400% compared with those against President George W. Bush.

"A lot of those threats are racially based," Kessler said. "So there is a real basis for concern."

Even as he echoes far-right theories, Beck tries to cast himself as simply a libertarian - a believer in self-reliance - whose show fuses "entertainment with enlightenment."

A former alcoholic and drug addict, he now mocks himself as a "rodeo clown" - one of the comedy bits he adds to his daily stew on evil government plots.

But here's what Beck critics consider the scariest part: Americans are eating him up.

His radio show is now No. 3 in America, with a following both younger and more female than the top two, conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

His TV show routinely pulls in more than 2.5 million viewers daily, placing him third among all cable news programs. On some recent nights, Beck's 5 p.m. show outdrew long-reigning cable news champ Bill O'Reilly, who holds a prime-time slot.

Heady stuff for a self-confessed sufferer of attention deficit disorder who barely attended college and, in his drinking days, once fired an employee for handing him the wrong kind of pen.

A convert to Mormonism, Beck lives in a $4.25 million home in Connecticut, with his second wife, Tania, and their four kids.

Beck spent decades working in morning deejay slots around the country, from Baltimore to Houston to Phoenix to New Haven.

His big break came in 2006, when CNN Headline News gave him a show. Soon Fox came calling and Beck became famous as the crying commentator for his on-air weeping, usually inspired by some new evidence that America was going down the drain.

"I just love my country, and I fear for it," he quavered.

His clout is still growing, and last weekend Beck landed his first knockout punch - the resignation of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs czar."

It was Beck who spotlighted video of Jones referring to Republicans as "a-------," and a petition Jones signed suggesting that Bush knowingly let the 9/11 attacks happen.

Not surprisingly, he is now going after other Obama czars as dangerous radicals.

But it is the undercurrent of paranoia that permeates Beck's show that has liberal critics and conservatives alike expressing concern he will inspire violence.

Christopher Balfe, who head's Beck's media company, said that's nonsense. "Glenn has clearly, repeatedly and unequivocally denounced violence and promoted peaceful, nonviolent expression," he said.

But to many, such disclaimers are drowned out by hours of overheated, fear-stoking rants.

"It's a subtle incitement toward violence, all the time," said Cenk Uygur, anchor of the "The Young Turks," a liberal-leaning show on Sirius Radio, who follows Beck closely. "He is saying, 'They are coming for us.'

"And you know, he doesn't need to convince his whole audience to go do something stupid and violent," Uygur added. "He only needs to convince one."

MOJO BLOG

MOTHER JONES NOVEMVER 20, 2008

My piece out today on frustrated internet activists in the Republican Party begins with a story from Michael Turk, a conservative activist who ran the eCampaign division at the RNC after the 2004 presidential election. In short, the RNC killed an exciting opportunity for web video just as it began to get some coverage because it badly misunderstood the conventions of the genre. (See the piece for more detail.) That episode presaged the current state of affairs. Four years later, Barack Obama used and is using web video as one of many technological tools to reach out to hundreds of thousands of his supporters, while John McCain had a lackluster YouTube channel and generated little excitement around his web operations.

But it isn't just Obama who is capitalizing on the power of web video. It's the left more generally. Consider The Young Turks. A radio show originally on Air America and now on XM satellite radio, The Young Turks has been broadcasting on the web since the pre-YouTube era. Now that it operates a YouTube channel, it is absolutely killing the game. Just this week the channel passed 50 million views, with 32.4 million views coming in a period that maps with the election cycle (January to October 2008). By comparison, the John McCain YouTube channel has just 25.7 million views in its lifetime.

A progressive satellite radio show did better traffic online than the Republican presidential candidate. The Republican activists that I spoke with have a seriously uphill battle.

BLOGTALK: FILIBUSTER DEBATE

NEW YORK TIMES - February 6, 2007

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