Breaking: The Sunday Yack Shows Are GOP TV!

That is the conclusion of a new study from the folks at Fair.org, who will confirm your impression that the Sunday yack shows are largely a parade of conservatives. Surprise, right?

This study tallies the political guests of the four network Sunday shows: ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday from June 2011 through February 2012. Since that time period was clearly dominated by a fractious GOP primary, they compared their study with one conducted by Media Matters in 2004, when you would expect Democrats to dominate the shows. That study also showed that conservatives were the majority presence on the Sunday shows.

Single-source interviews are the showcase segments on the Sunday shows, which tend to compete for access to guests they consider the top newsmakers—which, in the world of Beltway media, usually means politicians. In the eight-month study period, partisan-affiliated one-on-one interviews were 70 percent Republican—166 guests to Democrats’ 70.

Unlike the one-on-one interviews, these roundtable segments include some voices from outside the two parties; partisan sources—who leaned Republican, 180 to 109—accounted for less than half of the guests. But the nonpartisan guests didn’t alter the right’s advantage, with Republicans and/or conservatives making 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives (categories that are less interchangeable). Middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists made 201 appearances in roundtables, which serves to buttress the argument that corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.

I haven’t seen any reaction by the networks cited here to this study. It will likely be the same as their reaction to the Media Matters study, which was mealymouthed and certainly did not result in any changes in booking. But you have one more data point undermining the so-called liberal bias of the media, and one more reason to not be anywhere near your TV on Sunday mornings.