This reminds me of the market for DVDs, which found a big disconnect between the shows with big ratings on live TV and the shows that sold a ton of DVDs. The former tended to be anodyne comedies, the latter were niche shows with a harder edge.

When there's only three channels or a single local newspaper, you get content that is appealing or at least acceptable to the mass market. The smaller the market, the more extreme the content. When you get to the level of individual writers, I think there's an inevitable radicalization when people only pay for content that really really targets their idiosyncratic interests.