How did the right-wing acquire dominance on the AM dial?

[WillyBrandt]

Does anybody know how this happened? I'm 23, so I hope those a bit older and wiser than yours might have a lived narrative to share.

TV news can be OK. Cable news hovers between center and far right, but with a decent smattering of liberals that provide some hope. The book world is, finally, a proper mix. Print media has a center-right tilt, but is not bad.

But talk radio, when it is political, is beyond belief.

How the hell did this happen? What is the story?

[LoZoccolo]

1. There used to be this thing called the "fairness doctrine"...

...that forced broadcasters to give equal time to opposing views. I don't know what happened to it though.

[alcuno]

2. The regulations were removed over time. The Fairness Doctrine

was removed sometime in the mid-90's, I think.

[SharonAnn]

17. In the mid-80's under Reagan is when the Fairness Doctrine

was scuttled.

[LuCifer]

19. the fairness doctrine was remove by Raygun

in 1987. Sickening to think that Raygun and KKKing George I seem like pikers compared to the current asshole occupying the White House, no?

Lu Cifer, don't care who gets the Democratic nomination, JUST SO LONG AS THEY KICK "PRESIDENT" BUSH's LILLY WHITE ASS ON NOV. 4, 2004. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

[billbuckhead]

4. The way any monopolist takes a market....

They sell below cost till the other guys go out of business. Most of this rightwing crap was subsidized by the VRWC, ie Clear Channel. O'Reilly was caught paying stations to carry his program and I'm sure this is very common practice.

[Eloriel]

12. Yes and NO!!!!!! The Fairness Doctrine did NOT require

equal time. Not anything CLOSE.

It required that broadcasters serve their communities, including airing issues of public concern and for controversial issues, making sure that all sides were covered (not necessarily equally). Any responsible group or individual which felt their views were not sufficiently aired could petition the station (radio or TV) to get some air time. The air time they got was usually about 60 seconds, and it was often aired in very off-hours.

Citizens could complain to the FCC if they thought a station didn't serve the community, and probably also if they weren't satisfied with getting air time for their views on a controversial issue. And those complaints made a difference. The FCC had teeth, and broadcasters were often very anxious when license-renewal time came around.

But here's what the Fairness Doctrine really accomplished: it kept broadcasters honest. Can you imagine a Limbaugh in a climate like that? In just about any given 5 minutes of his typical show would generate HUNDREDS of letters requesting air time for an opposing view. (Hundreds wouldn't be granted, but still it would require broadcasters to handle that correspondence and possibly risk an FCC complaint if not handled well or properly.) So broadcasters in those good ole Fairness Doctrine days exercised considerable responsibility about what gets aired, how factual it was, how purely slanted or objective it was, etc.

Eloriel

[funkyflathead]

3. Money and power

The repukes have it to buy, bribe and grease the palms of station owners.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. The owners of the radiko conglomerates

are all monopolistic Fascist swine. And I mean Fascist in a very technical and accurate sense: Corporate Statism.

[WillyBrandt]

6. But why only AM radio

And not, seemingly, any other media? I'm not saying the other media are perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than the RW Radio stations. Fox news is a progressive bastion compared to some of the crap on the dial

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Ach, Willy--

Das weiss ich gar nicht.

[WillyBrandt]

8. Schade

Leider habe ich auch keine Ahnung

[arewethereyet]

9. I kinda think that it was just an entertaining compliment to sports talk

lets face it, you can only talk about sports so much.

corporations had no incentive to support it until it started selling.

[Wapsie B]

10. What some did

was to offer these stations programming for free in exchange for a few commercial spots each hour. This solved a big problem for programming directors. They have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to fill with shows. Reich-Wing Amerika steps in and offers Rush for free. That's 4 hours filled. Then on to Ollie North and all the rest, with a local host weekday mornings who's just Rush wannabe. Problem solved.

[Mel]

11. here's a link you may find of use

the fairness doctrine explanation is from Steve Kangas it's near the bottom of the page.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm

<snip>
The Fairness Doctrine

The United States once had a law which attempted to balance viewpoints in radio and television: the Fairness Doctrine. Created by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, this law required broadcasters to cover controversial issues with some opposing views. It required neither the internal balancing of programs, nor for equal time, nor for all opinions to be heard. It merely prevented broadcasters from airing relentless, one-sided propaganda.</snip>



This is why everytime I hear a right winger say the media is liberal I say, 'good then your for bringing back the fairness doctrine'
They need to be beat upside the head with it everytime they yap about the liberal media!

If they don't want the fairness doctrine returned then as far as I'm concerned they know the media isn't liberal! This is one of their yapping points we can take away from them, frame the debate, and turn it on them.

[linazelle]

14. This is a good argument and a good discussion but...

Things are so bad now that even if the doctrine were in place, CONs would demand air time and tell lies to hide the truth. It would be even more confusing. But, as I think through this, it would be much better than what we have now--a monologue.

[smallprint]

13. I think the 1996 Telecommunications Act had something to do with it

"Prior to 1996, firms were limited to owning twenty-eight stations total and no more than four in a market. (And that was after the Reagan deregulation, which basically doubled the legal totals for radio-station ownership.) After 1996 the cap was eliminated for the national total, and a firm could own up to eight in the largest markets. As a result, radio was transformed almost overnight-over one-half of US commercial radio stations have been sold in the past five years- into a highly concentrated market in which a handful of firms own hundreds of stations and nearly every market is dominated by two or three firms maxed out with six to eight stations each. It gave these new superpowers the ability to generate superprofits by providing standardized fare, de-emphasizing more costly local and original shows, and turning radio programming into a vast infomercial. It produced ecstasy on Wall Street, but hangovers everywhere else."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/Kennard_Public_FCC.html

There is also the fact that right-wing powers in the US have used AM radio as a main propaganda outlet for years. For example, in the 1930s a Catholic priest named Father Coughlin became the most popular radio broadcaster in the nation, with speeches full of anti-Semitic rants and open admiration of Hitler and Mussolini.

[Yupster]

15. Before Rush,

there just wasn't much on AM that anyone listened to.

There was lots of 24 hour news stations, but they were ticker type channels that gave the same headlines over and over again every 15 minutes or half hour.

There was sports.

There was some old music but the quality wasn't as good as FM.

In the morning I got dressed for school in the early 70's listening to Imus In the Morning, but there was nothing like Rush during the day.

I don't know when Howard Stern came on. I think at night because I remember listening to lesbian dial a date back in the 70's also.

Anyway, Rush was something completely different during daytime drive-time. I would argue his ratings went through the roof early due to lack of anything else on AM radio competing against him. First time I ever heard him was during the Clarence Thomas hearings. He covered them live and laughed while it was going on. It was something completely different.

Of course success in anything breeds lots of clones.

The question of why liberals haven't been as successful as conservatives in talk radio is an interesting one. I have my own theories.

I don't think Rush's success has anything to do with anything that happened in 1996. In fact, I think Rush reached his peak before that, and has been kind of old news since then. Remember "Rush Rooms" in restaurants? They disappeared about 8-9 years ago.

[starroute]

16. The right-wing shows filled a hole when AM stopped playing music

When I was a a kid in the 50's, we all listened to the Top 40 AM stations in glorious lo-fi on our cheap little portable radios. I don't remember even seeing an AM/FM radio until sometime in the 1960's. When FM did start to come in, it was kind of an elite thing -- college stations, classical music -- while the pop music was still on AM.

So by the late 60's, there was already a class division in radio. FM was for people who owned stereos and cared about sound quality and were willing to pay more to get that quality. (Around 1967-68, I bought an AM/FM portable, and it cost at least twice as much as a plain AM portable would have.) AM was for those who didn't give a damn, or couldn't afford better, or drove old pickups that still had only AM.

AM/FM radios gradually became standard, and in the course of the 70's all the music programming migrated over to FM. For a while, stations might broadcast the same programs on both AM and FM, but after a few years, they gave that up, and AM was pretty much left with nothing but talk -- news, sports, and call-in shows.

So at that point AM had (1) a large hole crying out for new forms of programming and (2) a listenership, such as it was, consisting of blue collar types. The left didn't want anything to do with AM -- too declasse. The hip kids didn't want it either -- they wanted stuff that would sound good on a boom box. The result was that AM fell by default into the hands of the only people who were interested.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[lancemurdoch]

18. Go back to the beginning

Well, let's go back to the beginning of radio. I see three options possible for who could control AM radio.

1) The government, which could have a BBC like radio broadcast
2) It could be local public access like you see on cable
3) It could be given to corporations

Obviously virtually all of AM radio went to #3. It went to corporations, the majority of stock owned by the richest 1-2% of Americans, who control the airwaves. They use the airwaves to further their views, and to make themselves some more money, so their propaganda is broken up by commercials selling you stuff you don't need.

The answer is obvious once you look beyond the surface and do some digging.

By the way, I like option #1, and think a good NPR-like program on a few radio waves is a good idea, but I like #2 even better, and think most of our airwaves should be public access.

Figuring out how to do it in a corporate manner is pointless I think. Support Pacifica (and to a lesser extent NPR).