If equal opportunity rules are brought back

[Radio Bob]

With the recent discussion by members of the FCC about requiring TV shows to offer equal opportunity to representatives on both sides of political issues and other subjects to be discussed
do you think this will naturally spread to radio stations? If so what would be the result upon radio
stations that have positioned themselves as voices for conservative talk seeing as how they
would be required to air the other side as well? Do you think their listeners would be offended?

 

[NJnerd19]

Are you referring to the requirement for 30 minutes of Public Affairs programming per week, or a conservative talker being forced to air progressive talk as a counter?

 

[Radio Bob]

It's still in the talking stage as the commission hasn't passed any law about this but the discussion is to require shows like The View and Jimmy Kimmel to present both sides of any issue they discuss. It's not hard to believe if it was enacted then it could also include radio and force stations to do the same. At present the commission has considered these shows News shows which are not required.

 

[TheBigA]

do you think this will naturally spread to radio stations?

Yes. Read here:

Equal Opportunities Rule Returns To Spotlight As FCC Targets Talk Shows.

The Fairness Doctrine may be gone, but the FCC is reviving attention to its equal opportunities rule, warning broadcasters that most talk shows are not automatically exempt. New guidance says

www.insideradio.com

Are you referring to the requirement for 30 minutes of Public Affairs programming per week, or a conservative talker being forced to air progressive talk as a counter?

No. Read linked article.

It's still in the talking stage as the commission hasn't passed any law about this

There won't be a law. It's about enforcing existing rules, and interpreting what is a bonified news program.

 

[davideduardo]

Are you referring to the requirement for 30 minutes of Public Affairs programming per week, or a conservative talker being forced to air progressive talk as a counter?

What 30 minute requirement?

As to “equal time” there is no requirement and never has been for whole “balancing” shows. In broad nd generalized terms, equal time means a comparable opportunity for opposing viewpoints when a proponent of one perspective is interviewed on a show.

 

[davideduardo]

It's still in the talking stage as the commission hasn't passed any law about this but the discussion is to require shows like The View and Jimmy Kimmel to present both sides of any issue they discuss.

The FCC does not pass “laws”. It issues regulations. This is why there are some issues that have been enacted by Congress that can not be summarily changed by the FCC by itself.

What the FCC rules, however, is often referred to as “administrative law” to separate such regulations from “real”laws. In fact, the FCC even has a court system with administrative law judges. There is even a process for those giving testimony to be qualified as “expert witnesses”.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Are you referring to the requirement for 30 minutes of Public Affairs programming per week, or a conservative talker being forced to air progressive talk as a counter?

What 30 minute requirement?

I was going to ask the same question. Show me where in the Rules there is a specific amount of time that is required for PA programming.

A lot of stations -- including the ones in New Mexico I consult -- do a full hour on Sunday morning by running the barter-syndicated PA programs "Viewpoints Radio" and "Radio Health Journal", which air on something like 1000 stations nationwide and which the FCC has never objected to. Some stations even run only "Viewpoints" and no one calls it inadequate.

Even before the requirement was relaxed (in the old days, a station had to make a commitment to a specific amount of time per week as part of their license renewal application), I worked at stations that honored all or part of their commitment by producing a bunch of five-minute PA "shows" which mostly ran overnight.

In any event, PA programming was never, in and of itself, subject to the equal time rule, mostly because stations avoided interviews for same of public officials running for office. More often, instead of the Mayor being interviewed, they would talk to the City Manager.

 

[NJnerd19]

I was going to ask the same question. Show me where in the Rules there is a specific amount of time that is required for PA programming.

A lot of stations -- including the ones in New Mexico I consult -- do a full hour on Sunday morning by running the barter-syndicated PA programs "Viewpoints Radio" and "Radio Health Journal", which air on something like 1000 stations nationwide and which the FCC has never objected to. Some stations even run only "Viewpoints" and no one calls it inadequate.

Even before the requirement was relaxed (in the old days, a station had to make a commitment to a specific amount of time per week as part of their license renewal application), I worked at stations that honored all or part of their commitment by producing a bunch of five-minute PA "shows" which mostly ran overnight.

In any event, PA programming was never, in and of itself, subject to the equal time rule, mostly because stations avoided interviews for same of public officials running for office. More often, instead of the Mayor being interviewed, they would talk to the City Manager.

I knew there was a requirement, I don't know why I thought it was 30 minutes. That seemed to be the norm. I worked at a few clusters that produced a 30 minute local issues program (usually someone in their news department) and it aired on all 5-7 stations in the cluster. I only remember because I had to do a breakdown of weekly topics for the quarterly public file report. Even in the market I'm at now, the two biggest companies in town do a 30 minute show. I guess I don't remember it being done any other way. I

I remember using the barter-syndicated PA programs in addition to our local show. Occasionally I would have to plug a 30 minute hole at 5am on a Saturday or Sunday morning when the colon cleanse informercial didn't buy time that week.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I remember using the barter-syndicated PA programs in addition to our local show. Occasionally I would have to plug a 30 minute hole at 5am on a Saturday or Sunday morning when the colon cleanse informercial didn't buy time that week.

I'm curious as to how you got them to agree to that. As the consultant to the Radio New Mexico group, I have a copy of the affiliation agreement for those shows on our stations and they require clearance at a contractually agreed upon time each week. I doubt they would be happy with only an occasional airing ... and I know for a fact that airing between midnight and 6:00am is not allowed (or was it an additional play to a scheduled one after 6:00am?)

The thing I like most about those shows is that they are professionally produced and the syndicator provides the quarterly issues report for uploading to the Public File. Given that 99% of our audience isn't listening anyway, and 99% of the ones that are don't care if the content is local or not, it's a good way to at least put something meaningful on the air to meet our obligation to the FCC.

Back in the day when I first sat in the PD chair, we used to devote three hours on Sunday morning to the PA programming. We started at 5:00am with the ABC Information Network program "Perspective", which back then ran for something like 54 minutes so we could start it after the ABC/I newscast and then run a couple of Ad Council PSAs to fill to the 6:00am newscast. Then Howard Cosell's "Speaking Of Everything" (24 minutes, made available to us because the ABC/C affiliate declined to run it), "Listen Closely" (ABC/FM; we had no affiliate in the market), then a five-minute local/regional newscast ahead of the 7:00am network news*, after which we did a recap of the local news of the past week followed by our own local half-hour PA show. Back to music after the 8:00am news.

Again, maybe no one was listening, but at least if they were, we had decent-sounding content for them. To me, the current bartered PA shows are the 21st Century version of that mindset.

(* - During the week and on Saturday mornings, we did our local/regional ahead of the network during drive time and at noon anyway, so this didn't seem odd at all in the midst of everything else.)

 

[NJnerd19]

I'm curious as to how you got them to agree to that. As the consultant to the Radio New Mexico group, I have a copy of the affiliation agreement for those shows on our stations and they require clearance at a contractually agreed upon time each week. I doubt they would be happy with only an occasional airing ... and I know for a fact that airing between midnight and 6:00am is not allowed (or was it an additional play to a scheduled one after 6:00am?)

They weren't from the company you mention. The program had in-show inventory. We were free to use it when we needed to. No contract, no affidavits. CD came in the mail every week. I used it when I needed to, probably a couple times a year. I recall needing it on Sunday nights more than anything.

I agree those PA shows are professionally produced. What I like more is that they are fresh. That's why I would use it instead of replaying only a half an hour of a weekday show.

One thing I always stayed on top of was keeping PSA's current. The Ad Council was a favorite. I got some from the state as well. It's one of the first things I did when I got to one station. I listened closely in the two weeks prior to starting and the overnights were loaded with repeated ads. I found out they hadn't been updated in years.

 

[K.M. Richards]

They weren't from the company you mention. The program had in-show inventory. We were free to use it when we needed to. No contract, no affidavits. CD came in the mail every week. I used it when I needed to, probably a couple times a year.

The shows I referenced also have in-program inventory, as well as two local minutes per show. They do come with an affiliation agreement and a restriction against overnight airings.

Maybe the ones I refer to learned from the mistakes of the one you used? I can see how they might have had difficulty selling their inventory without being able to give the client advertisers firm guarantees of clearance ...

I agree those PA shows are professionally produced. What I like more is that they are fresh.

That is, I think, their real attraction to stations, especially as so few music stations have anything resembling a news department now.

One thing I always stayed on top of was keeping PSA's current. The Ad Council was a favorite. I got some from the state as well. It's one of the first things I did when I got to one station. I listened closely in the two weeks prior to starting and the overnights were loaded with repeated ads. I found out they hadn't been updated in years.

I keep several of those on the server and have the automation play one or two at the end of any half-hour that ended early. When I download them from the Ad Council, they have expiration dates listed right next to the download link and I put that in an Excel file which I can then sort by date to see when something needs replacing.

Apparently I am one of the few who bothers, because every so often I get an e-mail from the Ad Council reminding me to remove expired PSAs, along with a list of the most recently ended. I wonder sometimes if those e-mails get ignored by the very stations that need the reminder!

NAB also provides PSAs but very few have actual expiration dates.

 

[NJnerd19]

The shows I referenced also have in-program inventory, as well as two local minutes per show. They do come with an affiliation agreement and a restriction against overnight airings.

Maybe the ones I refer to learned from the mistakes of the one you used? I can see how they might have had difficulty selling their inventory without being able to give the client advertisers firm guarantees of clearance ...

I don't think they had anywhere else to go in the market, and I didn't have a regular slot for them. Our competitor produced their own public affairs show as well.

I used 5am as an example, but our paid slots were early Sunday morning beginning at 6am and at 10pm Sunday nights. If I had a full hour of no infomercials I'd dip into the overnight show re-feed that was offered at both of those times.

I made a few "handshake" deals over the years. I had long standing relationships with many network reps. Favors were given and taken on weekends. I simply was not going to agree to full terms if something was going to be pre-empted by live sports or another conflict a majority of the time. I would never ask to bend the rules for a weekday show.

 

[davideduardo]

I was going to ask the same question. Show me where in the Rules there is a specific amount of time that is required for PA programming.

In fact, in the 70's and 80's, AMs were generally expected to submit renewal applications with 8% minimum non-entertainment programming (news, PA, religion, education, etc.) while FMs were judged poorly if they did not do at least 6%.

A lot was done Sunday 4 AM to 10 AM and lots of news in overnights.

One station I know did an hourly 90 second "Radio Rock Confidencial" which was a translation of supermarket tabloid articles. They logged it as news, and took about 4 hours worth of news credit each week from that.

 

[K.M. Richards]

One station I know did an hourly 90 second "Radio Rock Confidencial" which was a translation of supermarket tabloid articles. They logged it as news, and took about 4 hours worth of news credit each week from that.

Lew Irwin used to syndicate a feature called "Earth News Radio" which a lot of top-40 and AOR stations used to run back in the 1970s and that also was logged as news credit. So was "Odyssey File" on the legendary mellow rocker KNX-FM.

 

[Radio Bob]

Back to the original subject would this requirement if enforced not force those stations who have positioned themselves as the voice of the right to begin presenting the left view as well and weaken their strength in the ears of the listeners who follow only right leaning programming ?

 

[davideduardo]

Back to the original subject would this requirement if enforced not force those stations who have positioned themselves as the voice of the right to begin presenting the left view as well and weaken their strength in the ears of the listeners who follow only right leaning programming ?

On the occasions, when “the view“ has centrist or conservative guests, they do a fairly entertaining job of poking at what they consider the weak points of “the right“. Any good host can have a very strong moment if they know how to deal with opposing viewpoints.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Any good host can have a very strong moment if they know how to deal with opposing viewpoints.

That has always been true, and perhaps if Chairman Carrtoon gets his way (I still do not understand how he intends to "enforce" the Equal Time Rule outside of campaign season) it will have the effect of shaking out the worst of the talk hosts.

It is much easier for almost anyone to preside over a show which bashes one side or the other when only the side doing the bashing is present. The true test is when you have to have the other side present to rebut you in real time. It's analogous to the air talent on music stations; some are naturally good at it, others are just as naturally awful.

 

[CTListener]

Then Howard Cosell's "Speaking Of Everything" (24 minutes, made available to us because the ABC/C affiliate declined to run it),

Would Cosell's original feature, "Speaking of Sports," have counted as public affairs programming? As I recall, it often dealt with racism, gambling and other issues not related to game action -- news about sports, in other words. Or is all talk relating to athletic competition considered merely entertainment?

 

[ted chittenden]

Wow! Reading these posts reminds me of what I used to hear on Sunday mornings in both Los Angeles and Phoenix growing up. In Los Angeles, KHJ started their Sunday morning public affairs shows at 3am and they didn't end until 9am. KRLA would not begin its PA shows until 7am and they would conclude (in the morning anyway) at 10am when the station would run American Top 40. Between 7 and 10am on Sunday mornings, where I lived, KPPC-FM was the only station continously playing music. KNX-AM had a religious program at, I think, 7:30am. KGBS-AM pretty much did religious and PA programs all day Sunday with the FM leaving the simulcast around 9am. Since my bedtime was 7:30pm, I had no idea (until much later from airchecks) what Sunday night PA and religious programs were run on the stations I was able to listen to from my Tujunga residence.

In Phoenix, for most stations during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the magic PA hours were between 5am and 9am on Sunday mornings with the 6:00am hour having the fewest stations playing their regular formats. KOOL-AM ran its ac/mor format until 7:45 on Sunday mornings when it aired a religious show from CBS, and KBBC-FM (at least initially) went straight through Sunday mornings without any PA or religious programming. (Theirs was all on Sunday nights.) I say initially because by the middle of 1980, KBBC-FM was running a locally-produced PA show between 6AM and 6:30am on Sunday mornings. KDKB did its PA shows between 5am and 7am and then, starting in 1977, ran a locally-produced oldies show called Rock's Roots. Originally, that show was just two hours but it kept expanding and, by the time I left for LMU in the fall of 1981, that show was running for four hours from 7am until 11am on Sunday mornings. (The show was canceled by the station sometime between 1981 and 1985 while I was at LMU.)

When I came back to Los Angeles in 1981 to attend college, only two radio stations were playing music between 6am and 7am on Sunday mornings: KNX-FM and KFOX-FM in Redondo Beach. If the troposphere was right, I could hear the oldies show on 91X out of Tijuana (it aired between 6am and 12 noon on sundays before the station went back to its first rock, and then later, alternative format.) KGB-FM also had an in-house produced classic rock oldies show between 7am and 9am on Sunday mornings that I could receive when the tropospheric conditions were right as well.

Oh, how many memories all of this brings back!

 

[K.M. Richards]

Would Cosell's original feature, "Speaking of Sports," have counted as public affairs programming? As I recall, it often dealt with racism, gambling and other issues not related to game action -- news about sports, in other words. Or is all talk relating to athletic competition considered merely entertainment?

No. The daily program was classified as Sports back in the day.

The 24-minute weekend program was not classified as Sports, as the late Mr. Cosell rarely, if ever, discussed sports on that show.

These days, there is no official classification included on the program log. Those rules were relaxed when the commitment system was dropped for license renewal.