But, even in the "dark days" of the fairness doctrine, controversial talk shows were heard and there were many.
There were some, but not nearly as many as there are today, and not with nearly the same level of clearances.
The only differential was that broadcasters had to consider the total audience and not just pander to whatever reactionary group held sway.
That's a loaded statement, and grossly inaccurate. Broadcaster no more "pander" to reactionaries when they run conservative talk shows than they "pander" to rednecks when they broadcast country music. Almost all radio broadcasting in the 21st century is targeted to a specific, narrow audience. News/talk stations simply reflect the same sort of niche marketing that all of music format stations also engage in.
You'll hear spoken word format radio stations attempt to be all things to all people at about the same time that you start hearing music format stations start playing super variety Top-40 radio again, with every genre of music mixed together to appeal to everyone. In other words, never.
If the Fairness Doctrine comes back, it may improve what we hear.
If you regard hearing music instead of political talk an improvement, then you are correct. A return of the Fairness Doctrine will effectively kill almost all spoken word radio programming, with the possible exception of sports talk.
Forget about how things used to be with the Fairness Doctrine in the olden days. If the Fairness Doctrine comes back in 2007, there are more political action groups out there than you can shake a stick at that will be falling all over themselves filing lawsuits about real and imagined infractions. The handful of controversial talk show hosts from back in the days of the old Fairness Doctrine survived mostly because there were few complaints to the FCC about them, and the FCC wasn't all that proactive in enforcing the Doctrine. They tended to only investigate and take action if they received complaints.
Nowadays, we'll see well orchestrated complaint campaigns against all political talk shows. That will be a situation very different from the way things were two decades ago. AKLes got it spot-on correct when he said, "Rather, because station ownership will be so fearful of legal action based on reality or political opportunism. Lawsuits, even those without merit, are expensive."
However, AKLes was wrong when he said "This, of course, will stifle all political discussion other than in newspapers." He's wrong because there is no real political discussion in newspapers, and there hasn't been any real discussion in newspapers since Gutenberg invented movable type. Newspapers today follow the slogan, "All the news that fits, we print". If you want political discussion, as in the exchange of political ideas, the only source after a return of the Fairness Doctrine will be the only source that exists today -- the Internet.
There is no "discussion" of politics on news/talk radio today. There is plenty of biased pontificating and reporting on all sides of the political spectrum, but there is no significant amount of back-and-forth discussion. Rush holds forth on his conservative opinions and proclaims them to conservatives who already agree with him anyway, while Franken holds forth on his liberal opinions and proclaims them to liberals who already agree with him anyway. Neither of them (nor any other news/talk hosts) feature any sort of "discussion", unless you count accepting calls from people who disagree just so the host can shoot down their arguments and make himself sound good in the process.
