Better to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Is Today's Political Climate a Direct Result of Talk Hosts, Beginning in the 1990s?
- Thread starter Mikey Radio
- Start date
- Status
They can do whatever they want. My point is that government isn't supposed to be entertainment.
Enactment of the Fairness Doctrine was the thing that launched much of the political talk radio that we have today. If you'd like a little background; WNYC did an excellent podcast about the history of political and religious radio called The Divided Dial.
It's an excellent listen if you're interested in actual radio history:
The Divided Dial: Episode 1 - The True Believers | On the Media | WNYC Studios
On how one side of the political spectrum came to dominate talk radio —and how one company is using the airwaves to launch a right wing media empire.
Really? Even the most superficial exposure to right-wing media makes it clear that they're not pushing a hopeful message -- it's fear and anger all the way down. And that goes all the way back to the early days of right-wing talk radio, when Rush Limbaugh was ranting about "feminazis" and pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories about the Clintons.
That's not happening, would not apply to cable or internet, and would have the nuts demanding time on mainstream outlets
Even when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, I don't think it really did much. The whole concept was kind of squishy, lacked objective measures (if they could even be defined to start with), and ultimately served more as a scarecrow than anything else.
The job of a talk-show host is to get people to react and engage. Both right-wingers and left-wingers have their hot buttons that say "PUSH ME". Sort of the inverse of a talking doll. What has changed over the last 30-35 years is the sharply increased willingness to say anything to get just a little attention. Since radio is now just a small slice of the media landscape, and since there's a surfeit of hosts on the extreme right, those hosts have to try harder and harder to get attention.
Here is one we have to go back to Weird Al Yankovic doing a scene on UHF the Movie and here is a scene that was originally a parody of Wally George, Morton Downey and Geraldo Rivera. But the parody ended up being true for the late Jerry Springer in the 1990's and political pundits of today.
Air America had some very good signals, like KGW in Portland and station of that calibre in Miami, LA, Seattle. The issue I found from listening (And I had just recently been PD of a talk stations in LA that beat KFI in the key demos on occasion) was that the hosts for the most part were too intense; they sounded like they were campaigning, not chatting.
And, while Air America got some very good ratings for a while in several liberal markets, it faded rather rapidly even there. It was too intense, and not fun and entertaining to listen to. More like a college lecture than a chat.
The analysis here that liberal thinkers tend to be less unified and more varied in their interests seems to be an intelligent analysis.
And that is why none of them are positioned as "Public Service". The main objective of a talk station is to be entertaining. If they do not do that, they are obviously boring and not listenable.
No, it's to be entertaining while engaging listeners so they stay listening. No different than a comedy routine: the host has to set up a subject and talk about it in a way that listeners become involved and are entertained as they listen.
Then they're failing, because what's on the air today on talk stations is far from entertaining. It's just a bunch of rants and monologues intended to push hot buttons.
I don't recall many of the hosts on Air America being too intense - aside from probably Mike Malloy and Randi Rhodes who tended to shout and go on some pretty impassioned tirades at times. Malloy's playoff music each night was also a bit of a turnoff personally, as it ended with a folk group singing a capella "I'm going toooooooo heeeelllllll". While I didn't mind the hosts and I found most of them interesting and they held my attention, the 2 things I recall were: 1) A fair amount of swapping out of hosts and moving shows between dayparts, and those things happened more often than they should've. I'm not sure if that happened in every market, as the station I listened to pulled some programming from Air America but also contracted other hosts like Stephanie Miller for mornings, and Ed Schultz who I don't believe actually worked for Air America. Also, they had a local host do a few hours after Stephanie Miller. The first one was a long-time writer for one of the free papers one would get in various larger cities that basically stirred the pot and went in directions editorially that mainstream news rags would not, and he carried on with that same mentality on his show - trying to rile up local politicians and issues and stir the pot, and he attempted to back nearly all his guests into a corner. Once he got canned, they hired a female host who was blatantly awestruck by anyone of importance that she interviewed. I clearly recall her on-air saying like a star struck fangirl: "OK, we'll be back after the break..And oh gosh! I can't beleive I'm actually here, talking to (insert XYZ local celebrity or high profile politician here). Horrible. 2) As David correctly states, many felt at the time that those on the right would more or less blindly follow and walk in lock step with GW Bush who was President at the time, and with whatever Rush, Hannity and O'Reilly told them they should believe, and the folks on the right were much more unified because of that. It was easier to host a show for a group that, in large part, all believed anything they were spoon fed by hosts and networks they trusted. Those on the political left were more splintered, many had certain social issues that were more important to them than others, some were more intense in their political leanings and feelings and as a result, it was much more difficult for a politically liberal network to be "mass appeal". Actually, I remember the various hosts sometimes taking shots at each other on the air. There seemed to be some kind of ongoing beef between Schultz and a few of the other hosts, they'd start immitating his speech and accent when talking about him on their shows, etc.
Last edited:
I once heard a long-time, experienced talk host explain some of the tricks of the trade. For instance, if a talk host was having trouble getting callers, he'd simply bring up a well-known fact or person and pretend he couldn't remember a key name or some of the details. Voila! The phones would light up from listeners who knew the answer and wanted to expand on the host's comments.
He believed Rush Limbaugh and similar hosts would go into their studio almost daily and basically say to themselves "What can I do or say on the air that's going to be so over the top that it's going to stir up my listener base, but maybe also get me on the news and in the headlines". It didn't matter if they didn't believe in what they were saying personally, and it didn't even matter if it was truthful or accurate. It was all about creating a buzz, making controversy and speaking to their key demographic of listeners. Back when Limbaugh passed away, there were many discussions about him on this website, and at least one person commented that they knew people who worked closely with Rush and knew him personally. As is the case with many entertainers, the Limbaugh they saw and knew outside the studio wasn't quite the same as the one they heard on the air once the mic was open. For one thing, Rush was not as conservative as his on-air persona. Limbaugh was a showman and entertainer who did his job very well. For better or worse, most of his audience was ignorant to that fact and Limbaugh's on-air antics and popularity led to the handfuls of Rush wannabees that are on the air today, and who are the key target of the article in the OP in this talk thread.
While I basically agree with your sentiment, politics and government have been the target of editorial cartoons and satire for several centuries now. It only stands to reason that it would be in radio as well. It goes with the territory.
I would take any of those hosts -- or similar shows today-- over the nonstop political proselytizing heard today.
I listen to Bruce Williams' older shows on Youtube and loved hearing the Michael Jackson clip someone posted on this board. Gems all and what talk radio could've been if it didn't go to the gutter with "all politics, all the time."
I'm just about done with Premiere/Fox Sports Radio, since their sports shows include politics either from the hosts or callers. I'll probably start listening to Infinity Sports Radio more, their shows are more pure sports.
Problem is...all that entertaining talent is gone and nobody came along to replace them. WGN in Chicago is general talk but it's about as dull as some of the public radio shows and their ratings continue to slide. I'm not bashing Public Radio in general, but like the commercial side of things some of the stations/shows are better than others.
Art Bell was right. (I listen to his archive shows).
All-politics all the time radio is a recipe for disaster.
When conversing with a caller, Art asked him how much time, on average, a day he spends talking politics with his family. The caller couldn't even say an hour.
Now, this was the 1990s, but programmers started harming the format by only programming mostly political shows.
All-politics all the time radio is a recipe for disaster.
When conversing with a caller, Art asked him how much time, on average, a day he spends talking politics with his family. The caller couldn't even say an hour.
Now, this was the 1990s, but programmers started harming the format by only programming mostly political shows.
Well it's crazier than that given that one specific side has even thrown out the Rush Limbaugh formula to talk to copy the playbook of Alex Jones/Lauren Chen/Dave Rubin/Laura Loomer/Tim Pool/Tucker Carlson into ranting conspiracy theories while facing allegations of getting money from Russia. Not even Al Yankovic's UHF scene even considered this one. He got the talk shows are toxic part but then again it was a reflection of that era.
- Status