• 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

One of the first things trump should do

H

Heylistentome

Guest
Petition the FCC to cease all foreign language formats popping up and clogging the dial. Also, give broadcasters a few months to change their foreign language formats to only English. If not revoke their license bring radio back to the way it sounded in the 60's when America was great and English was the only language you heard on the radio.
 
Heylistentome said:
Petition the FCC to cease all foreign language formats popping up and clogging the dial. Also, give broadcasters a few months to change their foreign language formats to only English. If not revoke their license bring radio back to the way it sounded in the 60's when America was great and English was the only language you heard on the radio.
Click to expand...

America does not have a legislated official language so I am guessing that would need to be a first step.

And 'back in the 60's' there were non-English language radio stations.

If you think that America was 'great' back in the 60's you either were not alive then or don't know your history.
 
Heylistentome said:
Petition the FCC to cease all foreign language formats popping up and clogging the dial. Also, give broadcasters a few months to change their foreign language formats to only English. If not revoke their license bring radio back to the way it sounded in the 60's when America was great and English was the only language you heard on the radio.
Click to expand...

Wrong and false in so many ways.

Going back to the 30's there were stations that were all-Italian in markets like New York and Philadelphia. And by the late 40's, when there were more stations, we had several hundred stations (out of less than 2000 in total) doing some amount of foreign language programming.

One of my first jobs in radio in 1959 was being board op for the Sunday morning 8 hour block of foreign language shows on Cleveland station WJMO. I ran the board for the Italian, Greek, Czech, Gaelic, German, Hungarian, Polish, and other language shows and picked up bits of each language.

Foreign language media goes back to colonial times, where there were papers in Dutch, French and German among others.

Apparently, xenophobia is a contagious disease that mostly affects the bigoted.
 
Last edited:
landtuna said:
If you think that America was 'great' back in the 60's you either were not alive then or don't know your history.
Click to expand...

Or you weren't Black, Hispanic, Asian, gay or a woman. For that 60% or so of the population, it wasn't so great.
 
The FCC has a long history of staying out of regulating formats. But if one wants to single out a format that's clogging up the dial, why not choose conservative talk? Or maybe Christian? People have tried to get regulations against both, to no avail.
 
Heylistentome said:
Petition the FCC to cease all foreign language formats popping up and clogging the dial. Also, give broadcasters a few months to change their foreign language formats to only English. If not revoke their license bring radio back to the way it sounded in the 60's when America was great and English was the only language you heard on the radio.
Click to expand...

This bigotry can't possibly be for real, can it?
 
Bob Eubanks said:
This bigotry can't possibly be for real, can it?
Click to expand...

Having worked in either urban or Hispanic media for nearly all of a 58 year career, I can tell you it is all too real.

It's a product of xenophobia which has ignorance as its root cause.
 
Heylistentome said:
If not revoke their license bring radio back to the way it sounded in the 60's when America was great and English was the only language you heard on the radio.
Click to expand...

Let's look at the period towards the end of the 60's.

New York: WHOM and its sister FM were transitioning from all Italian to all Spanish. WADO had become a solid performer as an all Spanish station, after several decades mostly in Italian. WBNX, a sharetimer with WAWZ, was all Spanish. There was Yiddish on WEVD, and Italian and a variety of eastern European language programming on some of the lesser AMs.

Cleveland: two of the full power FMs both programmed with a variety of European langauges. The pioneer was Xenophon Zapis, whose WZEN was a very successful FM even in the earlier 60's. Several of the other AMs had foreign language on Sundays for much of the day.

Miami: after most of the decade showing a growth of the Cuban exile population, there were several AMs all in Spanish and they were generally #1 and #2 in the market.

Los Angeles: KWKW and KALI had nearly 100% Spanish programming, with several other stations having some Spanish language blocks.

McAllen, TX. KGBT, 100% in Spanish since the early 50's, was #1 with over half the audience. Many stations in the LRGV has significant Spanish language programming.

San Antonio: pioneering Spanish language station KCOR was going into its third decade in Spanish

Chicago: Several stations had large Polish language blocks.

Washington, DC: WOOK-FM, a full power Class B was all Spanish.

San Francisco: KOFY was 100% in Spanish.

Honolulu, Hawaii: Several stations were all in Japanese, and there were blocks for the Pinoy population on others.

There are many... hundreds in fact... of stations with blocks of programming in everything from Navajo to Portuguese.

And, last but not least for this discussion:

Puerto Rico, USA: nearly 80 stations all in Spanish with only three all in English.

All of this is free speech and protected by the US Constitution.
 
DavidEduardo said:



New York: WHOM and its sister FM were transitioning from all Italian to all Spanish. WADO had become a solid performer as an all Spanish station, after several decades mostly in Italian. WBNX, a sharetimer with WAWZ, was all Spanish. There was Yiddish on WEVD, and Italian and a variety of eastern European language programming on some of the lesser AMs.
.
Click to expand...

Boston radio in the late '60s wasn't nearly as diverse, mainly because the Hispanic influx had yet to begin there. Most of the "ethnics" were still Irish (who spoke English), Italians and various other Europeans, including Jews who'd come over just before or after the Holocaust. They all were served by one station, WBOS (1600) -- which became WUNR in the '70s -- which continues as a melting pot of the air to this day. Now, of course, several AMs in and around Boston serve the Spanish-dominant population as well. There are still no foreign-language FMs there, but WJFD New Bedford serves the large Portuguese community in southeastern Massachusetts and can be heard in parts of the Boston area. The Haitian community is ignored by legit broadcasters, but several pirates fill the gap with Kreyol programming.
 
Last edited:
In the 50s WHAY (910) in New Britain, Connecticut was owned by and Italian Family and was running Italian Programming until the early 60s whwn they became WRCH and started programming in English.

WRYM (840) also licensed to New Britain began adding Spanish programming and other ethnic programming in 1968. Today while they are primaily a Spanish language radio station they also air programming on Sundays in Portuguese, Polish, and Italian.

Present Day WFAR (93.3) in Danbury CT along with WFNW (1380) in Naugatuck broadcast largely in Portuguese. 97.3 FM in New Bedford, Mass too. I think there is also an AM in the New Bedford area that is also running Portuguese Programming.

Polish Programming on 1580 on Long Island and 910 in Rockland County New York. Korean Programming on 1660/87.7 in NYC. Chinese Programming on 1240 on Long Island. Chinese Programming of different dialects on 1380 and 1480 in NYC.
 
DavidEduardo said:


Good examples. Here is the listing of stations with Foreign Language Prroramming in 1967. Note that it takes three pages in small print.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/New_Folder/1958-BC-YB.pdf
Click to expand...

Your fingers slipped! The list, of course, is from 1958, not 1967. Maybe by 1967, there would have been at least a little Spanish on Boston radio. It's hard to imagine a Massachusetts (my home state) with only one hour of Spanish on radio per week -- and that on a station in the Springfield area! I do remember hearing the Yiddish (the language of my paternal grandparents, who arrived from Ukraine in 1921) on WBOS in the late '60s, though.
 
CTListener said:
Your fingers slipped! The list, of course, is from 1958, not 1967. Maybe by 1967, there would have been at least a little Spanish on Boston radio. It's hard to imagine a Massachusetts (my home state) with only one hour of Spanish on radio per week -- and that on a station in the Springfield area! I do remember hearing the Yiddish (the language of my paternal grandparents, who arrived from Ukraine in 1921) on WBOS in the late '60s, though.
Click to expand...

Here is the one for 1968

www.americanradiohistory.com/New_Folder/1968-BC-YB.pdf

Of course, the late 50's listing shows how prevalent foreign language programming has always been. And since submissions to the Broadcasting Yearbook were voluntary, lists like that were significantly incomplete.
 
Just sayin ..... if the FCC appointments are a priority .... and considering Trump's volatility (showmanship or earnestly so) .... there stands to be a Republican majority in the commissioners.

If the OP here is really serious on the premise, I suggest that he/she unite the Indians in this country to organize a deportation of all the white people back to Europe. Heck, nowadays communication by smoke signals probably would have as big an audience as the AM dial anyway.
 
Face it, the OP is just another troll-type poster, not even registered, who wanted to stir the pot. There are many out there who bemoan the changes in radio - time has passed them by and they just want to hear the familiar songs of their era.

How about songs like "Mas Que Nada", "Eres Tu", "Lo Mucho Que Te Quiero", "La Bamba", "Guantanamera", "Oye ComoVa"...?
 
HGN2001 said:
Face it, the OP is just another troll-type poster, not even registered, who wanted to stir the pot. There are many out there who bemoan the changes in radio - time has passed them by and they just want to hear the familiar songs of their era.

How about songs like "Mas Que Nada", "Eres Tu", "Lo Mucho Que Te Quiero", "La Bamba", "Guantanamera", "Oye ComoVa"...?
Click to expand...

Nah, I think "Speedy Gonzalez" was more to the OP's liking.
 
Tell that to the white corporations that are going after that market.....most non English radio stations are owned by a white American investor....if they are doing a non English station format it means they were not making money with an English format. America is a country of MONEYYYYY.......and Trump knows that. Do you think they will pass a petition such as this knowing that American companies will lose billions in which the government is collecting millions in taxes from the Hispanic market?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom