"The fairness doctrine was never applied to talk radio, considered entertainment programming." Really? My old boss, who ran the format for 16 years, went to his grave, thinking it did! He instructed his hosts that they could have a passing opinion but not to personally dwell very long on a controversial topic. One sided shows like Rush Limbaugh's didn't exist and it was my understanding that the reason was because of the Fairness Doctrine.
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Stephanie Miller on Talk Decline
- Thread starter TheBigA
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FredLeonard
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Really! The FCC passed it as part of allowing stations to editorialize (a practice they since abandoned). And one sided shows did exist. Ever hear of Joe Pyne? Bob Grant? Barry Farber? Wally George? The FCC never took an enforcement action based on the fairness doctrine against a talk show. I don't know what your boss was thinking but what you say he said is flat wrong. Maybe he knew better but wanted to avoid hosts falling into the kind of dogmatic talk radio that is the norm today and decided to use the FCC as his club, rather than saying "because I said so."
You had one sided shows, but it was countered by programming with a dissimiliar viewpoint. The abolition of the fairness doctrine is often cited as something that allowed a national show like Limbaugh's to be tried. That, and Ed McLaughlin getting the block of satellite time as part of his severence from ABC Radio. The most popular talk radio show in the immediate years before Limbaugh took off? Bruce Williams. His show was hardly political. Wish he was still on the air actually.
A
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Laws like the Fairness Doctrine have an effect on how things happen far out of proportion to their actual enforcement. There are many laws and regulations on the books that are seldom or ever enforced that are still strong incentives for people to conform to them. Just because few broadcasters were willing to be the first test case of the Fairness Doctrine didn't mean that it didn't have an effect in stifling political expression over the airwaves.
I think we are all making up history here. Everyone is coming out on this "drama strage" and rearranging the furniture for every scene to suit their own view of the world.
I may be the ONE PERSON in this conversation who ever had to deal with live, flaming Fairness Doctrine issue. In that era I don't think the use of fines had been put in place. When you say "The FCC never took an enforcement action based on the fairness doctrine against a talk show" that was because the only ACTION available to the FCC at that time was license renewal. The FCC was hesitant to use the "death penalty" to deal with the misbehavior and the fight that would have resulted in a big political bonfire over Freedom of Speech.
In the 60s I was running a station that was an early prototype for basically what we see some of the Salem stations doing today in programming. "Teach and Preach" on the religion side, freedom-fighters/anti-communist on the talk side. One of my local ministers had a daily broadcast. He had been a classmate of Jerry Falwell in their Bible School/Seminary days and they were two peas in a pod at mixing religion and politics and being trail-blazers toward what we call Talk Radio today. (If I had to be out of town, this pastor/broadcaster was one of the fleet of substitutes to host my daily talk show.)
The preacher said something on the air about atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hair that triggered the Fairness Doctrine. He wasn't doing a station editorial. He was doing his usual mix of religion-blended-with-politics broadcast on time he purchased from the station. I can tell you that even though the FCC couldn't levy fines in that era, I don't think it slipped past the folks at the FCC that stations ended up paying big legal fees to clean up such events.
The exception to the Fairness Doctrine rules was NOT editorials..... Legitimate newscasts could report what one person had said about another person and not be drawn into the Fairness Doctrine. Editorials may well have been the primary target of the Fairness Doctrine. (Maybe an unintended target!) When stations figured out that they were sitting ducks for complaints and actions regarding editorials under the Fairness Doctrine, that is what killed editorials (as we knew them then) in broadcasting.
You haven't lived until you wake up some morning and realize that your largest local customer (a pastor and his church) is on the air attacking the church denomination you belong to, and attacking a local ecumenical project where you are a board member. And when it comes time for your daily talk show with phone calls, the 'shills' are calling in to confront you that you need to change your life as dictated by the preacher. I lived part of the history of how we got from the Joe Pyne era of Talk Radio to today's flatulent-fests we call Talk Radio.
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FredLeonard
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Doesn't mean it did either. As broadcasters are having to learn (or re-learn) p*ing off people is not good for business. Controversy offends as much as it attracts (maybe even more than it attracts). People who want to claim the fairness doctrine stifles political expression in radio keep ignoring all the political expression that was going on in major markets. Outside of major markets, stations couldn't afford talk radio and they couldn't afford offending people. Besides, back then radio still had some class - many still believed in all that BS about "public interest, convenience and necessity."
The sad commentary on the people who run radio today is that fairness is something that only happens when enforced.
What Rush and the rest say about the fairness doctrine is a lie. Do some homework for yourself. Even Rush was doing his current act in Sacramento when the fairness doctrine was still on the books.
Larry King had more affiliates, and typically they were bigger stations. But he was after midnight, and Bruce was at 7PM.
A
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Read the insightful and accurate post from Goat Rodeo Cowboy that was up ten minutes before you posted this.
I worked in public television back in the days of the Fairness Doctrine. Folks in management would often use the Fairness Doctrine to shoot down program ideas, or ideas for segments on a magazine format show. The prevailing attitude wasn't that they were afraid of losing their license, it was that even a successful defense of an accusation of violating the Fairness Doctrine was too expensive, and more trouble than it was worth.
Granted, as competition got more intense, and more station managers had to choose between risking the FCC's wrath over the Fairness Doctrine or getting fired for low ratings, an increasing number began choosing between the wrath of the FCC over the wrath of their station owners. It's a classic "Scylla and Charybdis" choice. It over a decade of the FCC turning a blind eye to potential Fairness Doctrine violations for some station managers to become bold enough to risk it. And for every station manager bold enough to run the risk, there were others who chose to continue to play it safe.
As for controversy of "pissing people off" not being good for business, what planet are you living on? Radio succeeds by targeting small, specific market niches. Spoken word or music, it makes no difference. Rock stations don't risk making their listeners angry by playing rap or polkas. Talk stations that target conservatives don't alienate their listeners with liberal content.
The only reason owners believed in "public interest, convenience, and necessity" 40 years ago was because of the threat that they might lose their license. That was it. It wasn't out of charity or community spirit. The Red Lion case and several others were fresh in their minds, and the FCC really didn't have as much on their plate. So radio was still a big priority for them. Not any more. Take away the big stick, and people do what they want. It has nothing to do with the people who run radio today. The people who run the FCC today are selling valuable spectrum space to telecom companies. The FCC must pay for itself by selling assets. That's a big change from the way they worked 40 years ago. When the rules change, and the way they're enforced changes, it changes the way companies operate. That's what you've seen in the last 20 years.
Their conservative listeners were already listening when the format wasn't so heavily one-sided. The only alienation that went on, was the alienating of a whole bunch of people who aren't wingnuts. That's called a "net loss".
Even if a station *must* be a one-sided echo chamber, it still isn't necessary to be so reckless, dishonest and irresponsible, ie: Obama isn't really an American, FEMA concentration camps, ACA death panels, the Obama civilian police force (to kick in your door and take your guns), and a litany of other demonstrably false and outright absurd assertions that any programmer with integrity would've forbid from airing.
Having a firey, passionate ideologue on the air is one thing. Having someone regularly repeat fear-mongering falsehoods to an audience of eager believers is just irresponsible and UNNECESSARY.
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The point is it isn't entertaining any more. Maybe it was once, but these hosts are too eager to believe their own PR. They think someone elected them to something, and it never happened. Their job is to entertain and inform, not attack, judge, or insult. They've not only alienated an audience, they've alienated advertisers. This kind of talk is costing their companies money.
Yeah, 40 years ago is probably the front edge of the tide that began changing things.
You and I usually share philosophies but on this one I got to part company with you. It was about 60 years ago that as a kid I was hanging out at radio stations trying to figure out what made them work, and what do you have to do to get on "the inside". My early days were primarily in the rural South and Southwest. Primarily small markets. But when I got on the inside, I found myself working for people who were insiders in the state broadcasters associations. I heard the war stories about people whose first job included allowing them to sleep on the transmitter room floor during The Depression when rent money wasn't there for traditional living space. I sat in the "palatial" office of Mr. Wooten who founded and operated WREC in Memphis for decades and he was not bashful about expressing his views on what broadcasting should and should not be.
I sat at the feet of Jerrell Shepherd in Moberly MO who "made a religion" out of traveling the country and interviewing every broadcaster that would talk to him about what made their station a success. I have to disagree with you. A major part of the radio industry was held together by people/owners/licensees who felt that broadcasting went beyond just being a business... it was a calling... it was a religion... it was a fiduciary responsibility.
Many of the altruistic folks moved on to television circa the 50s and much a radio was held together by some "believers" in the concept that a license from the FCC was a sacred trust. But during my years in the business I watched as the folks who became attached to the Wall Street crowd decided that broadcasting was just "one more business enterprise" with no more community responsibility than the local Main Street shoe store or the Sunoco station on the corner. The Wall Street thinkers hammered the legislators and hammered the career FCC crowd until the balance between "Sacred Trust of Community" and the "Wants and Needs of Wall Street" were forever changed.
Early in life I stood on the top of the hill and asked: Do I go on to Divinity School and worry with the direction of society, or do I go into broadcasting and help shape the direction of society. 20 years later I walked away from broadcasting and opened up the Sunoco Station on the corner with 27 employees and found myself cutting a wider swath than I ever did in broadcasting. Found myself working as a lobbyist in the state legislature for four years, and a couple of years also wrestling with Washington over retail petroleum issues during the Nixon/OPEC era.
The world has changed. Radio now belongs to Wall Street. The corner gas station with the wrecker-on-call now belongs to the nationwide convenience store chain, so I became the fiduciary of an Employee Benefits Medical Plan where I brought humanity to the relationship between employers and employees. Now Wall Street has made sure that they own the "big end of the stick" of our healthcare under Obamacare, while encouraging the knuckle-draggers to keep yelling: "It's SOCIALIZED medicine!!!" (Time will tell whether Wall Street, Bureaucracy or Humanity drives our health system. We're discussing BROADCASTING and the changes over the last 40 years. I am not encouraged when I assume that some forces that have come to dominate broadcasting will also come to dominate healthcare.)
I don't know that any of us really want to go back to 1954 and say: "This is when perfection existed! We need to turn everything back to what it was then!" But it would help us all in our efforts to wrap our arms around the present if we could get conversant with one another on how the hell we got to the pickle we are in today!
Back to the top: No. The broadcasting industry was well populated with owners, managers and worker-bees 50 and 60 years ago who just wanted to "do the right thing... and make the industry worthy of the public trust" and in return just let us make an honest living while we are at it.
I had a choice today: I could sit here and think about the days of old (which is a mixture of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) or we could have all sat around debating the wisdom and the shortcomings of Thomas Piketty and his new 700 page book (which is a mixture of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly).
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You posted a story a week or so ago about the small shop-keeper who worked the counter, and knew what his customers bought. Then he started hiring people and taking more vacation. Then he passed the business down to his kids, and his connection with the customers changed. That process happened in radio 60 years ago. The founders of radio started to move on to TV. That's when things started to change.
But you can't ignore all the changes at the FCC. Reagan really took that agency apart in the 80s. He was the one who instilled the idea that they should raise their own money by selling assets. The spectrum ceased to be something owned by the people, but rather a commodity for sale to the highest bidder. That really changed the way licensees viewed themselves.
The hosts of these shows shouldn't be given a pass, or just blame the owners or management. The hosts are the ones with the power. They're the ones speaking to the public. As attorney Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy over 60 years ago: "Have you no sense of decency?"
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Excellent picture of the situation, but I would quarrel with the timing to this point: 60 years ago a lot of key people and key capital did leave radio for TV. But for about 20 years there was this influx of radio people who moved UP to ownership and some new folks came in from the outside and brought some thinking that involved disposing of the 'sacred cows' some of the old-timers had protected. Much of the radio crowd would have been happy to remain with some of the status-quo.... but TV became the big elephant in the room and the changes you describe were probably brought about by a peace treaty between Washington and TV ownership, and radio got dragged into the same "Roman Arena" as simply an appendage of the world of TV.
To use a cliche that has a lot more acceptance and understanding here in the South, Television became the event, and radio then became something like "The illegitimate child at the family reunion." Presence tolerated, but not allowed to be in the real center of things. And incapable of having or not allowed to have his own separate family reunion.
The "Visible Change" to radio did not come until 20 years ago when the evolution that began 60 years ago gave birth to the consolidation movement. People inside radio could see the changes. The voters, the local-level politicians did not get to see the unveiling of the changed industry until well into the 1990s.
We can't "put the toothpaste back into the tube." I would like to see more chatter in these forums on where radio COULD go, SHOULD go over the next 20 or 40 years. And to do that, we ALL have to release our grip a little bit on our person views of what the past WAS.
What you say is true at the lower levels. The first tier guys are still doing well. What they do isn't my kind of show, but the people who still listen to AM talk radio want that kind of stuff.
Funny thing is I replaced a blowhard exactly like you describe. Badmouthing the mayor and falsely accusing him of taking kickbacks doesn't work in a small town where the mayor works at a local business and everyone knows him.
Red Lion?
WGCB attacked an individual in a talk show and refused to grant response time, even paid time. Talk show, fairness. Not an editorial.
And the Fairness Doctrine was intended to respond to "editorial speech" of which actual "editorials" are a small subset.
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For now.
Funny thing is I used to watch WGCB when I was a kid. When they didn't show pay preachers, they showed old time TV shows. Of course this was a few years after the Red Lion decision.
But don't think Fred will actually take note of your correction. He'll just slink off when enough of us have proven him wrong, again.
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People have been saying that for 20 years. Sure it'll come to an end at some point. Everything does.
A
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You fail to factor in time, as in the passage of years. The people who listened to talk radio when it wasn't so heavily one-sided are several decades older now. People who liked to hear good music when they were in their 40's were chased away from the music format stations, and grew to be grumpy old men in their 60's who have different tastes now than they did back then.
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