Talk Radio Under Fire

[sailaway21]

It's only a matter of time before the Congress and the new President, who has already criticized Rush Limbaugh since assuming office, bring talk radio, a largely conservative dominated medium, into their gun sights. Reimplementation of something like the "Fairness Doctrine" would essentially wipe out talk radio as it exists today.

The irony to this will of course be that, people like Mr. Limbaugh are about to have their best year(s) ever with the Congress and the White House in liberal hands. I predict that such as Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank will not be able to restrain themselves. Let's face it; there's a core constituency of hard lefties who want blood and they want it running down the streets. They've been frustrated since 1980 and that's a lot of frustration. They still remember how it was when they ran the show and they're going to do their best to make it 1970 all over again.

[PBzeer]

What happened to "dissent is the highest form of Patriotism"?

[erps]

Will the fairness doctrine actually restrict conservative shows, or require radio stations to carry more liberal shows?

[xort]

The way it will work is they will require more local content for radio programming. Syndicated shows like Limbaughs will be in effect banned.

If they go with fairness doctrine, the threat of prosecution will close out the conservative radio stations.
During the old fairness doctrine days, you did not have talk radio much at all because stations did not want to face the legal battles and fines. Easier to capitulate to censorship and find another way to make money

[camaraderie]

Ideas that cannot win in the marketplace must be legislated or secured by the courts.

[erps]

I don't remember how it was before when the fairness doctrine was in effect. My knee jerk reaction was that the govt. shouldn't be messing with speech content, but I just did a little reading and see that the courts have already ruled on that:

A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.

Anyway, this could all be a trial lawyer's dream and could come back and bite the democrats in the butt. Wouldn't the doctrine apply to the big three TV broadcasters as well.

[bubb2]

[PBzeer]

No one is listening to liberal talk radio, so very few stations carry it. Those that carry conservative talk radio would then be FORCED to carry equal time of liberal programming, or not carry conservative. Thus, they shut down talk radio as a format. That will then result in many stations shutting down, with the concurrent loses in employment and taxes.

[sailaway21]

Talk radio saved AM radio from irrelevance. With the proliferation of FM stations, no one was going to listen to music on AM radio any more when they could get far better fidelity on FM of the same music. That left AM with the early morning farm report and drive-time traffic.

The syndication of national talk shows grew out of the fact that very few communities can support 24 hours of local talk. Whether the talk is political or sports, it's far easier and more likely to succeed if the format is national.

Which point brings us to another potentially interesting aspect. Does anyone have any doubt that Madame Pelosi might find it perfectly reasonable to demand that women receive equal time on sports talk radio as well? Sort of like title 9 for the radio? That ought to go over really big. But it would be the logical outgrowth of what will be done to political radio. Btw, that's why the personalities on talk radio say they are entertainers and not political commentators.

[scottyt]

the really crazy part about the fairness doctrine as it was is it was required that if you attacked some one on the radio you had to send them a transcript of what was said then give them time to respond. that unpaid time was not spec'ed out, they could talk for an hour if you took 10 mins bashing them. the fairness doctrine was done away with by democrats, when it was hurting stations. so now its being thought of to shut up those against them.

as for it affecting the big 3 news outlets, it wont be used because for the most part the big 3 lean left, then wont go after those who agree with them.

edit i was wrong the fairness doctrine was done away with by the fcc during reagan. they tried to make it law but reagan vetoed it. the fcc per the supreme court was not required to enforce the rules but did so in cases of extreme circumstances