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The War on Talk Radio (a New York institution)"So to argue that what I'm putting in here is a dramatic change of the law, is going to somehow muzzle Rush Limbaugh, it's not the case. What we're suggesting is that it is best that we follow the guidelines already in the law to promote and encourage diversity in media ownership." This is not an effort to muzzle Rush Limbaugh? Gimme a break! The war on (conservative) talk radio has just begun. The Fairness Doctrine was voted down in the Senate; that would have required some "talk police" to balance every conservative and liberal statement 50-50. However, Senator Dick Durbin's "diversity" proposal passed. In practice, it will be even more destructive of conservative talk radio--Durbin's one true aim. Talk radio began in New York City. Barry Gray (1916-1996) began his talk on WMCA in the late 1940s, at Chandler's restaurant on East 46th Street. No plaque today honors New York City's past. New York has talk ("all" or "some") stations such as WABC, WOR,WNYC, WMCA, WBAI, WPAT, WLIB, WFAN, and more. There are no diversity barriers to entry in the New York City market. If Oprah wants to buy a radio station here (or anywhere), she could. If Michael Bloomberg wants to buy a radio station, he could. (Bloomberg Inc. already has some media outlets.) If Air America wants to buy a radio station, it could. But no one wants to listen to Mark Green! There are no existing problems that require government intervention. It's true that Rush Limbaugh has been highly successful. If you like him, you can tune in. If you don't like him, you don't listen. In America, we usually value someone who succeeds in the free market. Senator Dick Durbin's attempt to muzzle Rush Limbaugh is through "diversity" and "localism" rules. The station that carries Limbaugh (WABC) also has local hosts, such as Curtis Sliwa. The owners of WABC might be black or white--no one should care. WFAN is devoted to sports talk. It doesn't talk a lot--if at all--about girls high school basketball in Staten Island. Nor should it, if people don't want to listen to that. The local politicians in New York City are almost all Democrats. If local radio rules and "diversity" were left up to the likes of Christine Quinn, you can bet that some objection will be made about Rush Limbaugh being on New York City's airwaves. How dare a Conservative speak in Democratic New York! Buried in the Bill of Rights in the First Amendment to the Constitution is something called "freedom of speech." Dick Durbin seeks to regulate it, at our peril. LINKS: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022609/content/01125112.guest.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_radio Talk radio as a listener-participation format has existed since at least the mid-1940s. Working for New York's WMCA in 1945, Barry Gray was bored with playing music and put a telephone receiver up to his microphone to talk with bandleader Woody Herman. Soon followed by listener call-ins, this is often credited as the first instance of talk radio, and Gray is often billed as "The hot mama of Talk Radio." http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/talk_radio/
New York Senator Chuck Schumer clearly stated the intent of such regulations just a few months ago. Fairness Doctrine Watch: Schumer likens conservative opinion to pornography If the feds would mandate critical thinking skills in K-12 as required curriculum, we wouldn't need "radio police" because the likes of Rush Linbaugh would be laughed off the airways. I applaud DIck Durbin's effort to control "pulpit politics" which inflames the undereducated emotions and sensibilities that frequent the airways polluted by Linbaugh's and Pat Robertson's inflammatory rhetoric, based on religiously inspired dogma. This country was founded on the premise of separation of church and state, but Limbaugh and Robertson and their cohorts would have their purported christial beleives legislated, so that no freedom of thought could co-exist with their views. Case in point, one Texas town wanted to outlaw Darwin's theory in the public school curriculum. How outrageous can they get?
 Airwaves are not like a newspaper. They are a scare commodity, which the government has allocated to serve public purposes, creating millionaires in the process. Given that this is the case, the idea that we have an unbridled free market place here is just so much nonsense. No one has an unbridled right to use a scarce resource they were allocated as a government franchose for their own unregulated purposes. If they didn't want to be subjected to such restrictions, they should have put out a magazine instead. That being said, this is becoming less and less true every day. Broadcast TV is almost irrelevant, and broadcast radio will soon go down the same path. Thus both efforts to enforce "fairness" and whining about such efforts will soon go the way of the vinyl LP and compassionate conservatism. "At a quarter to three, he climbs out of his tree, for the..."
My cousin was a fan. He loved it when you know who used to curse callers out in Italian. Post new comment |
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Though I suspect 20 years from now, it may be less relevant, boradcast radio and tV are harly a free market. Frequencies are not, like ink and paper, unlimited resources. They are a scarce commodity in which the government has some discretion and gets to set some rules to facilitate some goals. I can set up a printing press in my basement, but not a radio station. If I do, I can be jailed for stomping on someone else's frequency
That being said, I'm not sure reinstating the fairness doctrine really serves any useful pupose. The olden were really not so Golden, and more importantly, cable and satellite will eventually render the scarcity a lot less relevant. But the idea that this is a liberal attempt to trample free speech and the unregulated market of ideas is just so much fertlizer.