Question I hear these days that the left is trying to put in place a '"fairness doctrine" and that the result will be to put conservative talk radio out of business, or at least damage it. I want to understand how that would occur, i.e. the demise of talk radio. The theory that I heard is that people who listen to conservative talk radio will not listen to their favorite shows when equal time for the opposition is enforced. Other theories have included mention of it being disastrous for the format of the talk shows, but I have not heard it fully explained, as to how this would destroy talk radio. Thanks.
Answer The "Fairness Doctrine" has existed before. It meant that radio and TV stations had to present both sides of controversial issues of public importance.
In reality, that made the process too cumbersome and (more importantly to radio/TV execs) too boring. So they just didn't do it. There was no "talk radio" in existence up until 1987, because for every person who would have called in and said I'm in favor of "A" they had to find someone who said I'm in favor of "B." It was easier to just not do it.
In 1987 the FCC killed the "Fairness Doctrine", and the "common man" was able to get his viewpoints on the air everyday with no thought of finding an opposing viewpoint. It turned out that there were a lot of conservative "common men" in the U.S. so talk radio exploded (that type of radio programming was cheap to produce for the radio station, in addition to being popular) and it became a conservative stronghold. Liberal talk radio has had a long series of failures (if it doesn't make money, no radio station will have it on the air, regardless of its philosophical bent).
Because Leftist politicians don't want to appear to be closing down a popular form of entertainment, what they are trying to do now, is add what they call "Local format" to radio programming.
Rather than tell radio stations that they have to broadcast both sides of an issue, they want the stations to have a certain percentage of local programing (probably a majority, or during important times of the day). What this will do is kill off syndicated radio programs like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mike Savage, etc. because they aren't local.
The Liberal politicians don't really care about presenting both sides of arguments or promoting "local radio," they want to silence a powerful opponent - talk radio. Radio is a business, and if it is too expensive, or if it doesn't show a profit, the stations won't do it.
