Expert: Dennis - 3/29/2009

Question
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.




---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Good answer. "What this will do is kill off syndicated radio programs like Rush Limbaugh..." So the big name programs would be replaced by "local programming." "Local programming" could be almost anything, right? Could local programming bring a different but equally lucrative audience to a radio station, or would it diminish the audience? If it would diminish the audience, how do we know that? I am asking these type of questions because, as a big fan of talk radio, I want to know this issue as thoroughly as possible. Thank you.

Answer
Local programming would mean content that dealt with local geographic issues. Radio stations in Tulsa would have to talk about stuff going on in Tulsa. Sean Hannity isn't going to say anything about Tulsa.

It is possible that there would be a local radio host that could develop a large following (especially in the bigger markets like NY, LA, Chicago), but in your medium and small markets that isn't likely. What would happen is that the program manager would have to decide if it would be financially worth it to hire someone (salary, benefits, etc.) for whatever market share that is available, or would it be cheaper (more cost-efficient) to play music and have a local announcer say something "local" (like the weather)in-between the canned music (minimal employee costs).

It would depend on how the FCC wrote the rules (through the dictate of Obama). Would the entire station have to have 51% local content (in that case, they can have the local guys on from midnight to 6am), or would EVERY program have to have local content (which would effectively get rid of syndicated shows).

Since the goal of the Democrats is to silence national conservative talk show hosts, I'd be willing to bet on the latter.