[please send all responses to [EMAIL PROTECTED] instead of this address] Talking Back To Talk Radio - It's Time To Take Back Our Airwaves by Thom Hartmann
"All Democrats are fat, lazy, and stupid," the talk-show host said in grave, serious tones as if he were uttering a sacred truth. We were driving to Michigan for the holidays, and I was tuning around, listening for the stations I'd worked for two and three decades ago. I turned the dial. "It's a Hannity For Humanity house," a different host said, adding that the Habitat For Humanity home he'd apparently hijacked for his own self-promotion would only be given to a family that swears it's conservative. "No liberals are going to get this house," he said. Turning the dial again, we found a convicted felon ranting about the importance of government having ever-more powers to monitor, investigate, and prosecute American citizens without having to worry about constitutional human rights protections. Apparently the combining of nationwide German police agencies (following the terrorist attack of February 1933 when the Parliament building was set afire) into one giant anti-terrorism agency, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, was a lesson of history this guy had completely forgotten. Neither, apparently, do most Americans recall that the single most powerful device used to bring about the SS and its political master was radio. Is history repeating itself? Setting aside the shrill and nonsensical efforts of Coulter, Goldberg, and others who suggest the media in America is "liberal," the situation with regard to talk radio is particularly perplexing to most people: It doesn't even carry a pretense of political balance. While the ever-subtle Al Gore recently came right out and said that much of the media are "part and parcel of the Republican Party," those who listen to talk radio know the medium has swung so far to the right that even Dwight Eisenhower or Barry Goldwater would be repelled. Centrists and progressives across the nation are asking how could it be that a small fringe of the extreme right has so captured the nation's airwaves? And done it in such an effective fashion that when they attack folks like Tom Daschle, he and his family actually get increased numbers of death threats? How is it that millions of Americans actually believe the pronouncements of ex-felons like John Poindexter's protégée Ollie North and Nixon's former burglar G. Gordon Liddy? How is it that ideologues like Rush Limbaugh can propagate lies and half-truths to the overt benefit of hard-right Republicans, and avoid a return of the dead-since-Reagan Fairness Doctrine (and get around the desire of the American public for fairness) by claiming what they do is "just entertainment"? And, given the domination of talk radio by this new Reich, why is it that the vast majority of talk radio stations across the nation never run even an occasional centrist or progressive show in the midst of their all-right, all-the-time programming day? Even within the radio industry itself, there's astonishment. Program directors and station managers claim they have to program only right-wing hosts. They've point out that when they insert even a few hours of a left-of-center talk host into a typical talk-radio day, the station's phone lines light up with angry, flaming reactions from listeners; even advertisers get calls of protest. Just last month, a radio station manager told me solemnly, "Only right-wingers listen to radio any more. The lefties would rather read." How could this be? After all, a Democrat won the majority of the popular vote in the last presidential election, with more votes than any other Democratic candidate in the entire history of the nation: how could it be that there are no Democratic or progressive voices in major national radio syndication, and only a small handful in partial syndication or on local shows? The issue is important for two reasons. First, in a nation that considers itself a democratic republic, the institutions of democracy are imperiled by a lack of balanced national debate on issues of critical importance. Demagoguery - from either end of the political spectrum - is not healthy for democracy when there are no opposing voices. Second, for those progressives looking for a good investment, what's happened recently in the radio industry represents a business opportunity of significant proportions. The station manager I talked with is wrong, because of something in science known as "sample bias." Here's why the talk radio scene is so dominated by the right, and how it can change. First, a very brief history: When radio first became a national force in the 1920s and 1930s, most stations programmed everything. Country/Western music would be followed by Big Band, followed by Mozart, followed by drama or comedy. Everything was jumbled together, and people needed the newspaper program guides to know when to listen to what. As the market matured, and drama and comedy moved to television, radio stations realized there were specific market segments and niches within those segments to which they could program. And they realized that people within those niches had very specific tastes. Country/Western listeners only wanted to hear Country/Western - Big Band put them off, and classical music put them to sleep. Classical music fans, on the other hand, became irritated when Country/Western or the early versions of Rock 'n Roll came on the air. And Rock fans clicked off the moment Frank Sinatra came on. So, as those of us who've worked in the business saw, stations began to program into these specific musical niches, and it led to a new renaissance (and profit windfall) in the radio business. But to make money in the new world of radio that emerged in the 1950s, you had to be true to your niche. If, when I was a Country/Western DJ, I had tried to drop in a song from, say, The Beatles, my listeners would have gone ballistic, calling in and angrily complaining. Similarly, when I was doing morning drive-time Rock, it would have been suicide to drop in four minutes of Mozart. Smart programmers know to always hold true to their niche and their listeners. continued... _____________________________________________________________ "The world is only changed by those who can see beyond it."
