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Once upon a time...
...there was something called the Fairness Doctrine. It required broadcasters whose programming touched on controversial issues to allow equal time for opposing viewpoints.
You see, broadcasters don't own the airwaves. The airwaves are a public resource, and because radio spectrum is a limited resource, broadcasters were licensed by the federal government as trustees of the public airwaves. They agreed to accept certain public service obligations along with their licenses; originally those obligations included a certain amount of news and other public interest programming, and they had to conduct frequent interviews with prominent members of the communities their stations were licensed to serve, and produce programming to address issues of concern.
Major broadcasters such as General David Sarnoff, whose RCA corporation owned the NBC Red and Blue Networks, were passionately committed to the idea that radio (and later, television) could be culturally and intellectually uplifting. Sarnoff even created the NBC Symphony Orchestra and hired famed conductor Arturo Toscanini to run it.
As recently as Jimmy Carter's time, it was possible to challenge the license renewal of any broadcaster whose license term was up. A challenger could make a case that he or she would do a better job of serving the public than the incumbent, and the incumbent had to show how his station had fulfilled its myriad public interest obligations. Broadcasters served the public, or they lost their licenses. All that changed during the 1980's.
Under Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, broadcasters' public service obligations were watered down or abolished. Simultaneously, rules limiting a single owner to just seven AM stations, seven FM stations, and seven TV stations began to be loosened. Fowler's FCC suspended the Fairness Doctrine, declaring that the FCC should not be in the business of regulating program content.
The deregulation continued during the subsequent Bush and Clinton administrations and culminated in the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which eliminated almost all limits on the number of stations a single owner could have, and simultaneously introduced the concept of license renewal expectancy. Since 1996, it is no longer possible to challenge a station's license renewal except for violations of federal law or FCC rules and regulations. You can't complain that your favorite station is dropping classical music for rock, or that the quality of its news reporting has declined. You can't complain that the station is ignoring your community in favor of the big city over the hill. You can't say they play too many commercials. Actually you can, but the FCC is not allowed to do anything for you if you do. They're not supposed to consider program content in license renewal proceedings, with one exception: violations of FCC rules concerning obscenity, indecency, or profanity.
All Rush, all the time? No problem! All day, all night, all crap? Rubber-stamp that renewal. No local DJ, and no one to answer the phone when a major disaster hits town (google "Minot train derailment")? Hey, it's not a rules violation, so here's your new license; you're good for eight more years.
Rush isn't the real problem; he's a symptom. The problem with radio, as with so many other industries, is deregulation. Foxes used to get licensed to run hen houses from time to time, but they couldn't run more than seven and they were strictly regulated. Now they can buy up as many as they want, eat as much chicken as they like, and play nothing but (what else?) Fox News.
And shame on Democrats, and Bill Clinton in particular, for letting it happen.
You see, broadcasters don't own the airwaves. The airwaves are a public resource, and because radio spectrum is a limited resource, broadcasters were licensed by the federal government as trustees of the public airwaves. They agreed to accept certain public service obligations along with their licenses; originally those obligations included a certain amount of news and other public interest programming, and they had to conduct frequent interviews with prominent members of the communities their stations were licensed to serve, and produce programming to address issues of concern.
Major broadcasters such as General David Sarnoff, whose RCA corporation owned the NBC Red and Blue Networks, were passionately committed to the idea that radio (and later, television) could be culturally and intellectually uplifting. Sarnoff even created the NBC Symphony Orchestra and hired famed conductor Arturo Toscanini to run it.
As recently as Jimmy Carter's time, it was possible to challenge the license renewal of any broadcaster whose license term was up. A challenger could make a case that he or she would do a better job of serving the public than the incumbent, and the incumbent had to show how his station had fulfilled its myriad public interest obligations. Broadcasters served the public, or they lost their licenses. All that changed during the 1980's.
Under Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, broadcasters' public service obligations were watered down or abolished. Simultaneously, rules limiting a single owner to just seven AM stations, seven FM stations, and seven TV stations began to be loosened. Fowler's FCC suspended the Fairness Doctrine, declaring that the FCC should not be in the business of regulating program content.
The deregulation continued during the subsequent Bush and Clinton administrations and culminated in the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which eliminated almost all limits on the number of stations a single owner could have, and simultaneously introduced the concept of license renewal expectancy. Since 1996, it is no longer possible to challenge a station's license renewal except for violations of federal law or FCC rules and regulations. You can't complain that your favorite station is dropping classical music for rock, or that the quality of its news reporting has declined. You can't complain that the station is ignoring your community in favor of the big city over the hill. You can't say they play too many commercials. Actually you can, but the FCC is not allowed to do anything for you if you do. They're not supposed to consider program content in license renewal proceedings, with one exception: violations of FCC rules concerning obscenity, indecency, or profanity.
All Rush, all the time? No problem! All day, all night, all crap? Rubber-stamp that renewal. No local DJ, and no one to answer the phone when a major disaster hits town (google "Minot train derailment")? Hey, it's not a rules violation, so here's your new license; you're good for eight more years.
Rush isn't the real problem; he's a symptom. The problem with radio, as with so many other industries, is deregulation. Foxes used to get licensed to run hen houses from time to time, but they couldn't run more than seven and they were strictly regulated. Now they can buy up as many as they want, eat as much chicken as they like, and play nothing but (what else?) Fox News.
And shame on Democrats, and Bill Clinton in particular, for letting it happen.