[grc] Found this on Quora

Thu May 30 22:10:44 PDT 2019

In addition, his description of how the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal
Time rule worked is quite incorrect. However that misunderstanding of how
they worked was very common. Very few people, outside of the FCC and
communications lawyers, really understood how they functioned. The Fairness
Doctrine, in reality, was very weak, a confusing mess, and a bureaucratic
nightmare. However, the threat of a Fairness Doctrine issue at the FCC did
tend to keep broadcasters from going to extremes. Without that leverage, we
have seen what happens with Fox News and similar broadcasting outlets.

On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 9:55 PM Susan Raybuck via grc <grc at maillist.peak.org>
wrote:

> He makes a lot of sense. I remember Air America finally folding after a
> lot of large corporations refused to advertise on stations that carried Air
> America.
>
> He does make a couple of mistakes. The FCC under Reagan ended the Fairness
> Doctrine – after a carefully planned campaign to undermine it, involving
> Congressional hearings and university curriculum to look at ways it could
> be abused. (The American Enterprise Institute played a major role in the
> campaign.) Congress tried to pass it as legislation during Reagan’s second
> term but failed.
>
> Also, the Communications Act wasn’t the source of the Fairness Doctrine.
> After WWII, the Hutchins Commission met for many months to hammer out media
> policy with an aim to prevent the rise of Communism and Fascism which had
> gotten a toehold in America in the twenties and thirties. Truman’s FCC
> developed The Blue Book which articulated the Fairness Doctrine, based on
> work of the Hutchins Commission.
>
> I did research on the topic in grad school hoping there was a way to bring
> it back. I concluded it was dead as a doornail in that form, largely due to
> FOX News inculcating their audience to despise and fear it. (If the
> propaganda network was exposed and checked, maybe, just maybe.)
>
> Susan Raybuck
>
> > On May 30, 2019, at 2:46 PM, Frieda Werden via grc <
> grc at maillist.peak.org> wrote:
> >
> > I do think he is wrong about Congress deleting the Fairness Doctrine.
> As I
> > recall, the FCC was able to make that call on its own.  Also, there are
> > some shreds of Equal Time currently in place.  Basically that stations
> have
> > to sell candidates ads at the same rate.
> >
> > On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 11:30 AM Frieda Werden <wings at wings.org <mailto:
> wings at wings.org>> wrote:
> >
> >> For anyone who wondered about this question - this fella's answer
> covers a
> >> lot of the bases:
> >>
> >> [image: Sean Phillips] <https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-Phillips-29>
> >> Sean Phillips <https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-Phillips-29>, Poker
> >> Dealer In Pre-Early-Semi-Retirement (2016-present)
> >> Answered Aug 25, 2014
> >> <
> https://www.quora.com/Why-have-conservative-radio-talk-shows-been-more-successful-than-liberal-radio-talk-shows-e-g-Limbaugh-vs-Air-America/answer/Sean-Phillips-29
> >
> >>
> >> <
> https://www.quora.com/Why-have-conservative-radio-talk-shows-been-more-successful-than-liberal-radio-talk-shows-e-g-Limbaugh-vs-Air-America#
> >
> >> I spent 25+ years in the business.  The answer to your question is
> >> complex, but clear.
> >>
> >> First, to those who insist there is no audience, or that the political
> >> left represents a minority,  I say "Hogwash".  The fact is, this
> country is
> >> split into three virtually equal groups; the left, the right, and the
> >> middle, and the 1/3 of the country that makes up the middle splits
> almost
> >> perfectly down the middle, half leaning right, half leaning left.
> >>
> >> The reason all you hear is right-wing talk on the radio has to do with
> the
> >> psychology of human beings, and how that relates to the methodology of
> >> ratings being tabulated, and ruthless profit motive.
> >>
> >> Radio audiences are measured in two ways.  The first is cumulative
> >> audience (called "cume"); the total number of people who listen to your
> >> radio station each week.  The second is average quarter hour audience
> >> (called "AQH"), which is quantified in time spent listening ("TSL").
> >>
> >> Each listening day is broken up into quarter-hour periods, and just as
> if
> >> an attorney spends 5 minutes reading your email, and is ethically
> allowed
> >> to bill you for a quarter-hour's time, if you sample a radio station
> during
> >> a quarter hour, even if you stop listening after only a minute, or two,
> >> they get credit for that quarter hour.
> >>
> >> Ratings are arrived at though a mathematical combination of both cume
> and
> >> AQH.  Let's say Tom tunes into a radio station for 5 minutes in the
> >> morning, every Monday, but doesn't listen any more that week.  He is
> >> considered a member of that station's audience.  Now let's say Bill
> tunes
> >> into that same station for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week.  He is also
> >> considered to be a member of that stations audience.  Cume-wise, both
> Tom,
> >> and Bill represent the same thing to that radio station, they are both
> >> members of it's audience.
> >>
> >> AQH is another thing, however.  Tom gave the radio station a single
> >> quarter-hour's listening for the survey week.  Bill listened for 15
> hours
> >> that week, so he gave them 60 quarter-hours.  He is exponentially more
> >> valuable to the radio station.
> >>
> >> How does this relate to the political right, or left?  Psychologically
> >> speaking, the further left you go, the more anachistic you tend to
> become.
> >> The further to the right you go, the more you tend to crave
> organization.
> >> Politics aside, look at the difference between the TEA Party and Occupy
> >> Wall Street.  Occupy was, by design, an organization with no leaders, no
> >> agenda, no defined mission, and no two people seemed to be there for the
> >> same reason.  Meanwhile, all of the various TEA Party organizations
> quickly
> >> coalesced into a single entity.  People on the right tend to pick a
> single
> >> station, and listen with great loyalty, while people on the left tend to
> >> listen to a wide variety of stations.  Loyalty = TSL.  Very valuable to
> a
> >> radio station.  The tendency of loyalty towards a single station
> inherent
> >> in people who lean right politically can also be greatly intensified by
> >> making them feel they are a part of a group of people who are looked
> down
> >> upon, and discriminated against.
> >>
> >> There's more.  Ratings are measured by recruiting respondents, and
> people
> >> on the political right are much more likely to take a telemarketing call
> >> recruiting them, and agree to participate.  They're also more likely to
> go
> >> through the process, and return the diary, or people meter.  This leads
> to
> >> an undersampling of the left, and an oversampling of the right.
> There's no
> >> conspiracy, it's simple psychology.
> >>
> >> Most people don't realize it, but the airwaves are actually a public
> >> trust.  Just like a national park, they belong to the people.  All the
> >> people, regardless of their politics.  Radio stations are issued
> licenses
> >> to "broadcast in the public interest".  In the Communications Act of
> 1934,
> >> congress went to great pains to ensure no one single political voice
> could
> >> dominate the airwaves.  They put strict ownership limits in place, and
> >> cross-ownership limits (radio, TV, and newspaper).  They initiated The
> >> Fairness Doctrine, which held broadcasters to a standard of truth.  They
> >> also initiated the Equal Time Rule, which required stations broadcasting
> >> one political viewpoint to give equal time to opposing views, so if you
> had
> >> 3 hours of Rush, you'd have to give three hours to the left.
> >>
> >> Beginning in the 80s, ownership limits were relaxed again and again,
> until
> >> you got to the present day, where one company (Clear Channel) owns over
> >> 1,000 radio stations, and over 90% of the radio audience in this country
> >> listens to radio stations owned by just four companies.  The exact sort
> of
> >> concentration of power the Comm Act of 1934 was designed to prohibit.
> Once
> >> consolidation began, those newly powerful broadcast companies used their
> >> lobbying power to have congress do away with the Fairness Doctrine and
> the
> >> Equal Time Rules, so they were free to broadcast anything they liked.
> >>
> >> Then there's the fact that right-wing talk is pro-business, and left
> wing
> >> talk advocates re-regulation.  If you owned a company whose very
> existence,
> >> let alone it's massive profits were owed completely to the lifting of
> >> virtually every regulatory restriction, would you pay to air a show that
> >> urged people to reach out to their elected representatives to demand
> >> regulations be put back in place?  That's why Air America failed.
> >>
> >> When a radio station has a signal that only covers part of it's market,
> >> it's called a "rimshot" signal.  After deregulation, the big four
> gobbled
> >> up all of the strong signals in the 200 most heavily populated cities in
> >> America, leaving only the rimshots for independent owners.  The four
> >> companies that owned all the strong signals wouldn't touch Air America,
> so
> >> they ended up on the rimshots, with no money for marketing, or
> promotion.
> >>
> >> Years ago, while working for one of the "Big Four", I went to a
> manager's
> >> meeting, attended by all the top-level brass.  We'd just put on a new
> talk
> >> station in a crowded market.  It was the third one, and it's competitors
> >> already had Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly etc. all locked up.  Rather than
> >> putting on third-rate conservative talkers, the program director wanted
> to
> >> put on Air America, and had reams of ratings breakouts, showing where,
> in
> >> zip codes where the signals were comparable, Air America performed
> on-par
> >> with the big conservative talk shows.  The president of the company
> became
> >> very agitated, and said: "we aren't EVER going to air a show that wants
> to
> >> destroy us".
> >>
> >> The fact is, for the past 20+ years, the peoples' airwaves have been
> >> dominated by a non-stop right-wing political propaganda machine, not
> >> because of some vast conspiracy, but simply due to the most basic of
> >> capitalist principles: profit motive.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Frieda Werden, Series Producer
> >> WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org
> >>
> > --
> > Frieda Werden, Series Producer
> > WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org <
> http://www.wings.org/>
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