[grc] Found this on Quora

Fri May 31 04:44:13 PDT 2019

I remember attending a live Air America broadcast hosted by Jim Hightower
in Austin.  We had a lot of hopes for the competition against Limbaugh.  It
was a cryin shame that network could not survive.

On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 9:55 PM Susan Raybuck <
communitynews at wimberleyvalleyradio.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> 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
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
Frieda Werden, Series Producer
WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org