[grc] Found this on Quora

Fri May 31 10:27:08 PDT 2019

I wonder if any segment of the DSA is educated and interested in changing the radio landscape for 
the better.  Does anyone know?   Adrienne

On 5/31/19 4:44 AM, Frieda Werden via grc wrote:
> 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
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