Return of the Fairness Doctrine? | Rowsey Blog

Return of the Fairness Doctrine?

June 29, 2008

The democratic party, led by its fearless leader Speaker Nancy Pelosi, intends to revive the Fairness Doctrine. Since being abolished in the late 80s, conservatives have dominated the medium of talk radio and liberals have yet to find a viable alternative to shows like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.

I think it is far better for democrats to focus on finding personalities that can compete rather than trying to legislate their way into this medium. If you’d like to sign a petition against the Fairness Doctrine, click here.

Posted by Jason Rowsey | Filed Under Media Bias 

Comments

3 Responses to “Return of the Fairness Doctrine?”

  1. Stumped on June 29th, 2008 6:56 pm

    I would be more worried if I were you about these two factors killing talk radio:

    Most of it is on AM. And most of its listeners are over 55. Advertisers don’t like that. It’s a struggle getting younger people to listen to radio at all, much less AM.

    But there are also two powerful disincentives to stations throwing in the towel on talk and going back to music — music doesn’t work on AM, which is why they started talk in the first place, and the record companies are about to get the Democrats in Congress to force radio stations to pay more royalties for their songs. That’s going to cost radio stations more than hiring a boatload of liberals to balance things out would. It would make talk radio cheaper than music no matter what. And in radio, cheap always wins.

  2. Jason Rowsey on July 1st, 2008 2:05 am

    Talk radio is wildly popular and I think the demographics of some of the major shows would lprove that.

  3. Paul Lambert on July 1st, 2008 11:15 am

    There was once a time when the capacity of the radio/TV system was so limited, and its impact so powerful, that some argument could be made that it was appropriate to not allow one political party to dominate the airtime.

    Today, I think radio/TV broadcasters struggle to fill the massive amount of system capacity with programming interesting enough to draw people away from all the other entertainment choices available.

    I think it is safe to say that: a) if more people wanted to hear liberal programming; and, b) if they had demographics interesting to advertisers - there would be plenty of liberal programming available.

    The whole conversation seems kinda a nuts to me. Our society has never had a medium with the same degree of freedom and accessibility as the Internet. Before you say that there are plenty of rural and poverty areas without internet access (which is somewhat true), allow me to point out another dimension of the Internet - that it allows me to receive content from anywhere in the country without regard to broadcast limitations.

    Indeed broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh and especially Glenn Beck use radio, TV and the Internet in concert to reach their listeners.

    So would Speaker Pelosi’s 2008 version of the Fairness Doctrine seek to balance Internet hits too? How would you do that?

    Tells you how out of date our Congressional leaders really are…

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