by Tina Grazier
The Center for American Progress, a Washington based left-wing think tank, has set its sights on the destruction of right wing talk radio. Seems they cant abide the popularity it enjoys and so, in typical control freak fashion, they seek to put restrictions and regulation in place to make sure the programming allowed to float across our airwaves is fair. They will use the familiar tactic of appealing to the masses with a reasonable sounding phrase and so will speak of the public airwaves. But as Neal Boortz reveals in his website article, The Attack on Talk Radio Begins in Earnest Today, this little sham has its roots in a decades old political power play:
I know most of you have never really thought about this before, but this argument is ridiculously easy to destroy. On just what basis does the public own the airwaves? Is there a purchase contract somewhere that I just haven’t seen yet? *** The answer is that there is no evidence of ownership. None. The public “owns the airwaves” only because the politicians in the early part of the last century said so. And that’s it. They saw a new means of communication coming forward, a means of communication that had the promise of someday being more powerful than the Constitutionally protected printed word, and they wanted control. They wanted control, so they took it.
Liberals feel threatened by talk radio. They tried to succeed with their Air America, and all the George Soros and embezzled funds in the world didn’t help them. So, in the liberal world, if at first you can’t succeed, use the government to destroy your opponents.
Yep, that says it all. Personally I think its pretty amazing that these aging free speech flower children are now trying to use government power to stifle free expressionI mean who do they think they are Hugo Chavezor maybe Fidel? Well, actually
There were a few things in the report,
The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio that I found interesting. First they explain the illness:
Through more than 1,700 stations across the nation, the combined news/talk format is estimated to reach more than 50 million listeners each week. *** Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive. *** Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk. *** A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.
Then they call for the cure:
This analysis suggests that any effort to encourage more responsive and balanced radio programming will first require steps to increase localism and diversify radio station ownership to better meet local and community needs. We suggest three ways to accomplish this:
Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations. *** Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. *** Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.
What wasnt in the report is that left-wing talk radio doesnt sell! Ooops…guess that would make a difference.