will the Fairness Doctrine kill the AM band?

didn't hate radio save it?

that's the idea...just don't say it publicly..heehee
;)

And I say that as a former radio news person. I doubt it, though. If there WERE a Fairness Doctrine, there'd be more impetus to have more viewpoints equally represented, including - gasp!!!!!! - the ones on the left.

But if it's right wing or nothing, I'd vote for nothing. All that right wing spew has just about RUINED our country.

And it shouldn't.

The AM band was alive and well prior to the change in the FCC regs in 1986.

Hate radio only saved it for those who could profit from it.

Radio frequencies belong to the people. They have been stolen by the rich. We can take them back.

The fairness doctrine would put a lot of people back to work.

before Limpbaugh

by getting shows and personalities on the air to compete with the Rushbaughs and Hannities?

Folks are too quick to resort to a government solution to what they perceive as a greivous ill-- when often the cure is worse then the condition.

If competition doesn't work then just switch it off and don't pay attention to it- and don't hate the other half of the country who actually enjoy listening to it.

I find plenty of hate on this website, though I enjoy it immensely- does that make this website "hate-internet?"

Hardly!

It's FREE SPEECH!!!!

Get a clue!

shows were put on the air to compete, they failed. Stations have bills to pay and ads are based on listenership. No listeners, no station.

If you think I'm wrong then try and organize a campaign in your home town to appeal to the local radio station. If you have the numbers, they will put it on and they'll love to have dueling programs as it gives them something to differentiate their stations with.

Let me know how it goes.

that's what people forget. there is a limited amount of space available. just anybody can't go out there and buy themselves a radio station. that's why we have an fcc. they're supposed to regulate the public airwaves. the public airwaves are supposed to serve the public interest, not the interest of a few corporations.

This article might help explain this concept a little better than me: http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/51/51oped.html

I didn't propose a rescue by the government.

I'll bet you don't talk to people that way face to face.

I'm glad you like listening to AM, though. So do I. I don't hate the other half of the country, by the way.

Who peed in your Cheerios, anyway?

AM was not alive and well it was sick and fading. They had no content. FM had the music due to better broadcast quality, AM was left with some niche music, gospel etc. There was little talk radio beyond local interest. These things are not bad but they did not generate the listenership to pay the bills.

Everyone's going to be moving to digital broadcasts shortly.

Curiously, the digital radio standard chosen by the FCC is incompatible with the standard that the rest of the world will be using. This means US digital radios will be incapable of reciving digital broadcasts from other countries.

.

When the peoples of the world were split up and could no longer speak to each other. God took the rap for that one.

You can see it in all sorts of electronic equipment. But where it really stands out is in our archaic system of weights and measures, which 95% of the population has only the most basic working knowledge of. Rational standardization is a fundamental purpose of government- and the US fails at it miserably.

In the meantime, the rest of the world gets the jump on us with things like cell phone technology and they don't have a cow trying to read a metric speedometer while driving on the left side of the road.

Whatever you think of "talk radio" or "hate radio" as the misnomer goes, it also seems to be uniquely American.

I've done some travelling and I listen to a LOT of radio to get a flavor of the places I've been. So far I've come across few if any countries that have nearly the amount of AM talk radio as the US.

Feel free to set me right on this- I don't have the facts, but I believe that most other countries have some sort of fairness doctrine or speech limitations which prohibit their various media from engaging in talk radio as is seen here.

Have any of you people ever listened to it? You could pick up these stations very easily. Maybe it has changed, but there were some really scary things going on there. The law might have been changed, but up until about 1996 at least, domestically based short wave stations were not allowed to broadcast domsetically; they had to aim their signal away from the U.S. Well, there are some very VERY VERY conservative shortwave stations that just plain ignored that. Christian militia groups broadcasting hours of pure hate and bile. People that would make George Bush look splendid. I wonder if the government has ever cracked down on them or if they are still around.

I look for talk shows on the dial.

I found the Alan Coombs show the other night. I didn't know he had a talk show. One caller sounded like he was right out of DU's best conspiracy folder. He was telling Coombs that Bush planned the WTC Tower disaster.

This is not rocket science.

You or I could scrape together a few thousands of dollars and set up a transmitter.

But the government won't allow it, because there are only a limited number of spaces on the dial. So they are allocated by license.

Those who receive a license should be accountable to the public and be REQUIRED to serve the public interest and provide a balanced open forum. They do NOT own the frequencies. They have been given a privilege.

Whan a handful of asshole corporations manipulate the system and control the dial, they are strangling one of the major forms of public communication.

And when they only allow one point of view on there, they are killing democracy.

Anyone who thinks otehrwise is deluded.

...without it, the AM band will continue killing America. The right-wing propaganda machine that is AM radio needs to be dismantled.

These are *our* airwaves, but they've been sold to corporate media giants that have a definite agenda. I'm not particularly concerned about their bottom line.

If a business has to rape public property (the airwaves) in order to survive, then it shouldn't be in business.

My son is as liberal as I am, but a few years back, he drove a delivery truck.. All we get here in Southern Calif is Limbaugh/Hannity/North/Ingraham/DrLaura/Larry Elder/Al Rantel/Dennis Prager..you get the idea.. No matter what AM station you pick , you get one of them or many of them and even their re-runs..

After just a few months of him listening to them day in and day out, he actually started to SOUND like them.. He started commenting that "sometimes they made sense"... I sat that boy down and reminded him about propaganda and how there is usually a "germ" of truth, but the SPIN and distortion that follows is DANGEROUS.. I printed up actual articles that refuted the stuff he had "learned" from those shows, and after he read them and realized that their shows are ALL speculation, slander, and spin..with NO verifiable facts, he realized that he was being subtley brainwashed..

That's how it starts...