[BC] Fairness doctrine by another name? aka censorship?

[Mark Croom]

My visits to Madison are the only times I hear Air America over the air.

Each time I have listened, the first thing that has struck me is that the
folks on the air don't really seem to be having any fun. That's part of the
key to having an entertaining presence on the air--like or dislike Rush all
you want, most of the time he is having fun. If you're not having fun, your
listeners will know intuitively. When Rush is having a bad day on the "fun"
side of things he can be excruciating to listen to.

I tend to think that's why generic-liner-card/voice-tracked music radio is
boring, too. The liner-card-readers tend to be bored, and that comes through
on the air, even if they don't come right out and say it.

WORT was another station that had some "way too serious" talk programming
when I was in town. You know, community-focused radio with volunteer hosts,
each program typically catering to a minority population of some kind. Axes
to grind aplenty. "News" done by university students "covering" the
"injustices" done by the many government agencies in town (usually something
to do with the environment). Then again this is the same station where I
heard King Missile's "Detachable P_nis" (look it up on Wikipedia) one night
while in the studio to replace the fuse in the cue speaker circuit of the
RS-18 console. Same station whose Sunday evening host played a song that
clearly contained the audio depiction of a heterosexual coupling behind the
lyrics (even I thought that was obscene and I'm not that much of a prude).
Programming oversight seemed to be relatively loose, except for certain
music programs.

Radio has got to be at least nominally entertaining, in my view, or it ain't
worth listening to.

Mark
MN

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Kevin Trueblood <kevin at neptuneradio.net>wrote:

> Now living in one of the most liberal cities in the US (Madison, WI) I find
> it interesting that over the last few years the Air America station here has
> had very modest ratings has come close to flipping.  Yet the station that
> carries Rush and Hannity is typically on top of the ratings.
>
> Rush, love him or hate him, is entertaining.  Are they sensationalists?
>  Are they extraordinarily biased?  Absolutely.  But the are first and
> foremost entertainers and have figured out how to get people to listen to
> their show. If AA could do that, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
>
> Fact is, radio is not the only medium.  If you disagree with someone on the
> radio, fire up a blog and advertise it.  Podcast it.  Make it a webstream.
> Put it on YouTube.  Write to your opinion section in the newspaper.  There
> are countless ways in which you can broadcast your message and get it in
> front of people.  Forcing radio's hand is not what we need right now.
>