Faced with declining listenership and the growing possibility that radio will have to pay performance fees for playing recordings the way internet audio providers currently do, America’s radio broadcasters are trying to cut a deal with Congress.
If lawmakers will require cell providers to include an FM radio chip in cell phones, broadcasters will cave on their standpat opposition to performance fees.
The radio industry, represented by the National Association of Broadcasters trade group, argues that in a national emergency, radio chips in cell phones could be a valuable information source. That's only true if it's a credible information source and today's information radio, with its stable of right wing crazies, is anything but credible.
Prior to radio’s deregulation during the Reagan administration, their argument might have made some sense. The whole method of legacy radio regulation presupposed that radio was a scarce commodity that had high public service value because it was our only immediate mass communications system.
There were ownership caps that restricted networks from owning more than 5 outlets, restrictions on newspaper-crossownership, and limits restricting groups to no more than 1 AM and 1 FM in a market.
Stations weren’t guaranteed a license renewal; getting renewed was a difficult process that required "ascertainment of community needs." In this process, stations agreed to how much and what type of local programming they would provide. If stations used their outlets for political grandstanding, they would at least offer a reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints.
With Reagan’s deregulation and Clinton’s further deregulation all these requirements went out the window, and we have the radio landscape one hears today. Most of the news/talk programming in the country is provided by Clear Channel, Citadel and CBS. Two of these three (and the smaller Salem) broadcast a near non-stop stream of right-wing invective. When news is broadcast, it is most often national and provided by Fox.
So when the NAB tries to make its case for an FM chip in cell phones by claiming radio serves the national interest in an emergency, it raises the question of what radio would do if there actually were one. Most of the radio news departments are gone now, the reporters and anchors fired as the radio groups went into massive debt to buy up their competition. Where they remain are typically in AM stations, though since a few companies own everything, moving AM formats to FM in an emergency is an easy task.
So who would sit before the microphones and soothe a trouble nation? All they have left in their talk studios are people skilled at foementing controversy and confrontation. Rush Limbaugh may be trusted by the dittoheads who may represent a sizable fractional audience but would he be trusted by the rest of us to dispense official information? Would he even be trusted by his own audience if he suddenly were to carry the water for FEMA or the White House? Is Glenn Beck, Michael Savage or Mark Levin any more credible?
The NAB and their member stations decided the public interest was best served in a deregulated environment where they neither needed nor wanted the requirements of local service, objective reporting, and robust news gathering departments. Since radio is no longer the sole provider of immediate national dissemination, I’m not sure I disagree. Their future isn’t bright, and maybe the only way to stay profitable was to whore themselves with the demagogues that make up the vast majority of their information programming.
In pursing that path, however, they’ve traded away their credibility. Some of us still remember radio as a responsible medium: the kind of medium you might want to carry around in your pocket as a feature on a cell phone, in case there were an actual national emergency.
The situation in which the business of radio finds itself is a great example of what's wrong with the right-wing content it broadcasts nonstop to its right wing audience. Deregulation turned radio stations into commodities that quickly became overvalued and were gobbled up by a few companies with access to capital.
The debt-ridden stations can't afford to pay the debt and produce quality content that keeps pace with newer alternative delivery mediums. So the very same people who pitch "let the marketplace decide" to their listeners are privately petitioning the government to more heavily regulate their competition and for government protection from the people who produce their musical content.
If the economic and political crap they're peddling on their air is so damn good, then why aren't they practicing what they preach? And if they believe they can provide a service that acts in the national interest in a time of national emergency, why did they work so hard to get rid of the requirements that they do so, and then fire all the people who could produce that kind of programming?