did talk radio or hate radio save the AM band?

[pstokely]

what would AM radio be like today with the fairness doctrine? could it be sucessful

[jagguy]

1. out of business

like it nearly was before it was repealed.

[devilgrrl]

2. I always thought AM would be great for Alternative entertainment...

such as punk rock stations and such... :shrug:

[jagguy]

3. the deal where they have to reduce wattage kills them

for that sort of thing. Kills the reception at the time most folks who would be interested would be tuning in. Talk tolerates this less than music so they survive at night as well.

I'd love to get an explination as to why this requirement exists. My college basketball coverage has been on AM for the last umpteen years and its all I can do to pick it up. Mercifully they're going FM this season.

Oh, I'll bet noone cares about my basketball/radio issues... sorry

[Stephanie]

5. Why do they have to reduce wattage?

What is that all about? Have they always done it?

[Stephanie]

4. You should read this commentary

Hendrik Hertzberg on hate radio and AnShell Media.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030811ta_talk_hertzberg

COMMENT
RADIO DAZE
Issue of 2003-08-11
— Hendrik Hertzberg

<snip>But these NPR programs are news-feature broadcasts; they adhere to the practices of journalistic professionalism, including the aspirational ideal of objectivity. Their sensibility may fairly be said to be “liberal” in the sense that liberal education is liberal—that is, open-minded and urbane, with a preference for empirical inquiry over dogmatic conclusion-mongering—but what little overt political commentary they offer hovers around the moderate middle. NPR’s local talk-show hosts tend to be more overtly liberal, but they are always polite about it. In contrast, Limbaugh and his scores of national and local imitators aggressively propagandize on behalf of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and the domestic and foreign policies of the Bush Administration, with a stream of faxes and e-mails from conservative think tanks and the Republican National Committee keeping the troops firmly on message. Neither NPR nor anyone else ever performed any such services for the Clinton Administration, and no one is doing so today on behalf of the beleaguered Democratic opposition.

<snip>

Remember the old joke about politics being show business for ugly people? Well, right-wing radio is niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive. It succeeds because a substantial segment of the right-wing rank and file enjoys listening, hour after hour, as smug, angry, disdainful middle-aged men spew raw contempt at reified enemies, named and unnamed. The radiocons seldom offer analysis or argument. To the chronically resentful, they offer the sadistic consolation of an endless sneer—at weaklings, victim-group whiners, cultural snobs, Hollywood hypocrites whose hearts bleed for the downtrodden though they themselves are rich and privileged, feminists, environmentalists, and, of course, “liberals,” defined as the Clintons, other members of the “Democrat Party,” and persons suspected of thinking that the state ought to help correct for various kinds of unfairnesses or calamities (economic, racial, climatic, medical) or of attaching themselves to some identity other than or in addition to “American” (black, gay, foreign, all humanity).<more>