Did rightwing radio exist in the 1960s?

[Eric J in MN]

Or the 1970s?

[ClassWarrior]

1. Nope. We had the Fairness Doctrine.

NGU.

[merwin]

2. I think it's a more recent thing, like the 80's

1987 to be exact
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_radio#U.S._politically-oriented_talk_radio

[evlbstrd]

3. Radio was corrupt as hell for the most part.

But, politically, hey, it was the 60's and 70's! The music was asskicking, progressive FM radio emerged, and sadly died, until the internets made it possible again.

[daninthemoon]

4. Godamn limbaugh invented it, near as I can remember.

[Z_I_Peevey]

5. I remember one guy, Joe Pyne,

who had a brief stab at notoriety, but that was about it. Started the insult-the-caller schtick. Was a DJ, then had a TV show.

My dad had a brief flirtation with listening to his right-wing BS.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Was Joe Pyne pro-Nixon?

Did he insult protestors?

[Z_I_Peevey]

8. My memory is fuzzy.

I was but a mere tot. :)

But I assume he was a Nixon supporter. He ranted and raved about hippies, that much I recall.

[Hidden Stillness]

14. They Were Rare Then; They Own the Place Now

There was Joe Pyne, ranting against hippies protesting against the war in Viet Nam, I remember vaguely as a kid. Interestingly, Joe Pyne was considered an extreme right-wing nut case who did not have popular mainstream support, and was not quoted by even regular moderate Republicans. It wasn't until the days of totally multinational-corporate-owned media, and "D"LC, Inc. sabotaging real Democrats, that anyone would've even tried to put forth this nonsense that archconservatism is "mainstream" or "centrist." They used to be called what they are--and Pyne was considered an asshole and an angry nut, and not pretended to be normal or mainstream, as they do now with the illegal-drug addict and the rest.

Coughlin I remember my Mom talking about. A Catholic Priest with a radio program during the '30s, a horrible bastard, who not only gave out with some of the vilest, slanderous lying propaganda against Roosevelt--a favorite target, the Greatest President Ever--real spitting hate, but unbelievable anti-Semitism that was scary to listen to. Again, these rare archcon hysterics were not considered "respectable," did not influence real, serious politics, and were not mainstream. They did not own the media then, and so their numbers reflected their numbers in the actual society, that is, just about nothing.

This was not treated as "fun entertainment" then, and as another poster mentioned, the broadcasting regulations, Fairness Doctrine, etc., protected the audience and our society from this poison, as it does not now.

[kskiska]

18. I remember Joe Pyne, but on TV

He had one of those insult programs, and attacked just about anyone he had on. Another guy at the time was Alan Burke. I remember their guests including people who claimed to have been abducted and taken for a ride on flying saucers, where they were examined and probed. Pyne and Burke loved baiting these nuts. Pyne had one leg, as I remember, possibly a war injury.

[xray s]

7. Yes in the 70's, to a limited, but very effective, extent

The Fairness Doctrine did provide some balance, in areas where balance was demanded by the Left. In a lot of rural areas there was no one demanding equal time, so none was given.

I can remember in 1975 driving through Colorado and Utah and hearing Ronald Reagan doing a 15 minute monologue on the radio every afternoon. It was all over the dial. He could spout his brand of politics unchallenged. At the time I thought he was some weird far Right wacko that no one could possibly take seriously.

He was building his base.

I really don't understand why the Democrats never seemed to have figured out the power of radio. They should be running ads on radio right now getting the message out. It's inexpensive, and effective.

Maybe it doesn't make enough money for all the political consultants that seem to infest the Democratic party. They like to produce expensive TV spots, not inexpensive radio spots.

[Lithos]

9. Depends on your definition

If you are talking about talk radio, then someone pointed out what appears to be the definitive link. But if you are talking about RW radio in general, ie where RW crap was spewed out, it goes back to the beginning of radio itself.

Google Charles Coughlin who is considered the father of Hate radio here in the US. You can see quite a bit of his style being used by Pat Buchanan and others who use religion as a guise for their fascist agenda.

L-

[bobbieinok]

10. in 40s, 50s there were RW radio hosts: FultonLewisJR, WestbrookPegler

and others ..... those are the names I remember from listening to when I was a kid

there were RW radio hosts in the 60s......they constantly attacked the democrats 'selling out Chiang Kai Chek' sp????

there were constant anti JFK radio shows before Nov 22 1963

[belle]

15. Father Coughlin

[eridani]

20. Yes--check out the following link

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoughlinE.htm

[LostinVA]

26. Took the name out of my mouth

He actually made Limbaugh look like a semi-demented choirboy. Coughlin was nutso....

[Eric J in MN]

19. Can you recall the names of any rightwing hosts of the 1960s?

nt

[bobbieinok]

22. No, just remember there were several shows.....I was in grad school

I think I maybe heard a few broadcasts

it might be possible to find a few names by looking at newspaper/magazine comments after the assasination.......I think I saw some references to these programs when people wrote about school students in Dallas cheering when they heard JFK was dead

there were RW radio/newspaper people saying that JFK arranged for Diem to be killed in Vietnam and that his assasination was pay back for that

also my dad, at an accounting conference in Tulsa, said that when JFK's death was announced many of those attending from LA, MS, etc rushed to the phones and told their wives to get the kids and stay at home; my dad said they feared it was a white uprising against JFK because of his stand on race......JFK had sent 10,000 (!!!!) soldiers to Oxford MS to restore order after white rioting when James Meredith integrated the U of MS law school in the fall of 1962 (ordered by the SCOTUS.....nothing like 'activist judges', right????)........there were radio people ranting against this; I heard a few......doubtless there were many in the 'deep south'

[expatriate]

11. Not that I remember - not in the current form, for sure.

There used to be more conservative radio programs. Paul Harvey has been around forever with his bullshit. I remember most radio in the 1960's and 1970's, at least where I lived, being music oriented, with a strong concentration on a youthful audience. There were some stations that played "easy listening" (locally it was called "velvet sounds") - elevator music stuff. I don't remember much jabber on the radio except for late night shows.

In the 1980's, there was a sudden rash of "talk radio" and it became a huge fad. Sally Jessy Raphael and Larry King got going as public figures then, on talk radio, but there were all kinds of shows - childraising questions, financial advice, interviews with celebrities - with the call in format. The shows were very diverse and varied, everything from Howard Stern to people talking about gardening.

I think that's when the right wing shows got started. And man, did they ever proliferate.

[longship]

12. Nope. Could not happen

As others have pointed out. There was a law (a good one IMHO) which required that media provide balance. In general they did it fairly well. I like to think that the new NPR news did it about as well as anybody did back then. Maybe the best was CBC "As it Happens" (on Canada's public network) which was the inspiration for NPR's "All Things Considered".

[RandomKoolzip]

13. On a much smaller scale, yes.

In the midwest and the south, there were "posse Comitatus" radio stations, preaching racial hatred openly. Before them, there was Father Coughlin in the 30's, a pro-Nazi preacher.

There was left-wing talk radio too, in the 70's and 80's. Colorado DJ Alan Berg was one notable character; he was killed by Neo-Nazis for his views. Other notables of the political stripe on the West Coast were Wally George (RW), Joe Pyne (RW), and Morton Downey Jr. (RW, also. Sensing a pattern?) Don Imus and Howard Stern were on the East Coast and doing a non-partisan variation of these guys' shtick. While they all had local followings, none were able to parlay that popularity into the national consciousness. The Firness Doctrine also provided was in place during this time, remember.

Rush Limbaugh came up through the ranks of music-format FM radio DJ's in the 70's, but it wasn't until the early 80's that he tried mixing "anti-liberal" skits and diatribes with the standard "comedy" format of the morning DJ.

In California, Morton Downey Jr. held a spot on an AM radio show, and when he was fired, Rush was invited to fill in. He kept his spot, began accruing a cult following, and his show began to be bought by other markets around the country.

By the mid-late 80's the honchos who observe and ctaer to the markets around the country bagan noticing that Limbaugh's huge ratings had created a market for a certain kind of radio that had not existed before, and soon, Limbaugh was the first "star" of the conservative movement, and of talk radio.

Read "The Republican Noise Machine" by David Brock for more ifo on this subject.

[FloridaPat]

16. I just remember rock & roll stations and country western. And of course

religious stations.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. There were fundamentalist preachers on rural stations

but nothing like Rush Limbaugh.

I remember Joe Pyne from his TV days. Nasty fellow.

[nomatrix]

21. Early Beatles and the origins of spin.

John Lennon being misquoted about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus.

They came out of the airwaves with record burning rituals, pressuring teens to choose between Jesus and John. They did some real damage to kids trying to find their identity.

Today they are know as neocons.

[bobbieinok]

23. I'd say they're the 'religious wrong' today......the neo-cons (specific

individuals) migrated from the staff of 'Scoop' Jackson, a militaristic democratic senator among other positions

the neo-cons have at least some claim to education (many studied at the U of Chicago under Leo Strauss)....the anti Beattles radio preachers are the forerunners of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc NOT the neo-cons Wolfowitz, Podhoretz, Feith, Leeden, etc (the signers onto the PNAC documents)

the religious wrong and the neo-cons work together.....the televangelists may or may not be 'sincere' in what they preach.....the neo-cons view religion as something for the masses but not for the leaders; religion is used to control the masses so that they can be manipulated by the leaders (Strauss spells this process out explicitly)

[Art_from_Ark]

24. Yeah, there was RW radio back in the '70s at least

I remember taking my first trip out West back in the late '70s, flipping on the radio out in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona, and hearing some pretty weird RW spew. There seemed to be considerable backlash, for example, against the "Jane Fonda liberals" who "lost the (Vietnam) war for us". And there were a lot of Fundie preachers on the radio, too, but I don't know if any of them were nationally syndicated.

[rman]

25. It started in the (late) 60's,

as a RW response to the anti-establishment youth movement known as Hippies.
This response was so effective that to this very day even many liberals don't see the hippie movement for what it, but rather as a bunch of "pod-heads" - just as the RW calls them.

[WoodrowFan]

27. yes

As a teen in Dayton Ohio a few times I'd call up to bitch at a local am station was was all "news" and talk, and was all RW all the time. I don't remember what the call letters were, however.

[QC]

28. Ronald Reagan was doing right wing radio commentary in the 60's.

That's how he made the transition from third-rate actor to first-rate demagogue.