The Politics of Radio

Remember the good days when we could operate our radio businesses (successfully, hopefully), send our dues to the NAB, RAB and our state associations, and call it a day?

Those were also the days when our towns boasted more than one menswear shop and a few boutiques for the ladies. . .when we had several good car dealer clients. . .the DMV wasn’t the anchor store at the local strip mall. . .and your AM/FM combo was the only radio service in the market.

Well, fugaddaboutit. These days, in addition to retailers being as hard to find in our markets as a five-dollar haircut, we have to deal with the fact that everything we do as an industry is politicized. Congressional committees are convened to discuss what music we play, what words we utter (profanity is one thing, but political opinions are really under fire), and now, the ability of a public company to exercise its best efforts to survey our industry.

More on the Arbitron insanity in another post. In the meantime, when did radio become so dangerous to require such vigilance from so many people?

Was it the spawn of the lucky-13-year-old Telecommunications Act? Was it the increasingly prevalent conviction—fed first by reality television and call-in radio; then, haltingly and ultimately unsuccessfully by LPTV and LPFM; and now by YouTube and Twitter—that everyone, in fact, deserves to be a star?

Of course, all of this stems from the conceit that the airwaves are public property—a notion disputed hotly, if mutely, by some of our finest legal minds. And while we may celebrate the demise of local newspapers across the land, their decline clears the way for more heat on us.

The newspapers have always presented a problem to the powers that be. Just a we bear the burden of one conceit, so the print industry has benefitted from one of their own, rooted in the Constitution, called freedom of the press. (Why that one only peripherally applies to us, I leave to the aforesaid legal minds to address.) In their heyday, newspapers were royal thorns in the side of the ruling elite, and nothing could be done—overtly, legally, anyway—about it.

The government couldn’t prohibit newspapers from advertising a legal product, but they could force broadcasting to cease cigarette advertising. Ditto spirits. Ditto obscenity. Ditto free speech itself.

We live in contentious times, where no holds are barred and the loudest voices control opinion. Opinions expressed on broadcast media can be, and are being, manipulated in the name of public ownership of the airwaves. And who represents the public? Our good-hearted but industry-ignorant legislators, spurred on by a highly vocal minority.

As Bette Davis said in All About Eve (according to Google, anyway), “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”