Hush Rush: The "Fairness" Doctrine Crowd Slips a Stealth Provision That Will Likely Lead to the End of Talk Radio

Must read.

All public comment on this rule -- which demands "diversity" for each radio station based on "localism," that is, based on the racial/cultural make-up of each market -- ends the day after tomorrow, the 11th. Correction: Duh, whoops, today is the 11th. Comment has already ended, I guess.

It's obviously designed to end national syndication of Evil White Radio Hosts who actually have an audience.

If, say, WABC in NYC is required to have near-perfect racial/cultural balance... well, obviously it can't have most of the programming day featuring Rush, Hannity, and Imus. It will have to jettison three or four or five hosts to achieve "diversity" by the "localism" standard.

Furthermore, these new shows will of course not attract an audience (there's a reason WABC dominates the ratings), and thus WABC might not be able to even carry just Limbaugh (along with a sufficiently "diverse" cast), because a radio station can't survive on a single profitable three-hour slot.

Even though (again to use WABC as an example) the station could try to fill its diversity slots with interesting conservative hosts from the appropriate groups, the fact is, as of yet there just aren't a whole bunch of compelling black conservative radio hosts -- some, but not nearly enough if every single individual radio station is required to make quota hires or else forfeit its license.

posted by Ace at 07:27 PM

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