I’ve touched on this before, and some days it doesn’t bother me, other days it does. I flip through my FM dial on the way to and from work every day, and there are now two right-wing radio stations as well as two Christian stations. The Christian stations aren’t so frightening, one is the type where they take regular songs and make them be about Jesus, and the other is heavy on the “I don’t know Davey” type dramas where kids argue with their science teachers about dinosaur bones (you may not be familiar with this genre, but it’s strangely engrossing). The right-wing stations are truly terrifying.
How different is all of this from Father Coughlin? Not very is my guess. The amount of propaganda that bombards the public nowadays is staggering. I don’t want to wax Brooksian about how good Applebee’s-going Americans don’t have time for reflection and examination, but you saturate busy people’s brains with a simple-but-crazy message, it’s not surprising that they get misled or at least confused.
Maybe this too will pass, the strapping young bucks are writing potty-mouthed tweets instead of listening to Rush, and there isn’t so much right-wing radio in Spanish. It scares me, all the same.
(another) Josh
Best Dylan post title since “This is the story of the Herman Cain.”
DougJ
@(another) Josh:
Heard it on the radio yesterday, in an alternate version. You just can’t beat Blood On The Tracks.
Villago Delenda Est
It doesn’t bother me so much that the crappy AM spectrum is dominated by idiots spouting wingtard crap, but it does bother me that FM (no static at all!) is being turned over to fare that does not require high intelligence, high sensibility, or high fidelity to broadcast.
The spectrum is limited. Taking up part of it that should be for things appropriate to the medium (like say, oh, I don’t know, MUSIC?) for crap that is nothing BUT static just annoys me.
burnspbesq
Now THIS is a protest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/india-corruption-protest-snakes-tax-office?newsfeed=true
burnspbesq
Now THIS is a protest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/india-corruption-protest-snakes-tax-office?newsfeed=true
eemom
If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is living there I hear….
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
When advertisers believe that the programming you want will deliver the ears they want, you’ll have all you can handle. SATSQ.
eemom
@DougJ:
You have, however, been sorely lacking in Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts posts…..and it’s not like there isn’t plenty of lyrical ammo there, ferfuxsake.
pseudonymous in nc
How different is all of this from Radio Rwanda, is perhaps the question to ask. Limbaugh and Beck are, I think, savvy enough to work the limits, like the grifting trolls they are, but I’m not so sure about the minor leaguers and local wingnuts that you’ll find on stations across the US.
Paul
Idiot wind blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We’re idiots babe
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.
MikeJ
One way to find out.
http://www.archive.org/details/Father_Coughlin
Spaghetti Lee
What makes it different than Coughlin is institutional efficiency. Type up the day’s talking points and send ’em out, and every wingnut station in the country is playing them that morning. Hell, they all even sound the same: Overcaffienated ex-jocks spitting out short, agitated sentences. Part of it is the sort of personality drawn to railing against the liberal conspiracy for a living, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if they’re coached to talk that way, or it’s some kind of conscious choice.
I keep myself away from wingnut media-my soul just can’t bear it. When I’m forced to hear it for whatever reason, I start counting lies per second and it gets exponential before I can blink. Whenever I feel guilty about getting news from only liberal sources, I remember what the other side is actually offering.
I think one good thing for the future of the political sphere is that, from what I’ve seen, a lot of the big, nominally apolitical websites like Digg and Reddit and whatever turn out to be full of liberals when political subjects come up. The wingnuts would scream bias, of course, but I think it’s a natural result of being on a big messy internet with lots of people and lots of new ideas. People just learn to start doubting the backwards dogma of the social conservatives as well as the bizarro-world Randian stuff that survives in the real world as long as antimatter. Right-wing radio is, of course, carefully constructed to hide all opposing viewpoints, so maybe the key is interaction and socialization with other people. Personally, I used to be fairly socially conservative until I started getting to know the people I was judging.
burnspbesq
I’m lucky to live in a market where we have a good jazz station, a great classical station, and “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”
jheartney
Seriously, none of this would be happening if they hadn’t ditched the Fairness Doctrine. Given the limited amount of radio bandwidth, it’s a huge error to turn it all over to one side to run unrebutted propaganda.
The Fairness Doctrine didn’t prevent people from stating political views on the air, but it did establish the principle that if a station airs it, they have to allow opposing views on as well. That’s what we’ve lost, and that’s the reason you have Radio Rwanda pouring into the ears of red state folk.
Assuming Obama wins reelection, I’d be amazed if we don’t see a raft of Tim McVeigh’s popping up to do what they think they need to.
TenguPhule
We are long overdue for a good purging.
Long overdue.
CA Doc
Perfect post timing! I learned today that at midnight, the innocuous FM station I use on the internet or in the car when I want a little mainstream pop music is going full Rush Limbaugh and friends. Aaack, there is no escape from the stupid!!
burnspbesq
@TenguPhule:
Be careful what you wish for. The other side has more guns and fewer scruples. There is no reason to believe that things would go the way you’d like them to.
Brandon
If the extremists are capable of sending streams of evangelical missionaries that have been dramatically effective in reducing Catholic influence in the Americas, how hard will it be to conquer Telemundo? The only thing stopping them now is racism disguised as immigration policy. But I think you’ll find that they will get over it rather quickly when push comes to shove.
The Republic of Stupidity
Or even turn into jabbering, robotic wannabe Rambos…
And yes… Blood On the Tracks never gets old…
Brachiator
This is really dumb. Father Coughlin spouted bigotry, not just propaganda.
Also, too, I don’t know very many people who listen to FM radio, apart from public radio listeners, when they have Potify, Pandora, and other services for music.
And I find it amusing as hell that people are still talking about a need for the Fairness doctrine for radio, as they post their opinions on the InterTubes.
licensed to kill time
The thing that’s really scary about AM radio (and increasingly FM radio) is that it’s all people have if they don’t have the financial means to get on the Internet or even to have more than basic cable TV. So they are stuck with the angry white dudes, riling them up all day long.
And it is EVERYWHERE. I guess we have all had the experience of driving through bumfuckistan and flipping through the radio dial and finding nothing but wacky Xians and the angry white guys. Talk about a vast wasteland…
piratedan
whaddaya mean Doug? The right wing radio guys have already absolved themselves of anything that might be considered hate speech, that was already proven in the Giffords shooting. Never mind all that bollocks about 2nd amendment remedies and stories that Dems are traitors that are looking to create a welfare state on the backs of hard working Americans. That’s just ENTERTAINMENT dontchaknow.
butler
And what is it exactly that you think Rush and Co spout? They don’t come right out and say it, but their programs are grounded in and loaded with bigotry of all kinds.
Well that settles it, Nixon doesn’t have a chance!
West of the Cascades
@burnspbesq: Yes, that’s what Czar Nicholas convinced himself, too. It did not end well for him and his family (except Anastasia, of course). At some point the hired guns for the “other side” will figure out that they’re being played for fools as well, and then it will get very ugly.
The Republic of Stupidity
I think it was Richard Viguerie I heard talking one time, about the right wing move to AM radio, back in the 70’s…
How it was a deliberate strategy, that AM radio stations were seen as tacky and old fashioned, low-tech kinda things, and were dirt cheap to buy up.. and yeah, the kind of people that listened to cheap, tacky free AM radio were just truck drivers and fry cooks and mechanics and so on…
So the righties went out and bought a whole bunch of ’em… and just kept putting the same message out, over and over and over again… coming out of those cheap, tacky AM radios all over the country…
I was under the impression that in some markets, as much as 90%, or even more, of the political talk on AM radio was right wing…
A little hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube… I’d reckon…
RareSanity
It’s just a natural progression DougJ…
The stations have to cater to the groups that still listen to terrestrial radio for long periods of time.
Terrestrial radio has been losing listeners, pretty regularly lately. There’s satellite radio, iPods and streaming radio on smartphones. Guess which demographics are more likely to NOT use any of those 3 methods for to get their equivalent of radio?
You know it’s happening, because the broadcasters are trying to get Congress, to pass a law, mandating an FM receiver on every cellphone.
I would call that desperate…
sven
@licensed to kill time: Good point about income. I also know several people who have jobs which are booooring and listen to far more talk radio than they will admit to. One is an avowed liberal but I will catch him spouting just boilerplate right wing lies (last week: “He probably shouldn’t have called Americans lazy…”). Although I know it is just what he does to pass the time it is still troubling. I suspect there are a lot of people who aren’t movement conservatives who pick up this stuff for similar reasons.
Redshift
@RareSanity:
No, it isn’t. This isn’t something that “just happened” in response to market demands, it was done deliberately. If the demographics in question were already solidly and unchangeably in the conservative Republican column, there would have been no reason to do that.
Redshift
@sven:
I have a friend who works at the Pentagon (where apparently the still have Fox on 24 hours a day in some areas, which mystifies me.) He was never a liberal, but he was pretty rational, and if he spouted some Fox-ism and was called on it, he’d admit it and drop it.
Now he’s moved further away and I’m mostly in contact via Facebook, and his feed consists of two things: pictures of his one-year-old, and reposts of National Review articles with the added caption “the truth about income inequality”, sneers about socialism and even communism, etc.
I can’t tell if it’s just the Facebook effect (it’s easy to repost stuff like that) or if he’s gone way off the deep end. I don’t want a long fight on the substance of that crap, but I’m really tempted to post a comment of “What happened to you, man? What’s with the nonstop BS?”
Redshift
@sven:
I have a friend who works at the Pentagon (where apparently the still have Fox on 24 hours a day in some areas, which mystifies me.) He was never a liberal, but he was pretty rational, and if he spouted some Fox-ism and was called on it, he’d admit it and drop it.
Now he’s moved further away and I’m mostly in contact via Facebook, and his feed consists of two things: pictures of his one-year-old, and reposts of National Review articles with the added caption “the truth about income inequality”, sneers about soshulism and even communism, etc.
I can’t tell if it’s just the Facebook effect (it’s easy to repost stuff like that) or if he’s gone way off the deep end. I don’t want a long fight on the substance of that crap, but I’m really tempted to post a comment of “What happened to you, man? What’s with the nonstop BS?”
KG
I switched over to satellite radio a few years back. Every so often, I end up in a car that doesn’t have it and I’m just sad about how bad the choices are. I also suspect this is why ratings for sports talk radio is up so much.
Brandon
Am I the only one that just prefers the sound of road noise and my thoughts to constant audio bombardment while driving?
burnspbesq
@Brandon:
Telemundo is owned by NBC. It was purchased for $2.7 billion in 2002, and billions more have been invested since. The $6.5 billion purchase price paid by Comcast for 51 percent of NBC Universal implicitly values Telemundo at around $4-5 billion.
Univision is owned by a consortium of private equity firms. It was purchased for $13 billion and change in 2007.
Even if your name is Koch, those are big numbers.
RadioOne
It’s not like it’s some new trend. Right wing talk/shock radio has been dominant both nationally and in the local media markets for decades now. It’s imprint on the public debate is questionable. What’s happened recently that it scares you so?
Spaghetti Lee
@Redshift:
Stuff like that scares me. Like, it could theoretically happen to me, and I don’t even understand how it does happen. I guess it’s just that (if you’re a white guy), the tropes of conservatism are very seductive: You’re the real victim! There’s no racism or sexism! You should keep all your money! You’re a hard worker, and everyone else is a moocher! Everyone’s out to get you-we understand how it is!
Who doesn’t want to hear mental comfort food like that? It’s no surprise that they’ve built and empire with those types of messages. What takes strength is to break through it.
licensed to kill time
@sven: There are a lot of people who listen to radio all day long as they go about their jobs…because it’s all that’s available to them, for free, as they work. The talking points and memes seep in like a nasty mold and become part of the person’s mindset, without them even realizing it. Since “everyone” is spouting the same bullshit (and the repetition is part of the ‘driving it home’ Big Lie) it all seems to make sense to those who only get their ‘news’ from the AM machine,
I have a friend who is in many respects quite liberal, but he starts spouting BS he’s heard from the radio dial and it is very hard to refute…I make mild demurrals and suggestions that he look for other sources of news, and it is as foreign to him as if I told him to listen to Radio Havana Cuba or *gasp* Al Jazeera.
Redshift
@Spaghetti Lee:
That’s the most bizarre thing in this case — he’s Asian! His parents are immigrants, and not hardcore-conservative immigrants, either. I dunno, maybe if you’re one of the “good” minorities, the message can still work, which in itself disturbing.
Redshift
@RadioOne: Less than two decades that could be called “dominance” — hey, it’s (almost) always been that way, and there’s no evidence it’s influenced the public in bad ways or enabled terrible things to happen, right? Everything’s been just peachy. So the fact that there’s now hardly anything else on AM, and it’s seeping into FM — why worry?
Bago
@Redshift: This is where you have to be tricksy and play competing interests off of each other. You start with the conservative bias of “I earned it!” and play it against the weak sauce of the proffered argument.
The turn of phrase you would use is: “as an investor, do you want to own this?”. Really?
Bago
@Spaghetti Lee: That is disturbingly literal.
cthulhu
I’ll listen to liberal talk AM radio in LA fairly regularly but otherwise, I’m on satellite radio (and expect eventually to be on in-car internet where I can then get to my music collection efficiently – presently I have to use my cell phone). But this is an important point. Technology is killing traditional print media right now but, while broadcast radio has a reprieve at the moment, every passing day brings radio closer to oblivion. Yes, there will be a story in 2034, whereby the last remote US place finally gets complete, nearly universal high speed Internet (won’t be VT’s NE Kingdom as for some other standards of living but might be Appalachia. Again.) But the stranglehold that conservative radio presently has on many markets will be broken because choice will be infinite compare to 1-4 stations in a certain geographical area.
Now there’s a HUGE problem inherent to the self-selection of media facts/opinion via the Internet but that is where we are ultimately headed, like it or not.
THE
I don’t know. I haven’t listened to broadcast radio for a long time.
But there is a world of internet radio, programs from BBC, Australia, Canada, Europe; all in English all downloadable as MP3’s. I keep GBytes of this stuff on my cell phone.
I subscribe to my favorite science programs, business programs, medical, philosophy, politics, religion, the arts, all sorts of subjects. Much of it is delivered by RSS feeds. So I have no trouble keeping up.
When I walk or travel anywhere I plug in earphones or sync up bluetooth and away you go. My cellphone is always with me — closer than my jugular vein.
THE
@THE:
Just to clarify my post above:
I download it on my PC and transfer it to my cellphone in large chunks, maybe once a week.
So there’s always Gigabytes of stuff I haven’t heard yet, on the phone.
THE
There’s also heaps of audio books these days, including a huge amount of classics that are out of copyright and downloadable for free.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Here’s the sticking point – reality isn’t swayed by propaganda.
Consider the financial crisis. The wingnut meme is “Govmentdiddit! They MADE banks lend to irresponsible (black black black) sub-prime borrowers!”.
Now, we know that’s not the problem. But it’s an excuse not to regulate banks, which means another crisis is inevitable. And they’re accelerating.
Which means that another excuse is going to have to be thought up – but it will be weaker and even sillier. I’d like to think that people will eventually wise up, but I guess the best that can be hoped for is that we foreigners get a laugh or two out of it as the US collapses and drowns in its own bullshit.
Keith G
@licensed to kill time:
So you are unfamiliar with urban radio
http://theboxhouston.com/listen-live/
or this
http://estereolatino1029.univision.mobi/
Schlemizel
it is probably worse than you think as the propaganda is not just coming from wingnut radio. Minneapolis is home to the most listened to local morning drive time show in the country (Disney begged him to go national syndication but he refused). True be told Tom Bernard is pretty entertaining and he has side kicks that are knowledgeable on the local sports teams. But he is a polite “libertarian” Republican and he never misses an opportunity to dis Democrats and liberals while pimping Republicans and wingnuts. While he makes millions a year he plays the ‘just an average Joe like you’ thing to death. This is much more insidious than wingnut radio because he can pretend to be apolitical.
My guess is there are many more just like him across the nation, maybe not as successful but undermining the country just the same.
Soonergrunt
@West of the Cascades: It didn’t end well for her either. A few years ago, DNA proved that she was buried a couple of hundred yards away from the rest of her family.
Brian S
@burnspbesq: In order for them to do any real damage, theyd have to have the military on their side, and if they have that, we’re boned already.
El Cid
@MikeJ: Thank you for that. I never had actually listened to complete programs.
Last I saw, local AM & FM broadcasting still dominate the listening audience. I don’t have the magic figures at hand, but over-the-air analog AM & FM listenership dwarfs the other (though significant & increasing) audio media broadcasting formats. Apparently over-the-air broadcasts are still the great majority of TV viewers as well, still dominating cable, satellite, or other methods.
Svensker
This. I say this to my husband all the time, the rise of wacky radio and Fox is killing the States. You can’t imagine how much saner it is in Canada because they don’t have the crazy talk 24/7. People who don’t live in the US don’t realize the shit that is broadcast round the clock and the atmosphere it engenders. And people who do live in the States don’t realize the filthy soup they’re swimming in constantly.
EconWatcher
My impression, unburdened by any data, is that Fox News has had a much bigger impact in creating a belligerent and misinformed electorate than talk radio ever had or ever could.
I come from a predominantly wingnut family. But I used to be able to talk to them. They’d concede some points, and felt some obligation to follow a rational train of thought in making their own.
When Fox News first became popular, they were in on the joke. They knew, and admitted, that is was brazen propaganda, but they claimed it was all just harmless fun. “Hey libtards, we’ll show you what bias really looks like! Fair and balanced, b1#@hes!”
But then after a few years, they started claiming that Fox was no more biased than the New York Times, or CNN. And their political conversation was reduced to nothing more than ad hominem slurs and (often inconsistent) broadside talking points. Their immediate reaction to absolutely any contrary fact you might offer is to question the source, with a knowing sneer.
This is really ugly and unpleasant. And I think the main culprit is the constant stream of attractively presented, predigested bs they get from Fox.
Elizabelle
Insidious, and a real problem.
Who cares if some of us have satellite radio.
Real problem is that most don’t, and your listening choices are being reduced to pablum and poison.
The comment about radio in Rwanda is not too far off.
FormerSwingVoter
You’re scared, Dougie? Good. That means you’re paying attention.
Right-wing radio has mastered the art of making it clear that someone deserves to die without explicitly calling for their murder, and it comes through with how they talk about every single topic. The Republican party is a fascist organization dedicated to the creation of a single-party third-world country based explicitly around a fictional golden age where all the worthless peons knew who their betters were. And the only way they can get people to agree with that is to convince them that the opposition is worse.
Holden Pattern
Not that actual facts should matter to the storyline that “conservative broadcasting is what advertisers want”, but Fox News was a massive loss for Murdoch for decade or more — he bought his way onto cable plants in the US paying PER-SUBSCRIBER for the right to a channel on each cable plant. This is in addition to the operating expenses a TV channel has as an ordinary matter (though programming of the sort that FNC does is relatively cheap compared to other scripted television fictions).
I *think* FNC has gone past break-even — sometime in the middle of the last decade, probably — but it was a massive up-front ideological investment by Murdoch that there was no guarantee would pay out, and no-one on the left is willing to do the same.
Judas Escargot
I find myself wondering: which is the horse, and which is the cart?: Either people are very easily swayed by what they hear on the radio, or talk radio is just amplifying latent sentiments for retransmission back to the audience. Which is it?
Option (1) doesn’t say much for the continued feasibility of self-government: If public opinion is so easily swayed by modern media, then the Enlightenment project (which presupposes the existence of ‘individuals’ capable of using ‘reason’) is basically over. People will think what they are told to think, they will feel what they are told to feel, and they will vote as they are told to vote.
Option (2) is just as bad. It would indicate majoritarian American culture has already gone fascist. Only a few more election cycles, and the transformation could be complete.
I find neither option appealing.
matryoshka
@ Brandon Am I the only one that just prefers the sound of road noise and my thoughts to constant audio bombardment while driving?
No. I also prefer the quiet.
I was in a red state for the recent holiday, and in every public venue I visited, FOX was blaring on a screen overhead. I think of it and its radio counterpart as the soundtrack for The Great Demise.
flukebucket
Dead thread I know but damn that was funny and the post title is so wonderful. God I love this blog. I just hate it that by the time I get to read it so much wonderful has passed me by.
trollhattan
“Back in the day” when I was a wee lad, broadcasters held FM licences but didn’t know what good they were, so they would simulcast their AM programming on them just enough to keep the licence valid.
Then hippies discovered they could use FM stations to broadcast music (whole albums even), alternative news and general anarchy. Suddenly, FM stations were hot property and the corporate AOR format was born–radio for the kids and young adults that didn’t require hippies to run it.
The rest is sad history…limits on corporate media consolidation were lifted and today, a handful of conglomerates own all the country’s big stations, running them from a few server farms. Why do I mention this? Today’s news includes the following:
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/01/4091251/radio-poi-poiu-poiu-poiu-poiupoi.html
To sum up: Because the youngins haven’t been availing themselves of the superior programming on the AM band, we’re going to eddycate them by simulcasting AM on FM.
Also, too, Clear Channel needs a rusty chainsaw colonoscopy.
DougJ
@flukebucket:
Thanks!
redshirt
@Schlemizel: Sports Radio can veer into the political, and it will almost always be of the Wingnut persuasion.
And it works – when you think everyone around you is thinking the same thing (OBAMER SUX!) then you begin thinking it, perhaps despite your own opinions.
Talk Radio/Fox is a poison and it has been poured deep into the well.
In more hopeful news, it sounds as if Newscorp is in ever more trouble in England. Hopefully we in America can benefit by the investigations over there.
McConnor
I liken Right-wing talk radio to a 7-day-a-week slow-dose IV drip of poison.