5.08.2009

ACORN AM. Playing nothing but the hits!

The UK banning Michael Savage could be nothing more than a triangulated initial attempt by Obama's administration to see how much it can get away with as they ratchet up their assault on political dissenters. This opinion piece offers some fleshing out of that hypothesis.

But word is the Obama-controlled FCC is going to make "localism and diversity" the priority as it renews radio-frequency licenses to radio station companies. How? To be clear, there's been no official action on any of this yet. But the various "trial ballonists" are starting to make their statements on the matter (see Durbin below). The idea is supposedly that they will mandate certain percentage of minority-owned radio stations, and they will decrease the time between renewal-periods from 8 years to 2 years, which is a much "shorter leash". The FCC will supposedly begin to turn over some licenses to minority owned interests as a station's renewal time comes. They also supposedly plan on localizing the regulation of radio, by means of establishing a local "advisory board" in each region that will decide what content is appropriate for that local city or region. [I speculate that] No doubt, our top-notch, highly-trained, stimulus-bill-funded agitation-specialists, ACORN, will flood those local boards. And they'll be able to act as de-facto "program directors", allowing and disallowing certain programming. More can be read here.

Just weeks ago, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., submitted an amendment to the D.C. Voting Bill which would require the FCC to "encourage and promote diversity in ... media ownership" and reaffirm FCC authority to mandate the presentation "of opposing points of view on issues of public importance."

Also of concern to the hosts and producers gathered in the nation's capital was a decision last week by Clear Channel, the nation's largest owner of radio stations, to mandate the creation of local advisory boards by June at all of its properties. The move was seen as pre-emptive as the industry anticipates an FCC stacked with Barack Obama appointees will soon require stations to answer to panels of community activists.

"Rather than having the government regulate what people can say, we should let the market decide what people want to hear. That's precisely why the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned, and that's why it ought not to be revived," said U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., in a commentary critical of the plan.
What will the effect be? It's likely that "talk" stations would just change their format to "news" or music rather than deal with the radical "local advisory boards". At that point it's mission accomplished, Chairman MaoBama.

The most ridiculous idea in ALL of this, though, is the notion that the GOVERNMENT ITSELF can decide what KIND of political speech is to be defined as "liberal" and what KIND of political speech is to be defined as "conservative". And what? We only get two categories? What about "libertarians"? Wouldn't THEY get "equal time"? What about anarchists? That's a political point of view. If we're going to abandon the free market and give all political viewpoints "equal time" on the radio, then shouldn't we include an hour on the merits of a Monarchical government every day? Is "gun control" a "conservative" issue? Or is it a "liberal" (in the global sense of the word) issue? If a Democrat who happens to believe in lowering taxes and is pro-life appears on the radio for 20 minutes, will that count as "conservative" time? Or "liberal" time? Yeah, I really trust our government to be able to manage all of this. Of course, they can't and won't. That's not the idea. The idea is to over-regulate so that the talk-stations voluntarily get out of the business of Talk!

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