The little known history of the Fairness Doctrine, and how it changed America

[JohnG]

The reasons why Clinton and Congress did not pass a law to reinstate the fairness doctrine in or after 1993 are simple. 

1.   The focus of the President and Congress for the first two years of the Clinton administration was health care. 
2.   The Democrat Party did not see the impact that talk radio was beginning to have prior to the 1994 election.
3.   After the 1994 election any attempt to reinstate the fairness doctrine would have been seen as a personal attack on Rush Limbaugh and the other conservative talk show host that where emerging at the time.

As to the question of why liberal talk radio has not taken off the answers get more complex. 

First you must look at why conservative talk radio has been so successful.  When Rush Limbaugh first came on the air it was for many the first time that they got to hear their opinions in the media.  This became the one place a conservative could go to listen to conservative ideas, and for many it was the first time that they realized how many people shared the same opinions.  So people would get read the paper or watch TV for the news, but then they would listen to Rush for his, and his callers, take on the issues.  It is disingenuous to say that people that listen to talk radio vote the way they are told to.  Both my father and I listen to Rush in 1996, we both voted for the Libertarian candidate.  Rush, and other conservative hosts, do one other thing that makes them successful, they entertain.  This is so important, talk radio hosts are not news people, they are commentators and entertainers. I listen to Glenn Beck almost every day, I don’t do it because I agree with everything he has to say, I do it because he is fun to listen to.

The Second thing you have to look at is what has caused liberal talk radio shows to fail.  In 1996 I lived in Virginia, I would listen to Rush in the afternoon, followed by a liberal talk show host.  I believe his show was nationally syndicated.  Unfortunately I do not remember his name, because he was only on the air for about six months on that station.   Currently Air America has liberal talk hosts, but it is failing.  So why are these shows failing.  It is not because of any bias on the part of the station owners, if that was the case then most music DJ would not be on the air.  There are two main causes.  The first is format, the second is audience demographics.  Most liberal talk show hosts that I have listen to are either spend almost there entire show attacking conservatives and there ideas, or are very boring.  It is true that some conservative talk show hosts can be just as vicious, but the majority do not spend there whole shows acting that way.  As far as the boring ones go, have you ever tried to listen to Al Franken talk politics for an hour, it is almost painfully boring.  These hosts tend to only talk about politics and try to give to much information.  But it is the second problem that really causes the down fall of liberal talk radio shows.  Most liberals that I know, and I know a lot of liberals, choose to spend there radio listen time on music.  In fact at 3 to 8 hours a week, I spend more time listen to NPR then almost any of the liberals I know, even the politically active ones.  They do not want to hear people talk during drive time, or if they do they want to hear shock jocks. 
By the way, there is a successful liberal radio talk show host, Alan Colmes.  If liberals want to find a way to be successful in talk radio they only need to look to him as a pattern.