LIBERADIO(!)

“Democrats’ New Intelligence Chairman Needs a Crash Course on al Qaeda”, by Jeff Stein (CQ Homeland Security)
More intelligence needed in the new Democratic House Intelligence Chairman. I mean, sure, I might not’ve known that al-Qaeda was Sunni and that Hezbollah was Shiite, but I feel like Reyes should’ve known. What was wrong with Jane Harman, anyway?

“Democrats and lobbying”, by Lee Drutman (Providence Journal)
Drutman opines that it’s just as important to follow the money with Democrats as it is with Republicans? Whither Medicare pharmaceutical bulk discounts? Public financing of campaigns, anyone?

“Rumsfeld’s coveted interview”, by Cal Thomas (Chicago Tribune)
In case you wanted just one more opportunity to peruse a series of rhetorical questions immediately answered, don’t miss this very special episode of Playing Rummy! To be fair, I actually agree with him about the security challenges of the 21st century. I even agree with some of his ideas about reforming the military. But I don’t agree with his implementation of Cheney’s 1% doctrine and his helping architect the war in Iraq.

“Building on the Progressive Victory”, by George Lakoff (Huffington Post)
Biconceptual Democrats come out of the closet and activate the progressive values in the brains of swing voters.

“A Bright Gay Future For Marriage”, by E.J. Graff, (TomPaine.com)
While Tennesseans were at the ballot box cementing bigotry into our constitution, marriage rights for all have been advancing across the globe and from coast to coast.

“Immigration Pays Off—For Americans!” (TomPaine.com)
A Texas comptroller spells it out in dollars and cents: Undocumented workers actually help their local economy.

And don’t miss our selections of remarks and testimony from the recent FCC public hearing on media ownership in Nashville.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps opened the day with a statement of breathtaking clarity about the role and failures of the body on which he serves.

After the first panel came the first opportunity for public comment. Our radio neighbor Lonnie Atkinson played Tom Paine for 2 minutes and received a well-deserved standing ovation.

Then, prior to the second panel, Congressman Jim Cooper was on hand to offer some remarks, and I’m glad he did because they were spot on.

Though the passion and personal touches are lost in the translation to the digital page, these testimonies, remarks, and statements are well worth reading in their entireties. There were not, in my opinion, enough Nashvillians and other Americans present at this hearing, but that doesn’t lessen its importance. Preserving the best in show has allowed me to revisit these powerful words and remember why. Enjoy, and remember: it’s not too late to file a comment.

And, of course, Mary and I also testified…

Thanks to Josh Anderson for the photography!

Congressman Jim “Coop” Cooper gave remarks immediately prior to the second panel at Monday’s FCC hearing. We’re grateful to his office for doing their best to impress upon constituents how important this event was, and we’re just as grateful for his eloquent remarks.

Welcome to Nashville, and thanks for listening closely to our unique creative community. Please work hard to keep our community strong. I am particularly grateful to Commissioner Tate for arranging this special hearing.

I’d like to focus my few minutes on media cross-ownership. In my opinion, one of the very few ways that Nashville has not improved in recent decades is in the variety and quality of our news reporting and editorial opinion. We used to have several locally-owned, prize-winning newspapers and television stations; now there are none. Nashville is not alone, but I think we are suffering as a result. You may accept this decline as inevitable; I do not.

Look below the corporate level to the working conditions of today’s journalist. More local reporters admit to me that they’ve been told to find stories that please big advertisers. They are also afraid to run stories that might upset advertisers. Some reporters and cameramen ask me about welfare programs for their own families because they make so little money. There are fewer regular news beats. Reporters are not allowed to stick to any beat long enough to become expert. I urge you to listen to working reporters and protect them from retribution when they testify.

Let me be clear. I am not blaming reporters. I am blaming their bosses. Why is so little money trickling down to fund the core business of journalism? I know that shareholders have high financial expectations, but surely they also know that democracy works best with an informed electorate. Our better mass media used to be pitched at the 11th grade level — it is now at the 8th grade level — do we want it to fall to the 5th grade level or below? As more Americans than ever finish high school and college, why are we pitching our news to such a low common denominator? Only America’s enemies can be pleased with such deterioration.

I do not believe that media economics requires lower quality journalism. Today’s USA Today reports how Brian Williams got a fabulous viewer response when NBC found a single advertiser to sponsor the evening news, freeing up a precious six minutes of air time. Today’s New York Times reports how the Washington Post Co. successfully diversified into Kaplan, a test preparation company, in order to improve its profit margins while maintaining good quality. There are ways to keep our standards high. Don’t give up the fight.

The elephant in the room is our dominant daily newspaper, the Tennessean, which has been trying for years to control Channel 5 television. Gannett would love your permission to allow the swap so that it could reach more eyeballs with fewer reporters and less content. This is what they call synergy. If you give them permission, will Gannett promise to try to win Pulitzer prizes or launch more investigations? Will it even promise to maintain current staffing or pay levels? You couldn’t enforce such an agreement if it did. The Tennessean’s cash flow margins are already over 50%, the envy of almost any business, but Gannett wants them to be higher. Is allowing the Tennessean to control Channel 5 in the public interest? I don’t think so.

Your job would be simple if competition in media as measured by Herfindahl indexes or DOJ merger guidelines were correlated with journalistic quality. In my experience, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. I do believe that any further concentration and cross-ownership would be harmful. I suggest that new measures and incentives need to be developed so that conglomerates can be coaxed to produce better journalism and a more informed public.

Having served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, I have some idea of the seductive power of media companies whose selfish appetites, in my opinion, can never be satisfied, no matter how much you feed them. I urge you to resist their siren call. The renowned historian David McCullough gave Nashville parents the following advice last year, “No matter how little television you watch, watch less.”

Do you want your children to grow up in a world where they can’t tell infotainment from news? Do you realize that affirmation media is the Orwellian opposite of news because it massages your existing prejudices without disturbing you with facts? When your children ask why this happened on your watch, will it be enough to answer, “It’s OK, dear, the company’s stock went up.” And now that you have relaxed foreign media ownership rules, will it be enough to say that Nashville’s decline enriched executives in Adelaide, Munich or Beijing?

In the past few months, nine U.S. Senators and 38 of my House colleagues have urged this Commission to be extremely careful about relaxing your media ownership rules. As we move toward the 110th Congress, I think these numbers will grow. We look forward to working with you to encourage better journalism.

Commissioners, thank you again for coming to Music City.

Lonnie Atkinson, who is our radio neighbor on WRVU with Alternative Radio, gave perhaps the most poignant and passionate testimony at Monday’s FCC hearing. He deservedly recevied a standing ovation. He gave us permission to republish his testimony, and I’m happy to do so.

Because it is so infrequent, I think it’s always refreshing when government officials are willing to engage the citizens they serve in a dialogue.

Having said that, I would like to ask: Why are we really here? Why are we actually discussing this?

I think it’s fair to say that the government should be a function of the people. So are we here because the people have been beating down your doors begging for greater media consolidation. Are we here because the people have been calling their representatives in Congress by the thousands expressing their burning desire for media ownership to be in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.

Well, of course not. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. You’re all aware of the public outcry the last time this issue was on the table. It was three million people. You’re all aware of the calls and faxes and emails flooding into your offices right now.

Anyone who is not being paid to think otherwise knows that this wouldn’t even be considered today if there weren’t a powerful business lobby demanding it.

So why are we really here? In other words, is this for real?
Because, by now, the question is not what we think. You know what we think.
The question is: Does it matter?
Are you here today to truly listen to what we want as a people and then go back to Washington and act on it? Or are you here today simply to humor us?

Is the government a function of the people or is the government a function of big business?
You will decide whether this is a true demonstration of participatory democracy or whether this is a mockery of political representation.
Do not take my words today as an insult. Take them as a challenge to prove your worthiness as commissioners.
You are public servants. That means us. Not some handful of corporations.
Look around. We are concerned citizens. We are trying to believe that there are still some parts left of our system that are not yet fully broken. We are trying to believe that we matter.

Don’t make fools of us. Don’t let us look back on today and see this all as a cruel joke.
Today is not about your generosity in listening. It is about our patience with this system. Do not dismiss that patience.

You know what we think. You know what to do. Please do not let us down.

Okay. Kleinheider’s analysis of the futility of our recent testimony in front of the FCC is bugging me. Here’s why: liberal talk radio isn’t a failed experiment in Middle Tennessee; it’s an experiment that’s never had an appropriate catalyst. Adam Smith’s invisible hand, strong as it is, can’t high five every consumer under the sun to congratulate them on another successful purchase without first using market research to determine what they want. Yes, conservative talk radio demonstrated its success in the marketplace in the post-Limbaugh era without having to bootstrap a là Air America. But that followed on the cult of personality established by Mr. Limbaugh. Al Franken could’ve done it the slow way, too, but he wants to run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota and needed a national microphone to make putting the effort into his show worth his time.

In the case of the Nashville radio market, we’ve heard time and again that the assumption is that advertisers are conservative. Less frequently, we’ve heard that radio listeners who might share a higher degree of political affinity with us than Messrs. Valentine and Gill wouldn’t stick around (similar to Kleinheider’s notion of intellectualism in listenership). But I suspect that in a city that trends Democratic in its voting patterns as strongly as Nashville does (such as this year’s record Democratic margin in the Senate race) might yield enough liberal consumers who would spend enough dollars in the stores and for the services of enough advertisers that we could make a serious go of a show on a commercial station.

You don’t think that there’s a chance that local talk radio station owners and programmers are just a wee bit conservative? And that their advertisers might also skew conservative? You don’t suspect that if you looked at the membership of the NFIB and chambers of commerce around the country, that the people making the decisions to join those organizations might also trend conservative? My evidence is only anecdotal, but I’ve participated in local chamber events and know a bit about what makes the NFIB tick because a lot of their content is managed by a local business, and I’d have to say: small and medium-sized business owners who advertise on radio are often conservative.

Obviously, it’s in the best interest of a conservative business person to take money from a liberal consumer. But the data from radio advertising is terrible. You can get aggregate listenership numbers from Arbitron, but stations have to do their own polling if they want to give advertisers demographic information. And forget conversion data, unless it’s done roughly through the use of on-air promos. If there’s any reason we should skip radio and stick with the Internet, it’s because we could demonstrate conversion data much more effectively using statistics garnered from the Web.

Bottom line: I think there are times when the market isn’t supplying something, but people would buy it if it did. Just look at Fox News. It probably could’ve been successful any time after the Reagan revolution, but it wasn’t available, so who could watch conservative news? Here in Nashville, the market has never corrected for an overabundance of liberal talk radio because there’s never been anything to correct. Now that there’s a supply (albeit limited), we’re experiencing market growth.

So the challenge incumbent upon me and Mary with our particular product is to demonstrate to potential advertisers, many of whom I suspect will not balk at our personal politics when we gear up, that we can add value to their business. The response we’ve demonstrated to ourselves thus far — from callers; emails; subscribers to our email newsletter, podcast, and blog — has been positive enough to keep us going. And that’s the market suggesting to us that we’ve found a valuable niche.

And we’re building incrementally. We’ve found an audience on college radio. We’ve built an online presence with our own time and energy. And now we’re signing up advertisers. When we’ve got enough to cover our costs, we’ll go on the air. See you on a clear channel (but probably not Clear Channel) someday soon!

For the record, I think Kleinheider’s secondary point, that radio is dying, is also a non-starter. Why else would satellite radio have started? It’s yet another non-demand (as opposed to on-demand) broadcast technology requiring special equipment. Yet Sirius and XM have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into getting it going (just ask Howard Stern). Old, successful technologies are sticky. Sure, newspaper readership might be declining, but alt-weeklies and free dailies are growing. People will stick with paper and broadcast as long as it’s free. And they’ll pay for premium content, especially when it’s on-demand. So I’ll gladly take my 2 hours to speak my mind while the radio tower still has its signal.

In response to the brouhaha surrounding Natalie Maines’ comments about President Bush and the subsequent threat on her life, the Dixies Chicks asked the following question on their last album, “And how in the world/Can the words that I said/Send somebody so over the edge/That they’d write me a letter/Saying that I better shut up and sing/Or my life will be over?” I have the answer, ladies. It’s the kook juice, also known as what passes for civil discourse on conservative talk radio. It was the right-wing radio hate and fear mongers who, instead of disagreeing with what Maines said while standing up for her right to say it, painted a bull’s-eye on her back by repeating over and over again that she was un-American, un-patriotic, and that she “hated” not only the president but the troops as well. They called for the demonization of the Chicks and without any opposing viewpoint able to make it through the din of their talk radio monopoly, they got it.

In Nashville alone these right-wing conservative talk shows have 34 hours a day in which to spout their hate. As Freddie said in his testimony to the FCC yesterday, that’s 170 hours per week on two full-powered stations as opposed to our 2 hours. And spout it they do – falling lock-step in line with the same talking points and riling up the community to commit acts of violence while perpetuating hateful stereotypes against people that don’t think, or for that matter, look, exactly as they do (It’s no coincidence that the rise in violence against our latino community coincided with the rise of anti-immigration rhetoric on conservative talk shows). The President could be generous in his comments about the Dixie Chicks and their right to Free Speech because his conservative talk radio lap dogs had his back and could punish Maines and her bandmates in far, far more effective and less politically damaging ways.

The answer we consistently get to our protestations of a radio spectrum overrun by conservative voices is the one echoed by AC Kleinheider over at his WKRN-sponsored blog, Volunteer Voters. Conservative talk radio is what the market wants. Liberal, or radio and TV shows featuring other opposing opinions, aren’t more prevalent because they are not viable.

I don’t believe it necessary to defend what we do to the freemarketeers. We don’t do what we do to make the big bucks. We do what we do because we love democracy and the free exchange of ideas – all ideas.

But more importantly, and this is something I was reminded of by my friend Lonnie Atkinson’s FCC hearing testimony yesterday, free market principles do not, and absolutely should not, apply to the media.

The public airwaves belong to the public. The public’s right to know as complete a list of diverse opinions and ideas as possible should be paramount to “what the free market will bear.” This is important so listen up: The Public airwaves belong to the public and the people’s edification should be what is considered first and foremost, above market forces, when making programming choices and rule changes. Period. End of story.

This is where the FCC comes in. The FCC was created to serve the public good and to make sure that free market forces do no overrun our public airwaves. Should it matter that there isn’t more of a market demand for liberal talk radio (or progressive talk or civil dialogue of whatever the hell you want to call it)? The short and correct answer, even though I don’t agree with the premise, is no.

Is it doing a disservice and and injustice to the citizens of Nashville that they are being force fed 170 hours of conservative talk radio per week without an equal amount of talk radio with a different message or point of view? Absolutely. And if you buy into the argument that there should be a “balance” between market forces and serving the interest of the public, is this one-sidedness even accomplishing that? Absolutely not.

Our democracy needs a relentless free flow of information from a broad range of disparate voices to sustain itself. It needs to hear all the opinions of our school board members; it needs to hear the plans of our mayoral candidates for environmentally sound development; it needs to hear the unfiltered stump speeches of our state house and senate hopefuls; and it needs to hear all sides of the immigration debate from our metro council. Without diversity of opinion, without the exchange of ideas, without civil dialogue in the metaphorical public square, our democracy loses its life’s blood.

In his post, AC states that there are other place to find different ideas and voices. But we need to compare apples to apples here. It was amazing to me that so many arguments for media consolidation during yesterday’s FCC hearing was elitist in its clear disregard for disparities in income as it relates to being able to afford internet access, satellite radio, and even basic cable. AC falls into the same trap.

And if income isn’t enough of a deterrent, lets consider time constraints. Those of us (including those lucky bloggers that get paid to do it…ahem…) who are able to plug into the internet 24 hours of every day searching for alternative opinions from such sources as Truthout or The Guardian are the exception, not the rule. Most Americans get their scant news while driving to or from work or turning on the television at night and many have only the time to scan the headlines of a newspaper.

Radio and television, or traditional media outlets, are important because they are free. “Free” as in most Americans already own at least one radio or one television. “Free” as in you don’t need to buy a computer or pay a monthly access or subscription fee. “Free” as in radio and TV is available to those Americans who do not work in an office setting with computers and internet access provided to them by their employers.

So don’t talk to me about what the market will bear. This is not about the “marketplace” but rather the “marketplace of ideas,” a belief that not only the truth, but also outstanding public policy, arises out of the competition of all different ideas ushered into the marketplace by open and candid public discourse. And public discourse, we know, is the cornerstone of our liberal democracy.

Next Up: Why AC and others are wrong about the viability of liberal talk radio.

The Tennessean ran an article with quotes from yesterday’s FCC Hearing.

They left out the best one, of course, which is a response to the overwhelming majority of testimony against media consolidation and big business’ stranglehold on the public’s airwaves:

“Because, by now, the question is not what we think. You know what we think. The question is: Does it matter? Are you here today to truly listen to what we want as a people and then go back to Washington and act on it? Or are you here today simply to humor us?” — Lonnie Ray Atkinson, Asskicker

Mary and I went to the Nashville FCC hearing that was a part of the 2006 Review of the Media Ownership Rules. I went in part because I’m keenly interested in media ownership rules, which we’ve been discussing. But I also went to offer this testimony:

Commissioner Tate and the commission, thank you for this opportunity to comment.

My name is Freddie O’Connell, and, with Mary [who spoke immediately before me], I co-host a political talk radio show here in Nashville. Let me give you a lay of the land for political talk radio here. Our two most prominent talk radio stations are Clear Channel-owned WLAC-AM and WWTN-FM. Tune in to WLAC Monday to Friday, and you’ll hear Kevin Wall from 5-8, Steve Gill from 8-11, Rush Limbaugh from 11-2, Sean Hannity from 2-5, and Glenn Beck from 8-11. Tune in to WTN Monday to Friday, and you’ll hear Neil Boortz from 1-4, Kevin Miller from 5-9, G. Gordon Liddy from 9 to noon, Bill O’Reilly from noon to 1, Phil Valentine from 4-8, Michael Savage from 8-11, and Neil Boortz again to close out the day from 11 – midnight. Every single one of these shows and hosts is conservative. Of the 11 hosts, 4 are local.

Notice that I didn’t include my show in the list. Tune in to WRVU-FM on Monday morning, 7:00 – 9:00 a.m., and you’ll hear my show, which is *gasp* liberal. We are the only liberal talk radio program broadcast in the Middle Tennessee radio market on a full-powered AM or FM station.

When we’ve attempted to take our show to a commercial format, we’re told that the market isn’t interested in liberal talk radio. When we talk to potential investors (not advertisers), we’re told that they don’t want to take the risk. This despite the fact that for the past two years, we’ve consistently beat the local conservative talk show hosts in a local alt-weekly’s readers poll. We do the show as volunteers and have never paid for any sort of promotion. It’s difficult to gauge exactly how many people are listening, but through tracking usage of our website, podcast, and email newsletter, we know that we have a constant and growing listenership.

Democracy is forged in a marketplace of ideas, and currently our marketplace of ideas is filled with the echoes of 34 hours of conservative talk radio per day. That’s 170 hours per week. Compared with our 2 hours of liberal talk radio per week from a college radio station. How many ideas get to compete in a marketplace like this? I can tell you: not enough.

Political talk radio is influential, and the media ownership rules that already exist allow a single political viewpoint to be expressed for 34 hours per day. This borders on propaganda, and the half of the city that doesn’t share the perspective is counting on the FCC to ensure that we keep ownership of news and views local so that we are able to attempt to maintain a marketplace of diverse ideas on these, our public airwaves.

Thanks.

In case you couldn’t guess, I oppose big media. I was extremely grateful to be able to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was also glad we got the opportunity to interview FCC commissioner Michael Copps.

Summary: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, one of only two democrats that sit on the commission, joins us to discuss the significance of today’s public hearing, the proposed fcc rule changes, and how we own the airwaves.

Listen to: Interview with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps (18:00 22 MB)

We’re not sure which public hearing Nashville-resident and FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate will be attending tomorrow, but we’re going to the one at Belmont University to discuss proposed rule changes for media consolidation.

In a guest editorial in today’s Tennessean, Commissioner Tate says that it would be “hard to think of a more appropriate location than Music City, USA to discuss issues concerning the broadcast media, especially as they relate to radio and the music industry,” and she hopes that “while my colleagues and I are in Nashville, we will have the opportunity to discuss other issues important to this creative community, such as digital rights management, media literacy and piracy.”

She makes it a point to say that the discussion will not be limited to music but will also “consider the effects of the digital age on the broadcast media” television in particular and that she and her colleagues are in Nashville “to listen to your thoughts regarding the future of music, the future of video, the effects of the digital age, the Internet and the possibility of other new and innovative technologies.”

What she glaringly leaves out of her editorial is that this hearing, one of only six official public hearings, was set up specifically to address a draft proposal – called a Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making – issued by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in which he proposes rules to let a handful of giant media corporations swallow up more local television channels, radio stations and newspapers in a single market. These rule changes were first announced in 2003 but were rolled back due to an unprecendented 3 million-strong outcry from the American people.

Chairman Martin is especially interested in changing the rule on “newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership,” which prevents companies from owning a television or radio station and the major daily newspaper in the same area, as well as the rule governing local ownership caps that limit a company from owning more than one television station in most markets. (They can own two in larger markets as long as there are at least eight other competitors.)

Even the official press release from the FCC states that “The purpose of the hearing is to fully involve the public in the process of the 2006 Quadrennial Broadcast Media Ownership Review that the Commission is currently conducting. This hearing is the second in a series of media ownership hearings the Commission intends to hold across the country.”

Commissioner Tate does us a disservice by misrepresenting tomorrow’s public hearing as a forum to exchange ideas about new and emerging broadcast technologies when what is truly at stake is the cornerstone of our liberal democracy – the marketplace of ideas.

Limits on media consolidation have been a historically effective defense against the concentration of economic power that can and will, when left unchecked, restrict the free flow of discourse and ideas. It is also a much-needed and critical part of balancing the public service responsibility of the media with their private profit purpose.