American Heathen®

(The following is a rant by David 2 on his January 23rd broadcast of “Brutally Honest“. It has been posted here with his permission.)

On Thursday, January 21^st, Air America Radio announced that they would be closing their doors and shutting off operations.

Tonight, as this show is airing on ShockNet Radio, Air America is running repeats of previous programming.  Their staff has already been let go.  As of 9pm Eastern time on January 25^th, Air America will be officially off the air for good.

And with it the last liberal syndication network will disappear.

Conservative and neo-conservative talk show parrots are reveling in this news, of course.  They know that their icons still have a job.  Their dominance on the radio dial is still intact.

What they FAIL to comprehend, though, is that they NEEDED a liberal syndication network like Air America to be on the air even more than the liberals needed it.

You see, the key to the success of conservative and neo-conservative talk radio has been the abolition of the FCC’s anti-American policy fraudulently known as the “Fairness Doctrine”.  It was a policy that neutralized political discussions on radio and television as long as there was no “equal time” provided for opposing viewpoints.  For every Gene Siskel giving a “Thumbs up”, you HAD to have a Roger Ebert to give a “Thumbs down”, or else you weren’t allowed to give either one.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, and all the others would NOT be allowed to give the kind of shows they provide today if the “Fairness Doctrine” was still in place.  They’d still be doing ZOO Radio, hawking prefabricated Top-40’s bubblegum music, or playing morose country music about losing your home and your dog to a cheatin’ heart.  Or else they would have to actually work WITH and give equal time to their liberal counterparts, watching as their collection of cleverly-worded cheap shots and intellectual twisters are sabotaged on the spot.  They certainly wouldn’t be the shinning superstars that they are now.

And the eternal response to the criticism of talk radio has always been to simply follow their example.  Okay, if you don’t like conservative-dominated radio shows, then do what they did!  Go ahead!  Find a backer, set up your own syndication network, get some affiliates, and do your own radio shows.

Never mind, of course, that the big syndicators gave away the candy store for a few years, offering their headline shows at no cost to the potential affiliates in exchange for getting the audience hooked as well as listening to plugs from their national sponsors.  Never mind that this was done at a time when there really was such a thing as local radio stations and not corporate-owned corporate-cloned puppet stations.  Never mind that trying to get liberals to do anything as a collective group is like trying to herd cats, while conservatives are more prone to the cultish mindset.  NEVER MIND those things!  Just do what the cons and neocons did and liberals should be fine!

And that is what the people behind Air America did in 2004.  They found a backer, they set up shop, they got some affiliates, they brought in talent like Al Frankin and Randi Rhodes, and they launched Air America Radio.

And right from the start, the cons and neo-cons were saying it won’t last.  They don’t have a message.  They don’t know how to do a radio show or how to retain an audience.

Unfortunately they were proven right.  Air America couldn’t survive as it was.  Even when a second liberal radio network, Nova M Radio, was launched, it too lost money and went out of business.

But Limbaugh and others shouldn’t be laughing about this.  They should be worrying.  They should be regretting poking fun at the liberal stations and wishing them ill.  Because with the fall of Air America Radio, liberals now can go back to their fallback position of trying to restore the anti-American policy known as the “Fairness Doctrine”.  And with a Democrat in the White House and the Democrats in control of Congress, they have a chance of pulling it off.  Because if THEY can’t succeed in talk radio, then they want to make sure that NOBODY succeeds in it either!

And I gotta tell you folks, despite my own ongoing criticism of conservative and neoconservative programming, despite me calling them out on their cultish partisan tactics, despite me calling them trained parrots and paid puppets, I understand and appreciate that this has been a highly successful business for them.  They rake in MILLIONS in contract deals and book sales and speaking tours.  I can’t help but be envious of their success.  I would love to get even a fraction of what they make in a year.

But even though I continue to condemn the message as well as castigate the messenger, I certainly would not wish ill upon the MEDIUM itself.  Because the MEDIUM itself is a powerful tool, no matter which political faction uses it.  The key is being able TO use it.

Even though Air America failed, they still were able to get their voices out.  They still managed to raise enough of an audience to help get a comedian like Al Franken elected to the US Senate.  They provided the platform for Rachel Maddow to go on to be a star on MSNBC.  They gave a voice to groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  They reassured like-minded people that they’re not alone, that they’re not crazy when they saw all of the lies and hypocrisy of the cons and neocons, that they don’t have to listen to an endless parade of the same recycled talking points and the same cultish mantras being churned out by the cons and neo-con talent in-between commercials for diamond dealers and gold marketers.

That is why I make this appeal now to any liberal who is hearing this show: don’t give up on the medium.  There IS an alternative to the conservative and neoconservative propaganda machine.  There IS a platform that the conservatives and neoconservatives cannot claim as their exclusive monopoly.  You are listening to that alternative right now.

Let’s get brutally honest here… whether you know it or not, and whether the conservatives and neoconservatives want to accept it, Internet radio IS the next generation of this medium.  And it is a digital OCEAN full of messages and ideas that CANNOT be co-opted by the conservative and neoconservative propaganda machine.

Sure there’s digital satellite radio… Sirius/XM… which is a government-endorsed monopoly already contaminated with conservative and SOME liberal programming.  But that method is and always has been a temporary measure.  A stopgap idea.  A corporate-run way to fill the gap between the Internet and terrestrial radio.  It goes where the Internet could not… in cars and in homes without a computer.

However that gap is closing.  During my visit to the ShockNet Studios last November, I was riding around the streets of Norman and Oklahoma City with ShockNet Radio coming out the car’s speakers.

Yes, you heard me. ShockNet Radio, an Internet-based radio station, was being heard INSIDE A CAR!

And with more and more vehicles being made with Internet access and smartphone access, it was only a matter of time before it would be possible to hear Internet radio stations from your car.

Anyone who has an iPhone or any other smart phone that has web-browsing access to the Internet can now hear ShockNet Radio’s live streaming audio feed anywhere they have coverage.  This is not hypothetical.  This is not the fleeting fantasy of futurists.  This is real.  This is happening right now.

WE ARE THE ALTERNATIVE!  WE ARE the answer to the conservative and neoconservative domination of terrestrial radio.  WE ARE the future.  They are the past.  They are the dinosaurs, and eventually they WILL go the way of the dinosaurs.

My challenge to the former listeners of Air America Radio… my challenge to the former listeners of Nova M Radio… my challenge to any liberal out there who feels like they’re being shut out of the medium is this: forget about the “Fairness Doctrine”.  Let it remain the closet monster for conservative and neo-conservative media personalities.  Don’t turn to the government to resurrect some antiquated dictatorial rule that belongs in the same trashcan of history as the Edsel.  Turn to us.  COME to ShockNet Radio!  Come over to Internet Radio itself!

This is MY definition of a “Fairness Doctrine”: if you don’t like what you hear on Internet Radio, you can always create your own show.  You don’t need an FCC license.  You don’t need to worry about broadcast towers.  You don’t have to worry about speech restrictions.  You don’t even have to worry about ratings or sponsors.  When I got started in Internet Radio back in 1999, I worked with a low-end computer, low-speed computer access, two Walkman players, and ten-year old audio equipment that I bought at Radio Shack.  ANYONE can start their own Internet radio show.  ANYONE.  THAT’S FAIRNESS!  THAT is “equal time”!

If you don’t like what you hear on ShockNet Radio, you can always come up with ideas for your own show and speak with RJ Evans about hosting it.  You don’t have to be live.  This show is proof of it.  You don’t have to be in the studio if you’re not living in the Oklahoma City area.  Again, this show is proof of it.  The beauty of the Internet allows you to broadcast anywhere and to be heard anywhere you have access.  And I mean ANYWHERE on the planet!  THE ONLY limitations are access and your willingness to actually BE the voices that you so desperately want to have heard.  And that access is spreading more and more as technology allows us to be heard from smart phones, from smart cars, and even from smart homes.

But more importantly, if you hear something that you like, then you need to HYPE IT UP to your friends, to your family members, to your neighbors, to people that you know.  That’s the real reason why liberal talk radio fails.  Even if conservative syndicators did cut a few corners to get where they are, that just means you have to work twice as hard to make sure that you can beat them at their own game.

Yes, I do mourn the loss of Air America Radio, like I mourned the loss of Nova M Radio, because they helped to provide the alternative to the conservative and neo-conservative propaganda machine.  But just because the networks couldn’t survive the harsh realities of business doesn’t mean that the medium needs to suffer for it.  The alternative exists!  You just have to step up and embrace it.