Email has been pouring in regarding the recent state of radio. People outraged. People venting. People outraged and venting i haven't weighed in.

I've been in radio since 1992. I liked the daily dose of comedy and entertainment it brought to people. When the media was deregulated, a situation brought forth by the Reagan, Clinton and Bush camps with equal enthusiasm - it created a consolidation of power. Radio companies no longer had limits on ownership. And thanks to equal time rules being kicked out by Reagan, we got a 24 hour news culture. Thanks to the Clinton years a company can own 1200 radio stations. This culture essentially creates drama. Try creating 24 hours of drama in your life. It's difficult to do. So TV news seizes on and makes issues. Newspapers are fighting for their lives. Radio is too. TV news is competing with the Internet so much that they now report on stuff they found on the Internet. And what are they finding on the Internet? Offensive material. On Blogs.

Blogs are largely the ramblings of incensed idiots. Mine is no different. But the postings of soundbites considered "offensive" culls and shapes the debate. Few people today hear something offensive on a show they're watching/listening to and then demand action. Someone ELSE is offended for them and tells them to write letters or go to rallies. Someone grabs a 30 second piece from a show(out of context) and rants and raves against the offender, whether it's Rush, Imus, Opie and Anthony, Hannity whomever. Liberals do it. Conservatives do it. These bites, taken out of context and posted, are picked up by the 24 hour news, blogs and newspapers desperate to draw you in and tell you to be offended. "Controversy erupts over a radio segment by -insert name here-" No it didn't. You needed a story. Nobody watching that show or listening to that radio program was offended. And if they were, they turned it off. But TV news needs to make money now. It didn't used to. It used to be a required public service in exchange for spectrum and existence on TV. That transition - and it was one that Walter Cronkite warned me about back in 1997 when i interviewed him - is wrecking the freedoms we claim to hold so dear.

An FCC letter writing campaign against "offensive" material on TV was recently revealed to be nothing more than a webform that thousands of people filled out. They complained about parts of a show that never happened. They were never exposed to the TV show that they were told was offensive. They were simply told it was offensive and given an easy way to protest. They are calling for the cancellation of a show they never saw.

Where does this stop? It doesn't. unless the people demand politicians make changes to the "news" media structure, this will get worse. In a world where the politicians who raise the most money to run commercials win elections, it's becoming a situation where money/TV controls the discourse. The majority of articles in newspapers aren't written to inform or educate. Many TV news stories aren't produced to truly cover an issue. Networks have marketing meetings on what to name the conflict in Iraq and how the graphics should look in order to appeal to the target demographic and attract advertisers. Artificial controversy is created on websites and is picked up by 24 hour channels looking to fill time. Media corporations beholden to politicians to look the other way on regulation while they are grabbing viewers with sensationalism in order to boost ratings for sponsors who support the news they - and the target audience agrees with - aren't involved in journalism anymore. It's infotainment. Infotainment that tells us something isn't funny, that something isn't comedy or satire.

Comedy is not a crime. But it is becoming one.

posted by lazlow at 9:14 PM  on Thursday, May 17, 2007