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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. If you're listening to us now on an actual radio rather than the internet, there's a big chance you might hear something like this if you were to turn the dial.

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Speaker 1: The COVID plan demic, this has been the biggest global dry run to prepare the world to receive the mark of the beast in the seven-year tribulation in the history of mankind.

Speaker 2: The vast majority, at this point of gender confusion, is being driven by societal mania.

Speaker 3: Racial profiling is good for your health. It could save your life. I know a lot of people, "Oh, my God, this is racist." No, it's not.

Speaker 4: Drill, build a Keystone Pipeline, deport illegals, build the wall. I don't want to hear about the EPA or the Department of Energy. I don't want to hear about Biden's overreach. Defy the federal government.

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Defy the federal government. Perhaps you found those clips of right-wing talk radio we just played to be jarring, especially if you're used to the more relaxed voices and balanced coverage that's standard on public radio or even if you're used to serious-minded conservative policy discussions. Maybe you correctly recognize those clips as polarizing disinformation and assume this kind of programming is on the fringe, but it's not.

In fact, right-wing ideology dominates the talk radio space. There are over 100 stations throughout the country elevating this kind of talk all day. Our local New York Metro coverage area has three such stations all on AM. Minneapolis has five. Portland, Oregon has six, just to name a few. What? Portlandia has six right-wing talk stations. Despite the notion that Video Killed the Radio Star, remember that song? 88% or roughly 293 million Americans listen to the radio every week, that part is good news, making it the medium with the broadest reach, according to the Nielsen ratings from last year.

How does the popularity of extreme conservative talk radio, not just conservative talk radio but extreme conservative talk radio, affect our political culture, how did it get to be not just popular and influential but dominant? Think about it, there are practically no commercial progressive or liberal stations. There is zero even here in Blue, New York.

With us now to discuss this in more is independent journalist, public historian, and Fulbright Fellow, Katie Thornton. Maybe you've been hearing her as the host of the On the Media series, The Divided Dial, which chronicles the far right's takeover of our country's spoken word airwaves. We thought some of you who listened to this show, if you haven't heard the On the Media series, might like to hear from Katie directly right here. Katie, thanks for doing some overtime for us. Welcome to this WNYC show.

Katie Thornton: Thank you so much, Brian. I'm really looking forward to talking with you. Thanks for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Right-wing radio is nothing new, what prompted you to explore this world right now?

Katie Thornton: Yes, absolutely. You are spot on in saying that it's nothing new. I think a lot of folks trace its origins back to Rush Limbaugh, but in truth, it has been going on for far, far longer than that. That's something that we chronicle in this series. I wanted to look at right-wing radio right now because as you mentioned in the top, radio is still hugely, hugely influential.

Oftentimes, it's very ignored, it's underreported. Radio is still about neck and neck with social media for how Americans like to get their news. Radio has a farther reach than television. It has a really strong reach across demographics and across age groups which might surprise some people, maybe not radio listeners but might surprise some people. On Talk Radio 12 of the 15 most popular hosts, at least, lean right and some are very, very far to the right, only one in that top 15 is progressive.

This is still a hugely influential medium that often gets overlooked. It's the case that these radio broadcasts are taking hold, I guess, in small towns across the country where a lot of people may envision Talk Radio as having their heart and soul, but in truth, this is really, really prominent in cities as well and a lot of the content is originating from big savvy corporations that are based in large cities and often coastal cities.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to some of who those are. Just as a point of interest, when you say that radio still has this massive breach, first of all, woohoo, and secondly, does that mean just people listening on actual physical radios like we have a lot of listeners listening on radios, and we have a lot of listeners listening on streaming devices, their phones and whatever. Are you talking about all of that combined or just radios?

Katie Thornton: This is really just physical radios, AM, FM radio. We can get into this more later, perhaps, but that's important because there are different regulations and different policies and different expectations and mandates when broadcasting over the airwaves. The airwaves are owned by the American people. They are owned by the public. The electromagnetic spectrum is owned by the public and radio stations, commercial and non-commercial, are given that space on the electromagnetic spectrum for free in exchange for the promise to serve the public interest. It really does matter that this reach is still happening on broadcast radio which the airwaves are owned by the American people.

Brian Lehrer: Why is radio so hospitable to the far right?

Katie Thornton: Well, there's a long answer to that question until we seek to explore in the series. As I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of folks do ID this as starting with Rush Limbaugh. I don't think that's accurate. We really unpack that in this series. The danger of assuming that it started with Rush Limbaugh means that there's an implication that it may have ended with Rush Limbaugh as well. As we've seen, as we talked about just a moment ago, this far-right often conspiratorial radio is still very, very prominent and very influential.

In the series, we trace some of the origins of this prominence. We go back to the earliest days of commercial radio in this country into the 1920s and we love look at ways that in that early period there were periods of time where both the right and the left were kept off of the airwaves. There were also political decisions, regulatory decisions that helped a diversity of voices appear on the airwaves including very conservative voices.

The present-day dominance of these right-wing voices, I think, really can be traced to the Reagan period and to the deregulation that began with Reagan's FCC and really extended into the Clinton era with the 1996 Telecommunications Act which allowed companies to get these massive, massive economies of scale and to broadcast just a very select few number of voices often conservative talk hosts and blast them across the country on these radio stations often that they had just bought up often replacing local radio stations, sometimes local voices and local news and instead, programming these single talkers who would just get blasted out across the country rather than hosting local voices on the air.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you listen to right-wing talk radio, in addition to this show, because, obviously, you're listening to the show right now, what place do you think it has or should have on the radio dial or let's say an American political culture, why do you think it's as dominant as it is in the commercial sector of radio programming or anything else you want to say or ask Katie Thornton, who's been doing a series on this for On the Media, maybe you've heard some of those segments as well and want to react to anything you've heard from her previously, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Let's talk about that angle that you've touched on twice already. Obviously, you think it's important that national production of these voices that are heard in many, many local media markets. Much of your story is focused on a company called the Salem Media Group, which you refer to as a little-known but highly influential Network whose hosts pedal right-wing conspiracies and election denial. Who is Salem Media Group, and what's their reach?

Katie Thornton: In the series, we use the group Salem Media Group perhaps the most influential Media Company you've never heard of. Salem Media Group started off as a Christian, it's called Teach and Talk Network, a network of Christian radio stations that were platforming ministries. They started off in the early '70s with these conservative but primarily Christian and not political Ministries. Basically, they found that they could charge preachers a fee for carrying their sermons week after week, and in this way, they could make a little bit of a profit and in turn, buy up more stations to serve as pulpits.

They were Christians themselves, and so this was really in line with our mission of evangelizing. As time went on, they had this profit model where they were getting money coming in from these paying ministries, and they were able to buy more and more stations, they were sort of early adopter of a network model, at a time when a lot of Christian radio stations were one-off.

Also, as the late 1970s and early 1980s for on, their trajectory from a Christian radio network into a much more political and increasingly much more far-right network, really mirrored the growth of the religious right, they became increasingly more politicized until in the 1980s. One of their co-founders was running for Congress, they began to take more political turn in some of their content, all the while they're growing this this radio network that they have.

In the early 1990s, they gained representation in a group called the Council for National Policy. This is a group that was formed after Reagan's victory in 1980, to keep up the momentum of this newly activated group of religious voters who were voting for Republicans, big networks, big donors, political strategists, and pollsters, and really importantly, people in the media. Salem came on board, Salem co-founders in roughly the early 1990s, and not long after they joined this group, they made a formal switch from being just a Christian teach-and-talk network, into launching secular political talk stations.

That has been a really really thriving format for them and something that they have really continued to grow and develop today. They do still have these sorts of paying ministries that are helping them secure about half of their radio, income is coming from these paying ministries and so that makes them less susceptible to something like an ad boycott or to other the whims of the market that other radio companies and radio chains might be susceptible to.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to play for everybody a clip from your on-the-media series, The Divided Dial, which showcases the variety of markets that Salem runs these stations in. Listeners, you're going to hear a lot of station IDs here and you're going to hear Katie's voice very briefly at the end.

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Speaker 1: They have conservative talk stations.

Speaker 2: On Philadelphia's AM 990. The Atlantis, home for Conservative Talk.

Speaker 3: Right here on 1280, The Patriot.

Speaker 4: Intelligent Radio.

Katie Thornton: They have Christian talk stations.

Speaker 5: AM 980 The Mission. The Twin Cities Christian.

Speaker 6: KDAR 98.3 FM The Word, you are on the men's show.

Katie Thornton: Christian music stations.

Speaker 5: 104.7 The Fish.

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All right, that's not The Brian Lehrer Show theme song, that's music from The Fish, but not from fish. I think it's important to make it distinction here because we believe in diversity of points of view. That should be all across the radio dial, the media, any kind of information spectrum in this country.

Conservative Talk Radio, if there's a market for it, it should exist. I think you're trying to draw a distinction between just conservative-leaning policy discussion, and things that are really fringe in terms of ideas, like election-denying and some of the other things in the montage that we played earlier that the COVID was a plan demic as one of those clips called it. That kind of right-wing talk has become as dominant as it is. How much is that the main point?

Katie Thornton: Absolutely. Certainly, there is this type of radio broadcast should be allowed, but maybe not some of the hate speech and some of the repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories, but absolutely, we want to have robust debate and conversation, not even necessarily head-to-head debate but just an opportunity to hear different perspectives on the public airwaves.

The issue is the dominance, and something that we think and talk a lot about in the production of this series is, does the platform shape the audience or does the audience shape the platform? Certainly, there is a degree of both. There is absolutely a market for this type of talk radio, but what we really look to explore and this especially comes up in the fourth episode, when we talk about the last four decades of the talk radio industry, is that there is a point at which the platform has shaped the audience as well.

Salem, from very early on, they say in their public filings as they are a publicly traded company, that they may pursue less profitable options or not respond to changes in audience preference in order to serve their Christian and conservative mission, as they put it. There is very much an ideological motivation, in addition to a financial motivation here. I think it's important to not just write this type of politicized, very right-wing talk radio off as something that is just serving a market, just giving people what they want but as really something that has helped shape the market now that they are serving as well.

Brian Lehrer: Neil in Farmingdale, you're on WNYC. Hi, Neil, thanks so much for calling in.

Neil: How are you?

Brian Lehrer: I'm all right. How about you?

Neil: Okay. I wanted to mention, I've been listening to if you want to call it right-wing radio for a long time. The main reason is, it seems like it's something that evens out the playing field when it comes to CNN, MSNBC, most regular mainstream media stations, as you want to call it, that are very far to the left for the most part. Also, I don't believe it's right-wing radio, for the most part, the people that are on except for the crazy people, but the regular people are just quite reasonable.

The reason I started listening was, I said to myself, "Wow, this guy is saying what I believe." It's also economics, that's the reason why left-wing radio isn't on because nobody wants to listen to it pretty much. That's so that's my opinion, but I don't think right-wing radio is really right-wing blamed.

Brian Lehrer: Neil, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Call us again. That last thing that he said that left-wing radio doesn't exist. It's funny because he was and I think this comes up in your series, several times that some listeners of right-wing radio, conservative talk radio, say they're listening because there is a dominance of left-wing ideology in the mainstream media. He cited CNN, MSNBC, and yet, there are no real commercial liberal stations or progressive stations like there are commercial conservative stations all over the country. Can you talk about what might be a duality there, a contradiction in that thinking, but also about why there isn't a similar commercial talk radio infrastructure from the left?

Katie Thornton: Certainly. Neil, thank you very much for calling. I will just say that I listened to right-wing talk radio as well, in part because I do think it is really important to understand a variety of different perspectives, and what people are saying. There are a lot more calling-in shows that are on more conservative stations than there are on some more "mainstream stations," and you really do have an opportunity to hear from a lot of different people. I agree that this can be an important part of a balanced media diet.

I will say on the fact the non-existence of left-wing talk radio, this is something that we do get into in the series, but there was a time in the history of Talk Radio and the talk radio industry, commercial talk radio event, that left-wing radio was quite successful, especially in the early era of the Shock jock, alongside hosts like Gary D out of Cleveland, who was early conservative Shock jock, or Bob Grant in New York. You also had hosts like Alan Berg out of Denver, who was an early liberal Shock jock who--

Brian Lehrer: He got assassinated for that, didn't he?

Katie Thornton: He did. He was killed by white supremacists and the founders and members of the then newly formed group called the Order, which went on to have a lot of prominent influence and remains very influential within the white supremacist movement today but this was at a time quite successful radio.

One of the things that we chronicle in episode four is how Rush Limbaugh, who was very, very prominent and was the breakout star of the moment in the late '80s, how he ended up coming to shape a lot of the market in the late '80s and up really into the early 2000s by dent of being the right guy at the right time when there was a lot of deregulatory processes that were years and years of deregulation that were coming to ahead.

You had the erosion of these rules that would require a degree of educational programming on the air that would make it easier for groups to potentially challenge broadcast licenses if they felt they had a lack of representation or that they were maligned on the airwaves. You also had the end of the fairness doctrine which required that stations make some airtime available for differing viewpoints.

It didn't make any claims of objectivity or that people had to go head to head in every individual program but it just said, if you're going to air one viewpoint, you got to make time sometime in your broadcast day for another viewpoint. Then, finally, in 1996, you had the Telecommunications Act which eliminated the number of stations that a single company could own nationwide. For example, prior to 1996 Telecommunications Act, the company Clear Channel which is now iHeartMedia owned 43 radio stations across the country within a decade after the act, they owned about over 1200 stations.

Starting in 1998, they owned the company that owned the Rush Limbaugh Show which made it quite easy for them to put that program on all of these stations across the country. Also, early on when Rush Limbaugh went national, he used what was then a pretty novel strategy for syndication and distribution, which was to give his show away for free in exchange for nothing other than advertising time to stations across the country.

That's quite common now, it's called the barter Method of syndication. It was really unusual at the time, and that really helped him get all over the country to a point where it just these larger and larger companies that were forming after the '96 Telecom Act, their risk-averse, they want to go with something tried and true and at that time, because of all those processes, it was a voice like Rush Limbaugh.

Ultimately, when you did have an explicit liberal attempt to challenge the right-wing dominance of the airwaves in 2004 with Air America, that ended up not being very successful but I don't think that it's because there wasn't a demand for it. One of their co-founders was a bit of a grifter and ran the company like a Ponzi scheme, got a very sketchy loan that he appeared to give largely to himself.

They also got on the air very quickly, and a lot of their hosts, to be frank just weren't quite ready to, for the big time, wasn't great programming and that company failed but I don't think that it is representative of broader left-wing talk failing. You really see that in something like podcasts today. There's absolutely a market for more casual, more conversational, sometimes even more abrasive left-wing talk.

Brian Lehrer: Nina in Hempstead, you're on WNYC with Katie Thornton who's doing The Divided Dial series for On the Media. Hi, Nina.

Nina: Hey, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Katie. How are you doing? I came into this conversation a little bit late but I know this week, Brian, you've been talking about different things on the radio and on TV and all this talk. I think what you just touched on, Katie, which is really bugging me, is the fairness doctrine and the Telecommunication Act.

I cannot believe that this isn't discussed every single day when we're talking about what's wrong with the media right now. To me, the elimination of those things is so enormous and has had such a tremendous impact on what is going on in media and the imbalance of the scales. The fact that any one owner can own a thousand TV stations and six newspapers and for us to expect that we're going to have any diversity and dialogue is insane.

It's like, I remember in the '80s even going back to like, I guess whenever, when Reagan got rid of the Fairness Act. I can't remember when that was but I just even remember during the CNN days early on, me saying to myself it's like this cable thing is really scary because all we're hearing is one soundbite. [unintelligible 00:25:01] President goes to the White House, he has something to say, and every station is now cutting everything up and putting on one soundbite.

If a million stations are owned by one company and then that makes it all easier for them to only show that one soundbite, that's the only soundbite we hear. I just feel like whether it's good news or bad news, the notion that any one person owns a lot or that there isn't any restriction on editorial point of view, at least the fairness option, it may not have worked a hundred percent but it slowed it down a little.

It gave people a reason to say, "Okay, I have to give the other side here whether I like it or not". To me, that would slow it down. I feel like this is a runaway train, and these two subjects are never discussed anywhere. They're discussed here, of course, that's why I listen but the general public doesn't know anything about it and that's what infuriates me, is that people don't understand how-- I'm sorry, I'm going on and on. I'm very passionate about this. Thank you, that's my point.

Brian Lehrer: You've been very clear. Thank you. Katie, would you like to add anything to that?

Katie Thornton: Yes, Nina, thank you so much for calling. I would say that content regulations are very hairy. There's potential for them to go awry. As you said, the fairness doctrine didn't necessarily stop there from being one-sided broadcasting. Something we look at in the series is that the fairness doctrine had been on the books since 1949, and its foundations that the obligation to serve the public interest had been on the books since the 1920s.

Even so during the early civil rights period, there was still overwhelmingly one-sided, very racist, and segregation is broadcasting that would dominate the airwaves. The fairness doctrine alone did not guarantee a diversity of perspectives. There was a whole slew of policies and citizen action that ended up being able to have a brief period of time, maybe a decade and a half, where there was a big diversity of voices on the airwaves which is something we dive into in episode three.

I will say the 1996 Telecommunications Act, that was an economic policy decision for radio but it ended up having a huge impact on content. I think, looking toward the future, knowing that you don't have to have more than just content regulations impact the content and there's this idea within media of the marketplace of ideas that let ideas go head to head and let the truth or the best ideas win out.

There is a problem, especially after the deregulation of the '80s and '90s, that not every idea is able to enter into that marketplace. I would just say that a really strong counter to some of this stuff is more perspectives, is really local journalism, and there have been a couple of interesting economic ideas or regulatory ideas that can support some of that local journalism.

Maryland, it's held up in courts right now but Maryland had an idea to tax digital ads, to send it to a tax that goes toward, to fund local media. There's ideas to give a tax write-off for subscriptions and support to local media and overall just remembering that the American public owns the airwaves stations are given access to the airwaves for free in exchange to promise to serve the public interest and so while I don't want to want to put too much emphasis on individual responsibility and individual influence here, I will say that perhaps on radio more so, but more so than almost any other medium, the American people, historically, had a say and could potentially have a say again.

Brian Lehrer: Listener tweets, does the remaining influence of radio have anything to do with driving culture? Many older cars don't have the technology for connecting to smartphones, et cetera, writes that listener.

Katie Thornton: Such a good and interesting question. It's really difficult to parse that. It's hard to get data to say that specifically but certainly, I live in Minneapolis. I was born and raised in Minneapolis. We drive long distances to get from city to city to place to place and folks are listening oftentimes in their car but I would also hesitate to write it off as something that is specific to commuting, something that's specific to car culture because increasingly, as you mentioned earlier, Brian, Radio can be heard on all of these different platforms and the company that we look into in particular has been a radio company for a very long time, but they have used their strong base on radio to expand into being a really, a multimedia network.

They own some of the largest conservative news sites in the country, red State Town Hall hot Air. They also have an influence in network. They have a podcast network, a production house, a streaming service. They have services that sell sermons and other church products to pastors. They are really in every sort of market. I would say certainly driving has something to do with it, but even if you take away driving, the issue is still there.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more caller on after we heard from the caller who listens to a lot of Conservative Talk Radio because he finds, he identifies with the points of view there. Michael in Center Moriches on Long Island. I think listens, but for a different reason. Michael, we've got about a minute for you. Hi.

Michael: -picking my call. I listen because I want to know what my fellow citizens who think this way, I want to know what they're thinking. I want to know what is in their heads. Frankly, it's scary, the things that I'm hearing these people talk about when they call into these shows. Real quick, I want to just challenge Neil's notion that the mainstream media is so far left because that is fact-

Brian Lehrer: The other caller, the listener to Conservative Talk. That was his notion. Go ahead.

Michael: Yes, Fox cable News is the most-watched network and they're hardly left-wing. The idea that all of the media is left-wing, that's been debunked so many times. I would challenge Neil to start rethinking what his perspective is on that, because the left-wing media boogeyman that the far right is using just doesn't really exist. I think critical thinking on the part of all of us is an important thing. The only way to really think critically is to check in on what everybody else is thinking and what they're doing and be open-minded about what you're hearing and what your own perspectives are. I think that's super important.

Brian Lehrer: Mike, thank you very much. Let's close on this thought, Katie, that he brings up. Because the difference in perception between him and the previous caller who finds Conservative Talk Radio or even maybe-- Well, he doesn't find it to be far right, the first caller, and that was part of his narrative. Whatever an objective, whatever that means, analysis of the mainstream media networks would show there are people who feel like they're not represented, right?

That would include people on the right. That's one of the reasons that it sprung up on certain elements of the right. It would include a lot of marginalized groups, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ women as opposed to men. There's been dissatisfaction and feeling like they're not seeing their lives represented on so-called mainstream media, especially like in the days of the big three networks dominating news. That's, a source that should be acknowledged, right? People not feeling like they're being represented.

Katie Thornton: Oh, absolutely. I think you're spot on to identify that this is a feeling that people across the political and cultural spectrum have, we sort of unpack a little bit of the history of these ideas of Fox on both the right and the left being silenced in episode three. Some of it goes back to the 1940s around policies, around speeches, around World War II. Even earlier than that, people on the left who were not welcome on the airwaves for their economic beliefs. I think there's a really really long history here. Of course, the media has a very long history of not being representative of everybody in this country, politically culturally, and otherwise.

I think one of the reasons why I wanted to do this series in the first place, and one of the reasons why I have loved radio for so long is that radio is free to consume. Compared to other media, it is relatively cheap to produce. It is somewhat accessible. It is, at least in theory, inherently local, even though that has become increasingly less common in recent decades. There is potential on something like the public airwaves and the local airwaves to have a greater degree of representation by people from all sorts of different voices and backgrounds. That's why I want to look into this series because at the moment that's not happening.

Brian Lehrer: Katie Thornton, host of On the Media's series, The Divided Dial, she is an independent journalist, public historian, and Fulbright Fellow. You can listen to the series anytime at wnycstudios.org or wherever you get you're on the media podcast. Of course, it's on their live or on their weekend show on the Radio. That's right as well. Katie, thank you so much.

Katie Thornton: Thanks so much for having me and thanks to your callers.

 

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