Long ago when voices on the radio were live in the studio and actually responded to your requests, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed into law. This sweeping act deregulated radio broadcasting, allowing multiple signals and stations to be owned by one entity in local markets. The price of radio stations escalated into the stratosphere and humble “mom and pop” radio station owners became rich selling out to giant entities like Radio Inc. and SFX, better known today as Clear Channel.

In those early days announcers like me, hoped for the best and waited for the fall out to begin. At first the money flowed freely and life was good but soon, the drive for higher stock prices and bigger profit margins forced cutbacks. Fewer people were forced to work harder to keep up. The firewall between sales and on-air talent eroded and was eventually eliminated. On-air antics were scaled back and retooled upon the request or demands of advertisers and management. Over time the content of radio broadcasts were pre-packaged, pre-taped and uniformly alike in every city across the land. One live person could remotely run multiple radio stations at once. Tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated and veteran broadcasters were cast adrift, talented people trained to do work that no longer existed in sufficient quantities.

Over the years people said, “What’s the harm of deregulating broadcasting? They argued that the internet provides diversity of content, the news is out there and people have a variety of sources to choose from.” These same people also wrongly believed that broadcasting corporations can self regulate and can be trusted to do the right thing in providing fair access to public airwaves. The implosion of the Murdoch owned newspaper “News of the World” following the phone hacking scandal in Great Britain provides a rich and explicit example of the harm that can come from too much media concentration in too few hands. Rep. Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois pointed out a oft forgotten truth, “We can’t forget the fundamental tenet of media ownership in the United States. It’s not a right, it’s a privilege. And it’s a privilege based on trust and responsibility.”

Further deregulation by the Federal Communications Commission in 2007, allowed multiple ownership of newspaper, television and radio stations in local markets. Today, six corporations own virtually every broadcast outlet in America according to www.freepress.net

http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main.

The ability to influence public opinion and drive home a political agenda and to influence political policy and elections through money and the threat of public exposure is now being documented in Great Britain. Rupert Murdoch flunkies paid private investigators and reporters to hack into the voice mail boxes of celebrities, politicians and victims of tragedies to uncover the inside scoop. Bribes were paid to Scotland Yard and other law enforcement officials to elude detection. It is naive to think that similar skullduggery did not take place at Murdoch owned properties like the NY Post and Fox News here in the United States. The FBI is now investigating the possibility that News Corporation entities hacked into the phones of Americans, including the victims of the September 11^th terrorist attacks.

The scandal has killed a major broadcasting merger in England and has forced serious review of ownership rules by the FCC here in the U.S. Listen to NY Magazine’s Frank Rich’s take on the unfolding scandal

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/frank-rich-murdoch-and-oreilly-are-thugs

 This from The Nation on the need to investigate Murdoch’s media empire in the U.S.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162701/247-spotlight-murdoch?rel=emailNation

One can only hope that the FCC will begin acting like an independent regulatory authority in the wake of this scandal rather than a lapdog for big business and Rupert Murdoch.