Episode 2 - The Divided Dial

Summary

Summary of "On the Media" Episode 2 - The Divided Dial

Podcast Information:

• Title: On the Media
• Host/Author: WNYC Studios
• Description: The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast explores the intricacies of media production, scrutinizing threats to free speech and government transparency. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger critically analyze media coverage of significant stories and uncover hidden political narratives in various media forms.
• Episode: Episode 2 - The Divided Dial
• Release Date: May 7, 2023

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Introduction to Salem Media and The Divided Dial

In the episode titled "The Divided Dial," host Katie Thornton delves into the rise of Salem Media, a pivotal player in shaping conservative talk radio in the United States. The episode is part of a five-part series examining how one segment of the political spectrum gained dominance in talk radio and how Salem Media leveraged the airwaves to build a right-wing media empire.

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The Foundations of Salem Media

Early Beginnings in Ararat, Virginia

The story begins in 1935 in Ararat, Virginia, where Stuart Epperson was born into a family of tobacco farmers. Despite the lack of modern amenities like electricity, the Epperson household became a hub for radio enthusiasts. Stuart's older brother, Ralph, ignited the family's connection to radio by:

Stuart Epperson [05:22]: "Friends, come with us again to the Grand Ole Opry house and join in another half hour of fun music and song."

This early immersion in radio set the stage for Stuart's future endeavors in broadcasting.

Transition to Broadcasting Education and Family Business

Stuart Epperson pursued broadcasting at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, a move that would eventually lead him to co-found Salem Media with his brother-in-law, Edward Atsinger. In 1973, the duo launched their first FM radio station in Bakersfield, California, aiming to propagate their evangelical faith to broader audiences.

Adam Peori [06:02]: "These brothers-in-law acquired a radio station in Bakersfield, California. It was almost like a patch of the south that was detached and set down north of Los Angeles."

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Building a Radio Empire

Strategic Expansion and Business Model

Salem Media's growth was fueled by a strategic business model that differed from existing Christian radio stations, which were typically non-commercial and educational. By obtaining commercial licenses, Salem could sell airtime to preachers, creating a profitable cycle that allowed them to acquire more stations.

Stuart Epperson [07:14]: "Love your enemies, Matthew 5:44. Pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the sons of your father who's in heaven."

This formula enabled Salem to establish a network that wasn't heavily reliant on large audiences or traditional advertising revenue.

Overcoming Early Challenges

Salem's acquisition of powerful stations like KKLA in Los Angeles marked a significant turning point, providing the financial leverage to secure larger loans and expand rapidly across major cities, including Chicago, Portland, and New York City.

Adam Peori [10:29]: "Their big breakthrough was when they acquired KKLA, which was a thousand times more powerful than the one in Oxnard."

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Intersection of Media and Politics

Formation of the Council for National Policy

In the early 1980s, as Salem Media solidified its presence in the radio landscape, political strategist Paul Weyrich recognized the untapped potential of evangelical voters. Collaborating with Salem's founders, Weyrich helped establish the Council for National Policy (CNP) in 1981—a secretive organization aimed at aligning conservative leaders, donors, and media operators to influence national politics.

Stuart Epperson [20:04]: "How many of our Christians have what I call the goo goo syndrome? Good government. They want everybody to vote."

The CNP became a central hub where media and political strategies converged, with Salem Media playing a crucial role in mobilizing evangelical support.

Leveraging Radio for Political Mobilization

Radio became an essential tool for the new religious right to reach and engage their target audience. Weyrich and Salem utilized radio to disseminate conservative values and political agendas, effectively turning evangelicals into a formidable voting bloc without relying on mass voter turnout.

Stuart Epperson [22:55]: "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now."

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Growth and Strategy: The Telecommunications Act

Legislative Changes and Rapid Expansion

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, signed by President Clinton, eliminated the caps on the number of radio stations a single company could own nationwide. Salem Media capitalized on this deregulation, expanding from 18 stations in 1994 to 103 by 2005.

Stuart Epperson [31:45]: "Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future."

This expansion wasn't limited to traditional radio; Salem also ventured into digital media, acquiring conservative blogs, news sites, and launching podcasts and streaming services to broaden their influence.

Consolidation of Conservative Talk Radio

With increased ownership, Salem dominated the talk radio landscape, hosting a roster of influential conservative voices. Their approach was to create a unified platform that echoed the Judeo-Christian stance on key political issues, such as abortion and gay marriage.

Stuart Epperson [29:14]: "When they surveyed their listenership and asked their listeners who were listening to sermons where they were turning the dial after they found them turning the dial to talk radio and people like Rush Limbaugh."

This consolidation allowed Salem to shape political discourse and reinforce the alignment between conservative media and the Republican Party.

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Salem's Influence on Conservative Talk Radio

Hosting Prominent Conservative Figures

Salem's talk radio stations featured a mix of religious and political hosts, including figures like Oliver North, Alan Keyes, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, and Dennis Prager. These hosts were instrumental in promoting conservative ideologies and mobilizing listeners around political causes.

John FIA [09:34]: "Dobson was a big name in evangelical radio, still is... He changed my father's life."

Creating a Synergistic Media-Political Network

Salem Media's integration with the Council for National Policy ensured a seamless collaboration between media output and political strategy. This synergy amplified Salem's ability to influence both media narratives and political outcomes.

Phil Boyce [33:45]: "Talk radio is one of the most powerful forms of communication of the base. They do want to kill us."

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Conclusion: Salem's Enduring Impact on American Politics

Salem Media's strategic expansion and integration with political organizations like the Council for National Policy have cemented its role in shaping conservative discourse in the United States. By leveraging radio and digital media, Salem has built a robust network that continues to influence political strategies and voter mobilization within the evangelical community. The episode concludes by highlighting the pervasive influence Salem has wielded over four decades, ensuring that right-wing talk radio remains a cornerstone of the Republican Party's identity.

Stuart Epperson [33:52]: "We do want to kill us."

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This episode of On the Media provides a comprehensive look into how Salem Media transformed from a small evangelical radio station into a powerful media conglomerate intertwined with conservative politics. Through strategic acquisitions, legislative changes, and political alliances, Salem has played a pivotal role in shaping the media landscape and influencing American politics.

Transcript

[Progressive Insurance]

On the Media is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.

[Adam Peori]

Hi Katie.

[Katie Thornton]

Hi Adam, how are you? I called up reporter Adam Peori last fall and I happened to catch him just as a storm was slamming his home state of Connecticut.

[Adam Peori]

Good. Although my power just went out, so my I'm using the personal hotspot on.

[Katie Thornton]

My I wanted to learn more about Salem and Adam, who has written several lengthy articles about the company, is a good guy to ask.

[Adam Peori]

The way that I found out about Salem was I was looking at major campaign donors to both Democrats and Republicans at the time for George Bush, I kept seeing Salem Communications.

[Katie Thornton]

This was in 2004 when George W. Bush was running for re election.

[Stuart Epperson]

This will be the beginning of a new term to make America a safer place, a stronger place, and a better place.

[Adam Peori]

I knew who many of the donors were, the major Republican donors, but I never heard of Salem. So I began poking around to see what Salem was.

[Katie Thornton]

What Adam found when he was poking around was that Salem, though not the largest radio network in the country and lacking the name recognition of Fox News or Breitbart, is nevertheless a powerhouse political influencer. I'm Katie Thornton and this is the Divided Dial, a five part podcast series from on the Media about how one side of the political spectrum came to dominate talk radio and how one company is using the airwaves to launch a right wing media empire. In this episode, we're going to dig into Salem's 50 year backstory from their scrappy start to where they are today. It's a history that paralleled the growth of the national religious right and led to the company's longstanding involvement in a secretive group of powerful evangelical leaders, big donors and mainstays of both the Republican Party and the far right. Our story begins, fittingly in a small southern Virginia town called Ararat, named after the final destination of Noah's Ark. Here in 1935, against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a boy named Stuart Epperson was born into a family of tobacco farmers. They didn't have electricity in their farmhouse, no one in the area did back then, but the Epperson household was connected in a different way. When Stuart was a kid, his older brother Ralph had fallen in love with the new medium of radio.

[Stuart Epperson]

What do you do?

[Katie Thornton]

Everybody and Convinced his parents to get a mail order Montgomery Ward radio set.

[Stuart Epperson]

Your Grand Ole Opry without power.

[Katie Thornton]

He set up a windmill on top of the house to recharge the device's battery. The blades of the mill would cause the house to shudder on windy days, but the rudimentary generator worked.

[Stuart Epperson]

God with Sunday shoes on.

[Katie Thornton]

God my hair slicked down Happy would.

[Stuart Epperson]

Be time to die.

[Katie Thornton]

The Eppersons invited neighbors and passersby in to listen along. And when their house got too full, they would open the windows so everyone out there could hear too. Ralph's radio set was the neighborhood's line to the outside.

[Stuart Epperson]

Friends, come with us again to the Grand Ole Opry house and join in another half hour of fun music and song.

[Katie Thornton]

But young Stewart's brother Ralph didn't just want to listen to the radio. In a high school correspondence course, he learned via mailed letters from instructors to build radios. And eventually Stuart Epperson watched his brother use his passion to serve his country and then his community.

[Adam Peori]

Adam Peori During World War II, his older brother worked for the Navy developing radar. And when he got home, he built a radio station on the second floor of their farmhouse.

[Katie Thornton]

Just two years after getting hooked up to the grid, the Eppersons house was transformed into an electrical wonderland of tubes, gadgets and microphones. Aspiring singers and musicians flocked to the home with banjos and fiddles, filling the Eppersons living room and the local airwaves with what they called hillbilliery.

[Stuart Epperson]

Johnson had an old gray mule his name was Simon Slick he'd want his eyes in the backstairs and how that fool would kick he took him down foot of the hill to try him out One day he kicked in the party right all around SWAT the fool would say would say well boy the.

[Katie Thornton]

Family would take the mic okay, thanks a lot.

[Stuart Epperson]

That was mother who is also known as Mrs. H.A. ipherson. Yes sir, we appreciate that expression.

[Katie Thornton]

And preachers were invited to sermonize to unseen congregants within the station's reach.

[Adam Peori]

And Stuart Epperson, you know, at the age of 10, he read the 23rd Psalm over the radio.

[Katie Thornton]

It was the essence of a community radio station. Homegrown and accessible, beloved, a little haphazard. And it must have left an impression on Stuart Epperson because he went on to study broadcasting at the evangelical Bob Jones University in South Carolina. He married his classmate Nancy Atsinger and soon started a radio business with his brother in law and fellow Bob Jones alum Edward Atsinger.

[Anne Nelson]

In 1973 they started a small FM radio station.

[Katie Thornton]

Anne Nelson is an author and professor at Columbia University. She wrote about Salem in her book Shadow Media. Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.

[Anne Nelson]

These brothers in law acquired a radio station in Bakersfield, California. It was almost like a patch of the south that was detached and set down north of Los Angeles.

[Katie Thornton]

Bakersfield had been a sort of southern outpost since the days of the Dust bowl, when farmworkers from Oklahoma and other Southern states fled there. But Epperson and Atsinger didn't just want to reach other southern transplants. They had a vision to bring the message of their evangelical faith to new audiences. Soon they bought a second station, KDAR in Oxnard, California, just outside Los Angeles.

[Adam Peori]

They realized that Christians wanted a platform where they could tune in and listen to people talk about biblical truth and their beliefs. And it's there that they began developing the formula that they would later replicate so successfully.

[Katie Thornton]

At the time, a lot of Christian radio stations were small, not for profit educational projects with non commercial broadcast licenses. That meant they couldn't take money in exchange for running specific programming. But Epperson and Atsinger did something different. They got commercial licenses, meaning they could sell airtime.

[Anne Nelson]

And they found they could charge these preachers a fairly substantial fee for carrying their programs.

[Katie Thornton]

For Epperson and Atsinger, it was a win win. They gave a platform to preachers and with some money coming in, they were able to buy more radio stations and turn them into pulpits. They were not a lone wolf Christian station. They were building a.

[Adam Peori]

They mortgaged their homes and it was a scary time. They kind of bet everything on this.

[Katie Thornton]

The vehicle for their godly mission was a radio format known as Christian Teach and Talk.

[Anne Nelson]

From the beginning, they really emphasized what they called biblical values.

[Stuart Epperson]

Love your enemies, Matthew 5:44. Pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the sons of your father who's in heaven.

[Anne Nelson]

And this was promoting these very conservative social values. Anti lgbt.

[Stuart Epperson]

See, this is why homosexuality spreads. This is why it's not a constant. From society to society, it varies, favoring.

[Anne Nelson]

Christianity over other religions.

[Stuart Epperson]

The idea of a Christian marrying a non Christian is totally in disobedience to scripture.

[Katie Thornton]

But for many who grew up with these radio broadcasts, they were more than just socially conservative messages.

[John FIA]

My father, he was a contractor, so he was in the truck all day and had his radio locked into Christian radio all day.

[Katie Thornton]

This is John FIA Today he's a professor of history at Messiah Christian University in Pennsylvania. But growing up, John was just another kid whose family converted to evangelicalism and who heard a lot of Christian radio.

[John FIA]

Some would look at this as kind of crazy, right? Like, who does this? Who cranks, you know, John MacArthur at maximum volume in the middle of a construction site or whatever.

[Katie Thornton]

MacArthur is a minister who started on Salem's oxnard station in 1977.

[John FIA]

The idea here is, if you're playing it on 11, you know, with the doors open in the truck, America seems.

[Stuart Epperson]

To be losing its Christian orientation.

[John FIA]

People are hearing it. And that was a way of living out your faith, right? One of the key components of evangelical Christianity is evangelism, right? Sharing one's faith.

[Katie Thornton]

FIA also remembers hearing a show called Focus on the Family with James Dobson.

[Stuart Epperson]

Some Homosexuality begins by roommates.

[Katie Thornton]

Dobson was a big name in evangelical radio, still is. He's known for his homophobic rhetoric and for preaching corporal punishment and that a wife's place is in the home. But in the FIA household, the broadcasts communicated another message.

[John FIA]

My father didn't need James Dobson to tell him how to be an authoritarian figure in the family or that that people must submit to my father, to his will in the family. He was doing it well before he became an evangelical Christian. So when James Dobson came along and said, hey, yeah, you have authority, right? People must submit to you, but you have to be a person of God that people want to submit to. You need to be a good husband, you need to be a good father, you need to show love. That changed my father's life.

[Katie Thornton]

Salem's co founders were out to save souls. So the more people they could reach, the better.

[Adam Peori]

Their big breakthrough was when they acquired kkla, which was a thousand times more powerful than the one in Oxnard. And once they had this blue chip Los Angeles area station as collateral, they could get a lot bigger loans. From 86 to 1990, they moved into Chicago. They bought two stations in Portland, one in San Diego. They got a strong signal in New York City.

[Katie Thornton]

In a handful of years, Salem more than doubled their stations, and they started producing their own religious shows, too.

[Adam Peori]

They would tape shows at kkla, and they beamed them out to affiliates, offering the company a big advantage over single operators.

[Katie Thornton]

This way, they could use their own programs to fill the airtime that they didn't sell to preachers. Rather than paying a whole cast of local hosts in every city. You know, economies of scale and all that. And to drive home just how much this business model worked for them. Let me tell you about that big New York City station. They bought wmca, home of the good guys. Years after Salem took over wmca, they still didn't have enough listeners to rank among the city's top 24 stations. That's a key metric for advertisers, and most commercial stations live and die on advertising dollars. But with money coming in from paying ministries and their homemade shows filling some gaps, Salem had built a media network that wasn't all that dependent on a large audience and advertisers. With this model, they could broadcast their socially conservative religious programming to a niche audience and still get bigger, still grow their platform, still buy more stations. But we need to back up a little bit, because all of this growth didn't happen in a vacuum. So let me tell you another story about a political movement that was gathering steam in America and how it came to be intertwined with Salem. In the early 1970s, while Epperson and Atsinger were sowing the seeds of their empire in California, in Washington, D.C. a young Republican activist named Paul Weyrich was at his wit's end. He was a transplant from Wisconsin and only 30 years old. But for the previous decade, he'd been trying, and by his later account, utterly failing, to get conservative Christians to vote and to get Republicans to welcome them into the party.

[Stuart Epperson]

I remember calling the Republican party chairman in 1962 when the ruling came down against prayer in the schools.

[Katie Thornton]

This is Weyrich reflecting on his life's work in a 2005 interview with C SPAN.

[Stuart Epperson]

And I said, the party ought to come out really against that. And he said, oh, why would we want to mix up the party in that kind of an issue? And I said, well, because it's wrong.

[Katie Thornton]

Weyrich believed that evangelicals were an untapped voting bloc. Vote for the right. But try as he might, he could not find an issue that got evangelicals out from the pews and to the polls. Not the ban on prayer in public school or the women's rights movement, not the counterculture of the 1960s or pornography. Not even abortion.

[Stuart Epperson]

Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions. The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that the decision to end a pregnancy during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government.

[Katie Thornton]

According to popular lore, the Roe v. WADE Ruling in 1973 was the point at which morally outraged conservative Christians finally entered the political fray. Anne Nelson.

[Anne Nelson]

But in terms of the Protestants and even the conservative sects like the Southern Baptists, there wasn't a huge diversion from mainstream public opinion, which was that abortion should be available under certain circumstances. As of the 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention was Far more liberal in its approach to abortion policy than it is now.

[Katie Thornton]

Southern baptists are the country's largest evangelical sect. At the time of the roe ruling, their official newspaper said that, quote, religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the supreme court abortion decision. A lot of other evangelicals just didn't have much to say on abortion before or after roe. They saw it as a catholic issue. But in the early 1970s, one issue was getting a response from some evangelical leaders.

[Anne Nelson]

When the schools were integrated over the objections of certain communities.

[Progressive Insurance]

Let us go to our neighborhoods where our kids.

[Anne Nelson]

They opened what they called christian schools, also known as segregation academies, and offered the so called religious education as an opportunity for white students to go to school without any black students.

[Katie Thornton]

Citing freedom of religion, some religious groups created nonprofit tax exempt organizations to run these segregation academies. Since 1970, the IRS had been threatening and occasionally cracking down on several of these schools. And among the schools the irs was battling with was Stuart epperson and Edward atsinger's alma mater, Bob jones university.

[Stuart Epperson]

The greatest peril that faces America today is a religious peril. The line of demarcations being rubbed out between those men that would exalt God to men that would trim him down.

[Anne Nelson]

Bob jones was somebody who had a whole theology of segregation where he said, the bible said that races should not mix. It's against God's law. And eventually the federal government said, well, if you do not follow our integration requirements, you will lose your tax exempt status.

[Katie Thornton]

In 1976, that's exactly what happened. Bob jones university became the latest victory in the federal government's integration campaign. And some leaders in the evangelical community were not happy. Wyrick saw this as a winning campaign, but he was politically savvy enough to know that a rallying cry in opposition to integration wasn't a good look. So he hitched the anger over the school fight to another, more palatable abortion.

[Anne Nelson]

Once abortion became legal and available, the numbers rose precipitously. People looked at the number of abortions, and a lot of people found it concerning.

[Stuart Epperson]

About 40 people gathered outside a clinic to demonstrate their opposition to abortion, While the majority picketed peacefully Outside.

[Katie Thornton]

Catholics, many of whom were long opposed to abortion, spent the eve of the 1978 midterm elections leafletting church parking lots in three states. Iowa, New Hampshire, and my home of Minnesota, trying to get voters out for anti abortion senate candidates there. And it worked.

[Stuart Epperson]

From the NBC News Election center in New York, decision 78.

[Katie Thornton]

In a low turnout election, those candidates won.

[Stuart Epperson]

In minnesota, an upset there.

[Katie Thornton]

Our projections Show Republican David Durenberg. So Weyrich took a cue from the Catholics and tried the cause again with evangelicals. He and a few of his fellow conservative activists teamed up with an evangelical pastor, Francis Schaeffer, who was against abortion. Schaeffer and his son made a series of films and showed them in churches and theaters across the country starting in 1979.

[Stuart Epperson]

We have killing quotas for whales and porpoises, but it is always open season on unborn babies. While we can appreciate this protection of our environment, do you wonder why, I ask, whatever happened to the human race and to our sense of values?

[Katie Thornton]

Schaeffer's son recalled that by the end of the film tour, they were calling for an anti abortion takeover of the Republican Party. But though the abortion issue was getting more support among evangelicals, it still wasn't crystallizing as the issue. In August of 1980, presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan gave a campaign speech to 10,000 evangelicals at the legendary Reunion arena in Dallas, often considered the first large gathering of the new religious right.

[Stuart Epperson]

Now, I know this is a non partisan gathering and so I know that you can't endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.

[Katie Thornton]

The candidate didn't mention abortion at all, but he did mention the IRS's censure of independent schools.

[Anne Nelson]

The year of the elections, 1980, you had a substantial vote in the south for Ronald Reagan against the Democrat who was an actual evangelical Christian. Jimmy Carter.

[Katie Thornton]

In this burgeoning fusion of politics and religion, policies trumped faith. Reagan was given a pass.

[Stuart Epperson]

A sports announcer, a film actor, governor of California. On this election night, we have projected Ronald Reagan the winner.

[Katie Thornton]

Paul Weyrich's work had come to fruition and he wanted to be sure there was no going back. So in 1981, he helped found the Council for National Policy.

[Anne Nelson]

The Council for National Policy was founded as a very secretive organization that networked big donors, political strategists and media operators.

[Katie Thornton]

The New York Times has described the CNP as a little known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law center called it a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix. According to leaked rosters, recent membership in the CNP and its lobbying army has included the likes of Ginni Thomas, Mike Pence, Martin Blackwell, who runs the conservative activist training hub, the Leadership Institute, and Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who worked with Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, and Salem co founders Stuart Epperson and Edward Atzinger. How did the Salem leadership come to be part of this exclusive network? It was all thanks to the power of radio. When Paul Weyrich helped form the Council for National Policy, he knew that strategizing among elite leaders wouldn't be enough. They would need megaphones. And he knew how compelling radio could be. Before he was a political strategist, Weyrich had been an on air host and program director at a Kenosha, Wisconsin radio station and news director at a Denver station. Radio was to be a crucial channel for the new religious right and a way to help the CNP reach a very specific constituency.

[Anne Nelson]

You could go after older white Protestant voters and if you engage them through fundamentalist radio broadcasting combined with their churches and you mobilize them around certain issues, then you could turn them into highly motivated, high propensity voters who could really make a difference in strategic elections.

[Katie Thornton]

Strategic is the key word here, not widespread get out the vote efforts.

[Stuart Epperson]

How many of our Christians have what I call the goo goo syndrome? Good government. They want everybody to vote.

[Katie Thornton]

Weyrich explained his strategy in a speech he gave to evangelical leaders in 1980.

[Stuart Epperson]

I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

[Katie Thornton]

This was the goal of the Council for National Policy to reach the right people. And around this time a certain fledgling Christian radio network was doing just that. That's coming up after the break.

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[Phil Boyce]

OntheMedia is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states since Donald Trump reassumed office. Over 200 lawsuits have been filed against his administration. Firings, tariffs, immigration, climate policy. It's hard to keep track of and even harder to understand. I'm former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara, and on my podcast Stay Tuned with Preet, I'm joined by experts to break down complex legal stories and cut through the noise of this administration. It may feel tempting to tune out, but now more than ever, we need to stay engaged. Search and Follow Stay Tuned with TREAT Wherever you listen.

[Katie Thornton]

This is the Divided Dial. I'm Katie Thornton. When we left the Salem story, Epperson and Atsinger had developed a solid business model. Unencumbered by audience preferences or the whims of Advertisers in the 1980s, their Christian radio stations were multiplying, and as more and more evangelicals became immersed in politics. Salem's co founders were no exception. Stuart Epperson ran for Congress twice in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, the on air content was getting more political too. Their programs, though socially conservative from the start, had been Christian first, politics second. But in 1987, there was a change on the national radio stage that let the political stuff run wild.

[Adam Peori]

The Fairness Doctrine required that you give airtime to opposing views, reporter Adam Peori, which of course limited Salem's ability to talk about abortion and homosexuality and many of the hot button issues that they care about.

[Katie Thornton]

The decades old Fairness Doctrine had required stations to have a degree of ideological balance in their coverage and to present multiple sides of controversial topics. We'll talk about it more in later episodes. But the Fairness Doctrine was declared dead by Reagan's fcc, and once that was.

[Adam Peori]

Lifted, they were able to opine on those positions all the time.

[Katie Thornton]

For an increasingly politicized Salem, the end of the Fairness Doctrine was a godsend.

[Adam Peori]

Terry Fahey, who was the manager for kkla, the big LA station, was telling me he recognized the power that they had after the Fairest Doctrine was repealed. When Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ hit the theaters in 1988, Mother.

[Stuart Epperson]

I'm sorry for being a bad son.

[Katie Thornton]

Many evangelicals were upset with how the film portrayed Jesus. They felt he wasn't Christlike enough.

[Stuart Epperson]

Father, stay with me.

[Katie Thornton]

Don't leave me.

[Adam Peori]

Kkla spearheaded a demonstration at MCA Universal Studios. Protesters mobbed the entrance, waving signs Anybody.

[Katie Thornton]

Who mocks the Crucifixion will burn in Hell.

[Adam Peori]

They blocked Route 101. Tens of thousands of people participated in protests at theaters and video stores nationwide. And that was when they realized that the radio station did have the ability.

[Katie Thornton]

To mobilize in the early 1990s, Atsinger formed a political action group that was among the largest political donors in California. In 1994, Republicans gained control of the state assembly for the first time in 25 years after two thirds of the candidates he backed won their elections. And around this time, Stuart Epperson was welcomed into the Council for National Policy, followed soon by Edward Atsinger. And not long after, Salem announced a major change to their mission.

[Phil Boyce]

A station that covers the current news.

[Stuart Epperson]

In depth and then gives you a.

[Katie Thornton]

Chance to talk about it at all.

[Phil Boyce]

Times of the day, 24 hours a day.

[Katie Thornton]

In 1995, they officially expanded from pulpit to politics. So let me introduce you to that.

[Phil Boyce]

Station, the all new AM 1280 WWTC.

[Adam Peori]

Or as we around here are going.

[Katie Thornton]

To call it, the Patriot.

[Stuart Epperson]

More power than a Tomahawk cruise. EM 1280 the Patriots.

[Katie Thornton]

Salem started building conservative talk stations in cities where they already had Christian teach and talk stations. They'd save costs by putting everyone in the same office and then they'd promote their new conservative talk station on their religious station. It was a transformative step for the ever more ideological company. And it made good business sense too.

[Adam Peori]

When they surveyed their listenership and asked their listeners who were listening to sermons where they were turning the dial after they found them turning the dial to talk radio and people like Rush Limbaugh.

[Katie Thornton]

Salem's answers to Rush Limbaugh were hosts like Oliver north of Iran Contra infamy and Alan Keyes, a member of Reagan's cabinet. And some names you still hear on Salem stations or could until recently.

[Stuart Epperson]

Michael Medved. You put more people in jail for.

[Katie Thornton]

Longer term crime goes down.

[John FIA]

Hugh Hewitt, he was an assistant counsel.

[Stuart Epperson]

In the White House and he's just conservative. He's not even close to being a member of the far right. Dennis Prager, you are saying that in, in many important parts of this world, mafiosi run the society.

[Katie Thornton]

On Salem's news talk stations, the company took a big tent approach. Alan Keys was an early black conservative activist and Prager and Medved are Jewish. These new hosts weren't necessarily spouting theology, but they all communicated what the founders saw as the Judeo Christian stance on political issues like abortion, gay marriage and eventually the war on terrorism.

[Adam Peori]

These are all hosts who are sort of unified in their belief that the secularism that has bled into mainstream America, that we've kind of lost something, that we've lost our moral compass, as Stuart Epperson put it.

[Katie Thornton]

All the while on Salem's original Christian teach and talk stage, politics were muscling.

[Anne Nelson]

In what this is, is right wing talk radio. Dressed in the fundamentalist equivalent of priestly robes. Ann Nelson Salem describes itself as a Christian network. Now they monopolize the term Christian. There are millions and millions of Christians who would not agree with their approach to Christianity.

[Katie Thornton]

On their religious stations and their new secular stations, Salem's talk show hosts built an audience that would support the kind of work that Epperson and Atsinger and the Council for National Policy were doing behind the scenes. And Salem kept buying up frequencies.

[Adam Peori]

At a certain point, they began bumping up against FCC laws limiting the number of stations any one company could own nationwide.

[Katie Thornton]

In each market since the 1940s, the FCC had laws to ensure that no one company could grow too large. But then, in February of 1996.

[Stuart Epperson]

Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future.

[Katie Thornton]

President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act.

[Stuart Epperson]

I thanked a vast array of interest groups who had sometimes conflicting concerns about this bill, who were able to work together.

[Katie Thornton]

And among the many things it did was eliminate the cap on the number of stations a single radio chain could own nationwide. Salem gave money to lobby for the bill. And between 1994 and 2005, Salem grew from 18 stations to 103. You know what happens next. With their radio empire secured, Salem looked to digital media, buying up conservative blogs and news sites, eventually launching their podcast network, streaming service and production house. All the while, the company's founders were rising in the Council for National Policy. By the early 2000 and tens, both Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger were in leadership positions. In 2014, Epperson was president of the CNP, overseeing members like Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. A new recruit, according to the most recently leaked roster, is Salem host election denier and right wing conspiracy theorist Charlie Kirk. Four decades ago, Paul Weyrich used radio to help Republicans reach a new religious audience and change the destiny of their party. Today, the right wing talk radio ethos is inextricable from the party's DNA, thanks in part to Salem Media. Next time on the divided dial. Seventeen of the nation's top 20 most listened to talk radio hosts are conservative. Only one is progressive. And yet on talk radio there is a constant refrain of victimhood. Salem VP Phil Boyce.

[Stuart Epperson]

Talk radio is one of the most powerful forms of of communication of the base. They do want to kill us.

[Katie Thornton]

And when it comes to claims about censorship, they're not entirely wrong. In the century long history of radio in the United States, there has been censorship on the air. It just hasn't all been directed at the right. The Divided Dial is written and reported by me, Katie Thornton, and edited by Katya Rogers. We had help from Max Bolton and Sona Avakian. Music and sound design is by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our Technical Director. This series is a production of on the Media and WNYC Studios with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Listen to the upcoming episodes of the series wherever you get your podcasts and follow my work on Instagram at its Katiethorne. Thanks for listening.

[Progressive Insurance]

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