How did Talk Radio Get So Politically Lop-Sided?

Summary

Detailed Summary of "How did Talk Radio Get So Politically Lop-Sided?"

Podcast: On the Media
Host: Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger
Release Date: March 17, 2023
Episode Title: How did Talk Radio Get So Politically Lop-Sided?

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1. Introduction: The Conservative Dominance in Talk Radio

Brooke Gladstone opens the episode by highlighting a significant imbalance in the talk radio landscape: "Seventeen of the nation's top 20 most listened to talk radio hosts are conservative. Only one is progressive. How did the public airwaves come to be so politically lopsided?" (00:00) This sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of the historical and regulatory factors that have shaped talk radio into its current state.

2. Early Radio as a Platform for Political Discourse

In the 1930s, radio served as a central hub for political debate and public discourse. Katie Thornton narrates the era, noting that radio was akin to the "cafe culture" where "debates about politics, debates about the future of the United States were all taking place" (03:22). Both left and right-wing voices utilized the medium to influence public opinion during the Great Depression.

Notable Voices:

• Huey Long criticized President Roosevelt's New Deal from the left (04:05).
• Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest, opposed Roosevelt and the Works Progress Administration from the right (04:21).

3. The Fairness Doctrine and Broadcast Regulation

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced the Mayflower Doctrine in the late 1930s, aiming to prevent the spread of fascist propaganda by limiting broadcasters from sharing personal opinions on air (06:11). This led to the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, which mandated that broadcasters present multiple perspectives on controversial issues and provide airtime for counter-arguments (08:04).

Nicole Hemmer explains that the Fairness Doctrine inadvertently boosted conservative broadcasting by framing oppositional voices as silenced, thus fostering a narrative of media bias (08:25).

4. The Rise of Christian Conservative Media

By the 1960s, conservative talk radio began to solidify its presence. Figures like Pat Robertson leveraged television to blend religious messaging with conservative politics. The launch of The 700 Club in 1966, which went national in 1974, became a pivotal platform for evangelical and conservative ideologies (21:24).

Robertson transformed his show from religious discourse to a "propaganda sort of news organization with a conservative news bent" (22:32). This strategy laid the groundwork for aligning Christian conservative views with Republican politics.

5. The Emergence of Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh's journey in radio began in the 1960s, but his major breakthrough came in 1984 when a Sacramento station gave him his own show. Limbaugh shifted his format from weather and traffic to politics, attracting a dedicated conservative audience (36:14). His approach emphasized entertainment and monetization over traditional punditry, quickly garnering high ratings and substantial advertising revenue.

6. Deregulation and the 1996 Telecommunications Act

The Reagan administration in the 1980s initiated significant deregulation of the FCC's policies. Mark Lloyd, a former FCC counsel, states, "We ended up with an operation called Clear Channel that owned over 1,200 radio stations, which was just unheard of during the public interest moment" (46:19). The 1996 Telecommunications Act further accelerated this trend by eliminating national ownership caps, leading to massive consolidation in the radio industry.

7. Consolidation and the Consolidation's Impact on Talk Radio

With deregulation, companies like Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) and Salem Media Group amassed extensive networks of radio stations. These conglomerates favored syndicating successful conservative hosts like Rush Limbaugh across numerous markets due to cost-efficiency and guaranteed audience engagement (45:00; 47:05).

Limbaugh's business model, which initially used the barter method—offering his show for free in exchange for ad slots—proved highly effective. As satellite technology advanced, national syndication became more feasible, allowing Limbaugh's conservative message to reach a vast audience (44:34).

8. The Decline of Progressive Talk Radio

Attempts to establish progressive talk radio, such as Air America, struggled against the dominant conservative narrative. Air America's lack of station ownership and structural support made it difficult to compete with established conservative networks. By early 2010, Air America had ceased operations, reinforcing the conservative stronghold on talk radio (50:41; 51:10).

Brian Rosenwald points out that the failure of liberal radio initiatives was not due to a lack of demand but rather the overwhelming infrastructure and market dominance established by conservative syndicates.

9. The Consolidated Conservative Stronghold

By the early 2000s, about two-thirds of talk radio leaned right, a shift largely attributed to deregulation and the business strategies of major media conglomerates. Phil Boyce of Salem Media Group emphasizes the enduring influence of conservative talk radio, stating, "Talk radio is over without [Rush Limbaugh]" (52:21). However, the legacy of deregulation and consolidation ensures that conservative voices remain predominant.

10. Conclusion: The Persistent Conservative Dominance

The episode concludes by affirming that despite Narratives and predictions of decline, conservative talk radio continues to thrive. Even after Rush Limbaugh's passing, conservative voices maintain a significant presence, with 12 of the top 15 talk radio hosts being right-wing (52:39). Salem Media Group's Phil Boyce asserts the resilience of conservative talk radio, underscoring its entrenched position in the media landscape.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Rush Limbaugh (00:14): "If you turn the country station on and you hear Beethoven's fifth, you're going to be confused. Radio executives think that people feel the same way about talk."

• Pat Robertson (00:22): "Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives and right minded Republicans and those who want to be either or both."

• Mark Lloyd (10:18): "The folks who had money and made determinations about what got on television or radio, they were not interested in in the appeals of the civil rights movement."

• Rich Limbaugh (40:17): "Them out, people start calling up and saying, thank God you're on the air, Russ. We finally have a voice."

• Phil Boyce (52:21): "Talk radio is over without [Rush Limbaugh]."

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Key Takeaways

• Regulatory Shifts: The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the 1996 Telecommunications Act were pivotal in enabling the consolidation and domination of conservative voices in talk radio.

• Consolidation: Media conglomerates like Clear Channel and Salem Media Group strategically promoted conservative hosts, ensuring their widespread reach and influence.

• Business Models: Innovative syndication methods, particularly Rush Limbaugh's barter model, allowed conservative talk shows to thrive financially and grow their audience.

• Suppression of Progressive Voices: Structural and economic barriers made it challenging for progressive talk radio to gain a foothold, leading to its limited presence compared to its conservative counterparts.

• Legacy of Fear: The initial narrative of media bias and censorship cultivated by conservative hosts fostered a loyal listener base that perceives talk radio as a platform for their voices and concerns.

This episode of "On the Media" meticulously traces the historical, regulatory, and economic pathways that have led to the current conservative dominance in talk radio, underscoring the interplay between government policy, media consolidation, and audience dynamics.

Transcript

[Brooke Gladstone]

On this Week's on the media. Seventeen of the nation's top 20 most listened to talk radio hosts are conservative. Only one is progressive. How did the public airwaves come to be so politically lopsided?

[Rush Limbaugh]

If you turn the country station on and you hear Beethoven's fifth, you're going to be confused. Radio executives think that people feel the same way about talk.

[Pat Robertson]

Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives and right minded Republicans and those who want to be either or both. We sold it as news from a biblical worldview, but it was funny how that biblical worldview seemed to line up with Republican Party politics. Why would we want to have any Democrats on I'm never going to speak. I am a working mother. Yeah, and my kids are fine. They have. They are not. Who's raising them? You don't have them. The babysitter's got them. You ain't no mama. Get off my program, you liberal.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It's all coming up after this.

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[Willa Paskin]

Hi, I'm Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring, Slate's podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. On Decoder Ring, we dive down rabbit holes and obsessively explore questions hiding in plain sight, like why has slow dancing gone out of style? And when did we all become obsessed with hydration? And where did the word mullet, you know, to describe a hairstyle come from? That's Decoder Ring, named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by the New York Times. Listen to new episodes every two weeks and make sure. Follow us so you never miss one.

[Brooke Gladstone]

From WNYC in New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last week, in the first episode of our investigation into talk radio, we introduced you to Salem Media, a company that has deep ties to the Republican Party and Who, thanks to its involvement with a secretive group of evangelical and conservative leaders, is tightly networked with right wing political strategists, pollsters and big donors. This week we take a detour from Salem's Story and shine a light on the larger history of the right's ascendancy on the air, which it achieved by simultaneously arguing that it was being silenced. It turns out that the boogeyman of liberal media bias has been animating conservative movements and conservative radio for nearly nine decades. Here's our guide through the series. Reporter Katie Thornton.

[Katie Thornton]

By the 1930s, most Americans had a radio in the house, and a network of long distance phone lines brought a select few programs to stations across the country.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The radio dial really was the sort of cafe culture of the 1930s.

[Katie Thornton]

This is Nicole Hemmer. She's an author and historian who studies media and conservative movements.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It was the place where debates about politics, debates about the future of the United States were all taking place. Because remember, it's in the middle of the Great Depression and people are pretty panicked. They don't know that the United States is coming out of this.

[Katie Thornton]

From the left, Louisiana's Huey Long roasted Roosevelt for not going far enough with the New Deal. And coming at Roosevelt from the right, blasting Depression era efforts like the Works Progress Administration, was one Father Charles Coughlan.

[Pat Robertson]

You people living on the WPA envelopes, WPA envelopes filled partly from the money confiscated from industry and commerce and from the envelopes of those who are working.

[Katie Thornton]

The Catholic radio priest, once a supporter, became one of President Roosevelt's loudest critics. He hated the New Deal and considered Roosevelt a dictator. He was controversial, but controversy was allowed on the radio, at least for a while.

[Pat Robertson]

The shadow of the goose step falls on Austrian soil, while in Vienna, Austria's Nazi leader watches a gigantic parade on the balcony of the.

[Katie Thornton]

Toward the end of the 1930s, the news focus shifted from the US economy to the brewing conflict in Europe. At first, the idea of staying out of the war predominated. Even Roosevelt didn't want in. Popular sentiment shifted as news of German atrocities crossed the ocean. But not everyone changed their mind. And many who didn't began lacing their anti interventionism with vicious anti Semitism. Here's Father Coughlin in a broadcast from 1938 after the violent events of Kristallnacht.

[Pat Robertson]

Students of history recognize that Nazism is only a defense mechanism against communism and especially that prosecution of the Christians always begets persecution of the Jew.

[Katie Thornton]

In the late 1930s, Coughlin had an estimated 15 million people listening each month, almost one in every nine Americans.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The FCC saw that in Italy and Germany, leaders were using radio to propagandize to their people. And they were really concerned about that happening in the United States.

[Katie Thornton]

Fearing the spread of fascism, the FCC passed the Mayflower Doctrine, which prohibited broadcasters from sharing opinions over the airwaves. With this anti Semitic hate speech really was pushed off of radio. And many on the right felt that the die was cast. The media was a tool of the US government and the government was silencing conservative voices.

[Nicole Hemmer]

They understood their loss of platforms as a kind of censorship of their ideas.

[Katie Thornton]

But Nicole Hemmer says that the effect wasn't just quieting.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Anti Semites, non interventionist voices were finding it harder and harder to find a platform. And particularly once the US goes to war, there is no space in media for people who are arguing that the US should not be involved in the war.

[Katie Thornton]

It wasn't just non interventionists on the right like Father Coughlin who were feeling the chill.

[Nicole Hemmer]

There were socialist pacifists who opposed the war, communists who were for the war because the US was allied with the Soviet Union, but who had other opinions about the United States and about the US economy that were not welcome on air.

[Katie Thornton]

In truth, many on the left had found it hard to get on the radio long before the war with the wartime restrictions on speech. It was the far right's turn to feel the sting of censorship. But it didn't last long. In 1949, the FCC did a complete 180.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The FCC says actually stations have an obligation to cover controversial issues. They have to, we give them a license. This is the public service that they provide.

[Katie Thornton]

And here's the kicker. The on air coverage had to be fair.

[Nicole Hemmer]

It's kind of a compromise that, all right, we're going to let you editorialize, but we still don't want you to turn into propaganda outlets.

[Katie Thornton]

This is the basis of what comes to be known as the Fairness Doctrine. It required stations to present multiple perspectives on controversial issues. And if a group felt maligned or underrepresented, they could request airtime to refute the claims made about them. And that airtime had to be given for free. When the Fairness Doctrine first got going, it wasn't a problem for conservatives.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Conservative broadcasting really starts to take off after the Fairness Doctrine is implemented because they're considered to fulfill a public interest obligation or that they're introducing controversial ideas.

[Katie Thornton]

By the early 1960s, what was regarded as the radical right and their media mouthpieces were the hot gossip. Publications like Time and the Nation wrote about what one Article called Hate clubs of the Air. Newly appointed president John F. Kennedy was no fan of these broadcasters. And in 1961, he worked with two friends of his labor leader brothers, Walter and Victor Reuther.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Victor Reuther puts together this memo on how Kennedy can use the powers of the federal government that he's just acquired in order to battle back against this anti labor radical right. There are things like the irs, you can audit people, and there's the fcc. And he talks about conservative and anti union broadcasters and, and says you can use the FCC to shut these voices down.

[Katie Thornton]

Kennedy's FCC liked the idea and sent notifications to stations highlighting conservative talking points with a reminder that under the fairness doctrine, such controversial opinions needed to be countered. And when the Reuthers memo to Kennedy was leaked, conservatives used its existence to.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Say, aha, we are victims of federal censorship. Give us money, support our programs. This is evidence of what we've been telling you all this time.

[Katie Thornton]

While conservatives lamented the effects of the Reuther memo, there was a movement that was unequivocally finding it very difficult to get airtime.

[Pat Robertson]

The first demand is that we have effective civil rights legislation.

[Mark Lloyd]

The folks who had money and made determinations about what got on television or radio, they were not interested in in the appeals of the civil rights movement.

[Katie Thornton]

Mark Lloyd is a lawyer and former associate general counsel at the fcc. He says leaders of the civil rights movement were not always welcomed on the mostly white owned stations, which played primarily to white audiences and appealed to white advertisers.

[Mark Lloyd]

They weren't interested in what it was that Thurgood Marshall had to say about the Brown v. Board of Education and how it was being implemented in schools. That's not what they wanted to hear.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Those remarks about Brown v. Board of Education that Mark Lloyd referred to kicked up a long legal saga that would change the American radio landscape. That's coming up after the break. This is on the media.

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[Willa Paskin]

Hi, I'm Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring, Slate's podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. On Decoder Ring, we dive down rabbit holes and obsessively explore questions hiding in plain sight, like why has slow dancing gone out of style? And when did we all become obsessed with hydration. And where did the word mullet, you know, to describe a hairstyle come from? That's Decoder Ring, named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by the New York Times. Listen to new episodes every two weeks and make sure to follow us so you never miss one.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is ON THE media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Before the break, we heard about the long legal saga that would change the American radio landscape. Reporter Katie Thornton picks up the story.

[Katie Thornton]

In 1955, after future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall had argued the case that desegregated the schools, he went on NBC to talk about it.

[Pat Robertson]

We do believe that this decision in itself will encourage the people to take further steps without litigation in many areas. And that's what I think is important for our.

[Katie Thornton]

But that didn't go over well with the owner of an NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, at a combination TV and radio station called wlbt.

[Pat Robertson]

Thurker Marshall was on a national program.

[Rush Limbaugh]

And they cut the feed. You know, when he was on.

[Katie Thornton]

This is Joseph Torres who co wrote a book titled News for All the the Epic Story of Race and the American Media. And he says that instead of playing the segment, WLBT's TV station showed a slide reading sorry, cable trouble from New York. And it wouldn't be the only time WLBT cut the NBC feed during coverage of the civil rights movement.

[Pat Robertson]

The general manager of the station was.

[Rush Limbaugh]

A member of the White Citizens Council and he was a, you know, staunch segregationist.

[Mark Lloyd]

Black folks in the Jackson, Mississippi area, which were roughly 40% of the population, were not allowed even buy time on the station. Mark Lloyd, the editorials that would come out from the station manager all supported the position of the White Citizens Council, which was against integration.

[Katie Thornton]

Throughout the civil rights era, a small number of very influential black hosts were broadcasting on a handful of more progressive stations. But over the years, the KKK and other racist groups ransacked, bombed and destroyed offices, transmitters and towers of some stations that played so called race mixing, rock and roll or that broadcast left wing content and intimidation was commonplace.

[Pat Robertson]

The plan moved this year against radio station wbox, whose owner invited former operations Arkansas congressman Brooks Hayes to make a speech on race relations. Klansmen made hundreds of anonymous phone calls to the station sponsors. The effect was immediate. 75% of the commercials were canceled.

[Katie Thornton]

WBOX on many mainstream stations, the lack of media coverage of the civil rights movement was so pervasive that leaders like Martin Luther King started explicitly calling it out in the 1960s and asking allies to help the movement get attention. And in the case of WLBT in Mississippi, A liberal minded church group, the United church of Christ, answered the call.

[Mark Lloyd]

The united church of Christ office of communication joined with a local Jackson, Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and sued the federal communications commission and won.

[Katie Thornton]

The years long legal battle eventually ended with a federal court ruling that under the direction of a dedicated white supremacist, WLBT was not serving their local community's public interest. WLBT could stay on the air, but their license would be transferred to a nonprofit, a group made up of black and white broadcasters. But even before the WLBT case was settled, it was sending shockwaves through the media world. Just by allowing the case to move forward, the court had set an important, important precedent. For the first time, members of the public could ask the FCC to investigate a broadcaster if they didn't think their station was serving the public interest or being fair. Joseph Torres it was monumental, right?

[Rush Limbaugh]

The idea that US Citizens had legal.

[Pat Robertson]

Standing to challenge a broadcast license.

[Katie Thornton]

Across the country, listeners filed hundreds of license challenges.

[Pat Robertson]

The broadcast industry considers this an assault on the don't use that language. They're being assaulted.

[Mark Lloyd]

The stations began to understand that if they did not follow these guidelines, if they didn't follow the fairness doctrine, then local communities would challenge their licenses.

[Katie Thornton]

Broadcasters were panicked. So the FCC started laying out some guidelines of how they could avoid the same fate, how they could better serve the public interest. And they start pushing something they called ascertainment, where the station had to go.

[Pat Robertson]

Out and ascertain the needs of the.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Community as part of his license renewal process.

[Mark Lloyd]

This was done by radio stations and television stations, commercial stations, public stations across the country.

[Katie Thornton]

In fact, doing these ascertainments was part of Mark's job early on in his career.

[Mark Lloyd]

I had to go out into migrant fields and church basements and women's shelters and ask leaders in their places of power what they thought were the important issues facing the local communities.

[Katie Thornton]

Though the fairness doctrine had been on the books since 1949, it hadn't actually prevented stations from running racist, one sided programming. But with the legal challenges of the 1960s, that started to change.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Pro segregation forces are right that they're in the losing end of that shift.

[Katie Thornton]

The decline in segregationist broadcasts led many on the right to double down on an old trope, as they're no longer.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Seeing their viewpoints reflected in positive ways. They read that as liberal bias, Although.

[Katie Thornton]

When some broadcasters asked the FCC to clarify the doctrine, the government made it clear that they didn't expect stations to give airtime to some leftists like, say, communists or to atheists. But even so, all of the civil rights era changes kicked off what Mark Lloyd refers to as broadcasting's public interest moment.

[Mark Lloyd]

We had an explosion of not only news programs, we had an explosion of Sunday morning public affairs programs.

[Katie Thornton]

The FCC would come to require stations, even those that played mostly music, to run at least a little bit of educational programming. There were wellness shows, guides to good.

[Pat Robertson]

Living, a program designed to help you enjoy a fuller and healthier life.

[Katie Thornton]

Shows about social justice, Indian land, Radio.

[Pat Robertson]

Indian Land, Alcatraz Island. On behalf of the Indians of all tribes, we understand the only thing that's held black people down this long is the rampant racism. Probably my first step in becoming a separatist was realizing that I was gay and finding that the only literature on gays was about men.

[Katie Thornton]

There were shows about farming and labor.

[Pat Robertson]

My name is Ray Kauer. I have a 280 acre farm. I would like to know how I could cut down on my harvest losses on corn.

[Katie Thornton]

TV, also overseen by the FCC, had its own huge public interest moment.

[Pat Robertson]

This is 60 Minutes. It's a kind of a magazine for television. And if this broadcast does what we hope it will do, it will report reality.

[Mark Lloyd]

This is, this was the time when we really began to see news and public affairs programs become really important in the American culture.

[Katie Thornton]

Let's make something clear. This sea change in the media wasn't because the FCC was going around and punishing stations for not adhering to the Fairness Doctrine or not serving the public interest. They rarely actually enforced these policies. The threat alone of citizens taking legal action was often enough to get stations to change their coverage. In fact, only one radio station ever lost its license for falling foul of the FCC's fairness and public interest guidelines. It was WXUR, owned by Fire Breathing Radio Reverend Carl McIntyre. Karl McIntyre repeatedly broadcast scathing screeds against the civil rights movement.

[Pat Robertson]

Then let the guilt lie squarely upon such philosophers as Martin Luther King and President Johnson. What did the Negro apologist of our time expect?

[Katie Thornton]

He espoused paranoid ideas of communist penetration into the US government.

[Pat Robertson]

White Americans. What the world ought to see is that the communists are so wicked and so evil that men have ever and.

[Katie Thornton]

Trumpeted anti Semitic ideas.

[Pat Robertson]

The Jews at the present time are in darkness. They're going back in unbelief.

[Katie Thornton]

But all of that was left. What did his station in was his lack of ideological balance. And when the license came up for renewal, the FCC denied it. But while WXUR was deprived of air by the fcc, Christian broadcasting writ large, was not in mortal danger, just the opposite.

[Pat Robertson]

Hello, Katie.

[Katie Thornton]

Hi. This is Terry.

[Pat Robertson]

This is Terry.

[Katie Thornton]

Hi.

[Pat Robertson]

Terry Heaton.

[Katie Thornton]

How are you doing? Terry Heaton is a TV guy, always has been, but a lot of the work he did on TV helped shape what was heard on Christian.

[Pat Robertson]

Well, the 700 Club was. When I got there, it was just. It was a television talk show.

[Katie Thornton]

At the time, the 700 Club was a little more than that. It was a wildly popular early televangelist show.

[Pat Robertson]

Well, thank you and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this edition of the 700 Club.

[Katie Thornton]

Launched in 1966, it went national in 1974. And at its heart was Minister Pat Robertson.

[Pat Robertson]

Pat Robertson was the son of a U.S. senator and Virginia. So politics was in his blood.

[Katie Thornton]

Robertson was an early mover and shaker in the religious right, a close confidant of many conservative politicians. He was also an early leader of the Council for National Policy, that secretive group of conservative strategists, donors and media personalities founded after Reagan's victory, which would come to welcome the Salem co founders into its fold. The 700 Club was a megaphone for the group's goals even before Salem was.

[Pat Robertson]

I became the executive producer of that show during a time when it was transforming from what was a religious talk show into a propaganda sort of news organization with a conservative news bent.

[Katie Thornton]

Pat Robertson's show was savvy and smart, and his Christian conservative message broke through in a way no religious program had ever done before.

[Pat Robertson]

Young people are bombarded by distorted visual images and twisted music messages that are saturating their minds and, yes, sabotaging their futures. We sold it as news from a biblical worldview. But it was funny how that biblical worldview seemed to line up with Republican Party politics.

[Katie Thornton]

The show didn't just push conservative politics, it peddled in persecution.

[Pat Robertson]

If you're a feminist, if you're a homosexual, if you're any of those things, you can say what you want to about your preconceptions. But if you are a Christian and you write in favor of the Christian point of view, then you are considered a right wing and you can't work any longer in a, quote, objective news orientation. Ladies and gentlemen.

[Katie Thornton]

Pat Robertson pushed the idea that Christian producers needed to not just make media, but to own the means of distribution. And he founded the first Christian TV network, which eventually helped spread the 700 Club across the country. And he owned a small string of radio stations, too. That network model was a blueprint for other Christian communicators, all the leaders of.

[Pat Robertson]

All These organizations, they all looked to Pat. Pat knew them all. And all of these Christian radio stations and other TV networks, they all had the gospel at core, but they also had this Republican God needs us to take over the world kind of mindset.

[Katie Thornton]

By the start of the 1980s, one out of every seven radio stations in the country was Christian. Though they pushed the idea that conservatives were being silenced, the religious right had established a comfortable place for themselves in the new media ecosystem. And yet they didn't dominate. Thanks to the victories of the civil rights movement and that public interest moment, the radio dial was still a place that welcomed and protected a diversity of voices. But all of that was about to change.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Coming up, how we got from that public interest moment to today's conservative talk radio landscape. This is on the Media.

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[Willa Paskin]

Hi, I'm Willa Paskin, the host of Decoder Ring, Slate's podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. On Decoder Ring, we dive down Rabbit Hol and obsessively explore questions hiding in plain sight, like why has slow dancing gone out of style? And when did we all become obsessed with hydration? And where did the word mullet, you know, to describe a hairstyle, come from? That's Decoder Ring, named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by the New York Times. Listen to new episodes every two weeks and make sure to follow us so you never miss one.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. When we left off our story, Christian radio was ascendant, but it didn't yet dominate the airwaves. How did we get from there to here? Reporter Katie Thornton explains.

[Katie Thornton]

In the 1970s, talk and public affairs shows exploded in part because of the FCC's public interest moment, but also because of a great technological leak.

[Pat Robertson]

No static. No static.

[Katie Thornton]

No static at all. That was the promise of FM radio the year this steely dance song came out. 1978, the FM band beat AM in listeners for the first time.

[Pat Robertson]

The difference in reception will leap to the ear.

[Katie Thornton]

With AM or amplitude modulation radio, there was always a sort of ambient hum, lots of interference, like looking through a dirty window. But with FM or frequency modulation, sound was encoded into radio signals differently. And compared to AM's muck, it was freshly shined glass.

[Nicole Hemmer]

As the FM dial opens up, radio stations that play music are like, we're going to be an FM station now.

[Katie Thornton]

Historian and author Nicole Hemmer.

[Nicole Hemmer]

And that actually leads to some languishing in the AM dial. And for AM stations, at first, low.

[Katie Thornton]

Quality AM radio struggled to find its competitive advantage. That is, until it landed on talk.

[Pat Robertson]

Talk and more talk. Advice to the lovelorn, to the investor, to the shopper.

[Katie Thornton]

Talk radio was AM's salvation, and the special sauce was the listeners themselves.

[Pat Robertson]

But among the most popular of talk is the invitation to the audience to talk back. Hello, you're on the air is as familiar a phrase on radio these days as the station's call letters. It's an invitation.

[Katie Thornton]

In radio's earlier days, it was awkward and clunky to get a listener on the air, with hosts either holding up the phone to the mic or holding it to their ear and saying before reiterating to listeners what the caller said. But changes in broadcast regulations and improvements, improved telephone technology, made it easier for listeners to get on the air.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The idea that somebody can hear themselves on the radio by calling in and talking to the host sounds so old school at this point, but it really was a revolution. You could now be like a local celebrity because you're calling in and able to have your voice heard on a station. And it changes the medium because it makes people feel invested in shows, because even if they don't call in, they hear people like themselves calling in and they feel like they're being represented on this new talk radio.

[Katie Thornton]

Around this time in the late 70s and early 80s, satellite dishes were also becoming more accessible, allowing some larger networks to beam a select few shows across long distances in real time. Combine that with easier and cheaper long distance calling and once you have those.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Two things where I can make a toll free call to a show that is being aired around the nation all at the same time so that people in Oregon and people in New York can be listening to the same content at the same time, can be calling in at the same time. Now you can have a national conversation.

[Pat Robertson]

On radio Network radio's most listened to coast to coast talk program featuring guests from from around the world and calls from all across.

[Katie Thornton]

National slots for talk radio were prized going to the rare host like Larry King.

[Pat Robertson]

Thank you, Fred Loring. Good evening everybody on this.

[Katie Thornton]

But in local markets, call in shows with local hosts and local listeners ruled. And these call in shows, while very egalitarian, weren't always the most civil. You still got your teeth, the original teeth, of course.

[Pat Robertson]

Imagine this woman being your grandmother. Oh, really? My three and a half year old. Hey, hey, honey loves you. Something about old people, when they get on the phone, they love to talk about their personal life. And I know it's real interesting to you, but we gotta move along.

[Katie Thornton]

The early 1980s saw the dawn of the shock jock era, with Baltimore's Howard Stern famously at the helm.

[Pat Robertson]

Man, when I get to your age, I hope they shoot me. Oh, I hope so too.

[Katie Thornton]

Hosts like Stern and those who followed in his footsteps were usually confined to local markets early on. And their shows weren't always political, mostly just lewd and abrasive. But by the early 1980s, some shock jocks were adding politics to their shows.

[Pat Robertson]

I have been called by my program director, God to bring the truth. Why would we want to have any Democrats? Losers. I'm never gonna speak. I am a working mother.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Yeah, and my kids are fine.

[Pat Robertson]

They have. No, they are not. Who's raising them? You don't have them. The babysitter's got em. You ain't no mama. Get off my program, you liberal.

[Katie Thornton]

And they weren't just conservatives. There were liberal shock jocks too, like sharp tongued former attorney Alan Berg, who broadcast out of Denver on an AM station called koa. Its powerful signal allowed Berg to reach listeners in about 30 surrounding states.

[Pat Robertson]

If you don't like it, you can move to Moscow. Correct? In other words, if you're not a Christian, you're un American. Is that your point, sir?

[Katie Thornton]

That's right.

[Pat Robertson]

Good point, sir. You and your redneck go to bed.

[Katie Thornton]

Berg was Jewish and he goaded the right wingers, racists and anti Semites who flooded his phone lines. In a poll, Denver residents were asked to name the city's most beloved media personality and its most despised. Alan Berg won both, and by early 1984, he was making a splash nationally. Here he is on 60 Minutes.

[Pat Robertson]

Isn't there something a little dangerous about this kind of broadcasting? There is a danger, I agree with you, but I think that's the danger that we exhibit in all rights of free expression, be it columnists who write newspapers. Yeah, indeed. But you say yourself, you often go on there, you don't know quite what you're gonna say. Hopefully my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me. And I've come awfully close.

[Katie Thornton]

It was less than six months after that segment aired that 50 year old Alan Berg was gunned down in his driveway by members of the newly formed white supremacist group the Order. The driver of the Getaway car was identified as a man who had previously called into Alan Berg's show.

[Mark Lloyd]

I think the Jews are still firmly in control of the Soviet Union.

[Pat Robertson]

I think they're responsible for the murder.

[Mark Lloyd]

Of 50 million white Christians.

[Pat Robertson]

You think so?

[Mark Lloyd]

Yes, I do.

[Pat Robertson]

I think you're sick. I think you're pathetic. I think your ability to reason and use any logic. Put a Nazi on your program and.

[Mark Lloyd]

Then you'll have somebody.

[Pat Robertson]

Sir, you are a Nazi by your very own ambition. Thank you so much. He said, that's right, you heard it. Okay. Eight, six, one. It's 1042. On a very, very, very blue evening.

[Katie Thornton]

There were other liberal talkers, but for Berg's colleagues and listeners and for left wing radio, this was a huge loss.

[Pat Robertson]

You're on the air. Go ahead.

[Katie Thornton]

I am so sorry for your grief. I find it so hard to believe. I could not believe what I heard. I can't believe how low people will go. At the time Berg was murdered, radio was undergoing another colossal change, this one from the halls of government. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he inherited a media ecosystem that was flourishing, buoyed by hard won regulations.

[Mark Lloyd]

But the Reagan administration came in and began to eliminate all of those regulations.

[Katie Thornton]

Mark Lloyd says that not long after his inauguration, Reagan's FCC started killing off the policies and guidelines that had been built up during the civil rights era.

[Mark Lloyd]

We had ascertainments, we had a set of guidelines about how to serve local communities. It was an entire regime that enforced local service. Then Reagan came in, all of it was gone.

[Nicole Hemmer]

The FCC made some major changes in.

[Mark Lloyd]

How radio stations are run.

[Katie Thornton]

No more requirements to go and find out what local residents wanted to hear. No more mandate to run educational shows. The FCC also made it harder for people to challenge broadcast licenses like civil rights groups had done by the hundreds to get fairer representation. The long standing Fairness Doctrine was still on the books, but without these other policies, it didn't have as much bite.

[Mark Lloyd]

Get rid of all that and the result is Rush Limbaugh.

[Katie Thornton]

When broadcasting's public interest moment was in full swing in the 1970s, Rush Limbaugh wasn't really a part of it. He was on the air, but he was a dj, queuing up songs and reporting on weather and traffic in between.

[Pat Robertson]

1360, solid rock and gold. And for the morning rush hour, sunny and cold today, Radar says a near 0% chance of precipitation.

[Katie Thornton]

Limbaugh had been in love with the medium since he was a kid. His dad, who was once a part owner of a station in their hometown, of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, got young Rush his first radio gig there in the 1960s, when Rush was only 16. But after that, he found it hard to keep a job. By the early 1980s, after well over a decade in the industry, Limbaugh had been fired from five stations, mostly for interpersonal reasons.

[Pat Robertson]

Hello tonight down to 22 degrees. Nippy, nippy, nippy.

[Katie Thornton]

Limbaugh spent a few years working in sales for the Kansas City Royals. But he was back behind the mic in 1983, now in his 30s and trying his hand at news coverage. He lasted less than a year before getting fired again. But the next year, in 1984, a station out of Sacramento took a gamble on Limbaugh and gave him his own show.

[Pat Robertson]

This is KFPK Sacramento.

[Katie Thornton]

And it was there that he really honed his pitch. Less weather and traffic, more politics and preening.

[Pat Robertson]

Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program exclusively designed for rich conservatives and right minded Republicans and those who want to be either or both.

[Katie Thornton]

And the phones lit up. Whether callers wanted to argue or agree with Limbaugh's right wing hot takes, they all wanted to talk. Ratings soared and advertising dollars poured in for Limbaugh, who had made it clear that he was an entertainer and moneymaker first, pundit second. It was a gold mine.

[Pat Robertson]

The views expressed by the host on this show are not necessarily those of the staff, management nor sponsors of this station, but they ought to be.

[Katie Thornton]

Limbaugh was in many ways representative of the new post public interest radio dial of the mid-1908. After deregulation began in earnest in 1981, the number of complaints to the FCC about racial stereotyping went up. So did complaints about a lack of programming for minority groups. And then, of course, in 1987, Reagan's FCC dealt the death blow. This week, the FCC voted down the Fairness Doctrine by a vote of 4 to 0. The logic of doing with the Fairness.

[Pat Robertson]

Doctrine was, oh, well, now all of.

[Katie Thornton]

These towns have 100, 500, 1000 channels on their cable systems. Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Media Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.

[Pat Robertson]

So anybody can find any opinion they.

[Katie Thornton]

Want and we don't need to have that requirement for individual broadcasters anymore. But she says there were a couple of issues with the FCC's argument. First of all, you know, you can't watch 100 channels.

[Pat Robertson]

In fact, it's this fire hose of.

[Katie Thornton]

Information is going to be so overwhelming.

[Pat Robertson]

That you'll probably just stick to one or two channels.

[Katie Thornton]

Also, not everyone had cable. And even if you did you can't watch cable. While commuting to work or working on most job sites, plenty of people still relied on radio, not television, for their news. And the existence of cable TV didn't suddenly mean there were more radio frequencies. The Fairness Doctrine had not been perfect. Adhering to it was a big logistical headache. Station staff had to monitor hosts for controversial material and figure out how to make free airtime available to people who wanted to respond. Many scholars believe that it kept some broadcasters who didn't want to do their due diligence from broadcasting controversial material at all. But for many, including some conservatives, it had been an important means of getting ideas out.

[Nicole Hemmer]

By the time you have the repeal of the fairness doctrine in 1987, you have a whole cohort of conservatives, people like Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, who want to see the Fairness Doctrine kept in place.

[Katie Thornton]

The Democratic led Congress, with the help of some of these conservative leaders, actually passed a law to codify the Fairness Doctrine, which had just been an FCC policy. But Reagan vetoed it. And as it turns out, it wasn't a loss for the right. Without the Fairness Doctrine in place, highly political, often vitriolic talk radio skyrocketed. And Sacramento area's Rush Limbaugh was the breakout star of the moment. And a year after the doctrine was overturned, he's taking his act to New.

[Pat Robertson]

York City, where his radio show will be nationally syndicated.

[Katie Thornton]

Limbach quickly made a name for himself from WABC in New York. Limbaugh looked to get a rise out of listeners, including liberals, who made up a quarter of his audience in the early days. But as time went on, he appealed more to those who felt that popular culture was edging toward greater representation of the marginalized, and consequently, they felt, leaving.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Them out, people start calling up and saying, thank God you're on the air, Russ. We finally have a voice.

[Katie Thornton]

Brian Rosenwald is the author of talk radio's how an Industry Took Over a Political Party that Took over the United States.

[Rush Limbaugh]

And it's ironic, right, because this is the 80s. Ronald Reagan is still in office. They have the White House, they have the biggest platform in the world, but they don't feel that way. And in some sense they're right, to be honest, that the liberals are still winning the culture wars even as the conservatives are gaining more political power. And over time, they start to lose the liberal audience.

[Katie Thornton]

Eventually, even the skeptical conservatives came around on deregulation.

[Nicole Hemmer]

Nicole Hammer it's not until Rush Limbaugh takes off and they see the power of this deregulated medium that suddenly the conservative line is, yes, the Fairness Doctrine is bad. It only exists to shut up Rush Limbaugh, and we all oppose it.

[Katie Thornton]

But it wasn't just political conservatives fueling Limbaugh's growth. It was also his large of evangelical Christians.

[John Fia]

I was in seminary. This would have been maybe 89, 90. And everybody on my floor, all these seminarians, were listening to this new guy, Rush Limbaugh.

[Katie Thornton]

This is John fia, the professor of history at Messiah Christian University in Pennsylvania, who in last week's episode told us about the omnipresence of Christian radio in his childhood.

[John Fia]

You know, you'd go into the lounge or you'd go into the bathroom or whatever, and they're talking, hey, did you hear what Rush said?

[Pat Robertson]

Which is why I say, this cat's taught me more about women than anything my whole life.

[John Fia]

And I had no idea who this guy was, and I started listening to him. So I remember being quite taken entertained by Limbaugh in seminary.

[Katie Thornton]

John eventually grew to be a Limbaugh critic, but in the early days, he was on board and not unlike his dad, who evangelized with Christian radio blaring from his truck, John turned around and shared the word of Rush with his old man.

[John Fia]

I introduced my father to Rush Limbaugh. I'll never forget this. My parents kind of convinced me to come home from Chicago for our annual trip to the Jersey Shore. And I remember saying, dad, you gotta hear this guy. I think he'll like him. And I remember turning him on and he was hooked.

[Pat Robertson]

Half my brain tied behind my back.

[John Fia]

Just to make it fair, he listened to him every single day that vacation and then continued to listen to him. This replaced Christian radio in his truck.

[Pat Robertson]

Most listened to radio talk show in America.

[Katie Thornton]

Years of well organized Christian media networking and socially conservative programming from the likes of the 700 Club's Pat Robertson or Salem's early teach and talk stations meant that in content, if not tone, Limbaugh wasn't a giant leap from what a lot of Christians were already listening to.

[John Fia]

Any historian would find the roots of Limbaughism in Christian radio in the 70s and 80s.

[Katie Thornton]

It was around this time that Salem, then just a Christian network, surveyed their listeners and found that when they turned the dial, they tended to stop at conservative talkers like Limbaugh. Christian radio helped prime audiences for Limbaugh and Limbaugh. Appealing to anxieties around cultural changes helped shape Christian radio.

[John Fia]

This anxiety and fear turned Christian radio into a kind of political outlet to serve the culture wars.

[Katie Thornton]

Republican politicians soon realized that getting in good with Limbaugh meant getting in good with his listeners. President George H.W. bush literally carried Limbaugh's bags into the White House when he came for a visit. Limbaugh imitators abounded, and by 1995, about 2/3 of talk radio leaned right. End of story. Right.

[Mark Lloyd]

The story that's often told, Mark Lloyd, is that the Fairness Doctrine ended, and that made the way for Rush Limbaugh to come on the air and really reach an audience that had never been served before and provide continuous conservative views. It's nonsensical.

[Katie Thornton]

So if it wasn't Limbaugh's firebrand personality that drove his success, what did?

[Rush Limbaugh]

Syndicated shows, starting with Limbaugh, come along and they offer programs by what they call the barter method, which essentially means that you don't pay for the show.

[Katie Thornton]

Brian Rosenwald says that with the barter method, Limbaugh's group offered the show to stations across the country for free, just in return for the ad time within the show, which they could sell to advertisers who wanted to reach a national audience.

[Rush Limbaugh]

So essentially, you're not losing anything if you're at the station. You're not handing out money, you're not paying a salary, you're not paying a flat fee or something.

[Katie Thornton]

Barter based syndication is common practice now. And Limbaugh eventually went on to charge stations to carry his show. But as a business model, it was pretty new back then.

[Pat Robertson]

Rush will still be heard here.

[Katie Thornton]

And then there were those satellites. As the cost of the technology went down, satellite transmission became more affordable, and going national wasn't as big a deal. But perhaps the single most important factor contributing to the right's dominance of the radio dial was the 1996 Telecommunications act and its elimination of national ownership capsules. Those were the longstanding legal limits on the number of stations that a single company could own. That number had been increasing for years under Reagan. But in 96, the national limit for radio chains was eliminated.

[Rush Limbaugh]

And that ends up triggering massive, like, frenetic consolidation in the radio business in the late 90s, where companies are merging, companies are buying each other up. It basically becomes clear to most owners that you're not going to survive as, like, an individual owner. You either need to get big or get out.

[Mark Lloyd]

We ended up with an operation called Clear Channel that owned over 1200 radio stations, which was just unheard of during the public interest moment. The idea that any one entity could.

[Katie Thornton]

Own 1200 stations before the 96 Act. Clear Channel now called iHeartMedia, had just 43 stations. And starting in 1998, Clear Channel owned Premier Radio Networks.

[Mark Lloyd]

And guess who Premier radio networks owned. They owned the Rush Limbaugh show. And guess what? Clear Channel and the Premier Radio networks promoted and put on every station they could. Well, they put on the show that they owned, Rush Limbaugh.

[Katie Thornton]

And while no other company got as big as Clear Channel, others like Salem and Entercom, which soon acquired Sinclair's radio stations, grew exponentially. Cumulus, a media giant, was formed in the wake of the act. And all of this economic consolidation changed what could be heard on the airwaves.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Why does this affect programming? Well, it affects programming because you end up getting these companies that become vertically integrated for one set of talent and one set of production costs. You can program a show that you can then air on a huge chunk of your stations.

[Katie Thornton]

It was cheaper for a company to invest in one big host who they could blast out across the country than it was to hire local hosts in every city. And as the higher ups were programming for their newly expanded networks, they stuck to tried and tested formats.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Consolidation and these big corporate ownerships create risk adverse companies, risk adverse executives, executives who want to program something that they know will work, and conservative talk is it.

[Katie Thornton]

In the 90s and early 2000s, more and more talk stations switched from showcasing a variety of opinions to airing one political perspective all day, mirroring an approach called format purity in music radio.

[Rush Limbaugh]

If you turn the country station on and you hear Beethoven's fifth, you're going to be confused. Radio executives think that people feel the same way about talking about that. If you turn on the conservative talk station and there's a liberal guy on, you're like, did I turn the wrong station on? That there needs to be predictability from.

[Katie Thornton]

A station manager's perspective. Platforming talkers like Rush Limbaugh was predictable and also safe.

[Rush Limbaugh]

What is dangerous is raunch stuff that's going to threaten your FCC license. Conservative talk, for as harsh as it can be, is largely safe. And it's one decision upon one decision upon one decision that makes this make more and more and more sense, to the point that you get to the 2000s, and then they're like, okay, yeah, all conservative, all political, all nationally syndicated, or mostly nationally syndicated. That's how we make our money.

[Mark Lloyd]

There were no progressive or liberal talkers on commercial radio in Philadelphia. And certainly there are liberal and progressive people in Philadelphia. There were no progressive or liberal talkers on commercial radio in Houston. And certainly there are liberal and progressive folks who were interested in that programming, but none. They were not being served by commercial radio stations in those markets.

[Katie Thornton]

In 2007, Mark Lloyd worked on a study that looked at news talk radio stations owned by the country's five biggest commercial radio companies, including Salem.

[Mark Lloyd]

What we found was that conservative talk dominated liberal or progressive talk by 10 to 1.

[Katie Thornton]

The study also noted that in some markets where left leaning talk was aired, it could bring in money and ratings. But the big conglomerates hardly bothered. They could afford not to. The only real attempt by liberals to give conservative radio a run for its Money came into 2004.

[Pat Robertson]

Air America Radio Real facts in a.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Filtered world with even more intensity politics and culture.

[Katie Thornton]

Air America had hosts like Al Franken.

[Pat Robertson]

Today is both an ending and a beginning. An end to the right wing dominance of talk radio.

[Katie Thornton]

Public enemies Chuck D in the House on the real.

[Pat Robertson]

What's up bro?

[Katie Thornton]

And Rachel Maddow.

[Mark Lloyd]

This is the Rachel Maddow show here on Air America.

[Katie Thornton]

But from the get go, there were some issues. A lot of the hosts were new to radio and just weren't that great. But importantly, Air America lacked the structures that had benefited Limbaugh. Air America didn't own any stations. They just made shows. So they had to convince existing stations to run Air America programs. Not easy in this era of format purity and big chain ownership. Air America was off the air by early 2010.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Brian Rosenwald what happens is a lot of people in the radio business take the Air America failure and say, see liberal radio won't work.

[Katie Thornton]

The 1996 Telecommunications act was an economic decision, not one that regulated content. But in practice, it hit both. It meant that the loudest voices didn't have to be the the most representative ones. Extreme rhetoric like Rush Limbaugh's might have remained on the fringes if his ideas and attitudes hadn't been echoed by host after host on station after station. Because with the infrastructure working in your favor, you can bring the extreme into the mainstream and make it look organic. Rush Limbaugh was not the first to do what he did, but he was the right guy at the right time when years of deregulation were coming to a head. But because the narrative is that conservative talk radio started with Limbaugh and in many ways was Limbaugh, a lot of people predicted it would end with Limbaugh too.

[Pat Robertson]

I heard this narrative now several times.

[Katie Thornton]

Salem's senior Vice president Phil Boyce, since.

[Pat Robertson]

Rush has passed, that talk radio is over without.

[Katie Thornton]

But as Phil Boyce knows well, radio still has an enormous reach. And today, without Limbaugh on the dial, it's still the case that 12 of the top 15 talk radio hosts are right wing.

[Pat Robertson]

Talk radio will go on. Those of us here at the Salem Radio Network, we built the strongest conservative radio platform on the planet. This this battle continue.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Next week. In the final installment of our series, we go in search of possible legal and legislative solutions to the rampant dissemination of election denial and other misleading discourse on the air.

[Katie Thornton]

And U breed's Salem Media Group, the leading media corporation serving America's Christian and conservative communities.

[Brooke Gladstone]

After a lot of unanswered calls, emails and some rejections, Katie finally got to hear directly from someone at Salem. Someone with a lot of sway.

[Pat Robertson]

Hi, Katie.

[Katie Thornton]

Hello, Mr. Boyce. Can you hear me?

[Pat Robertson]

I can hear you.

[Katie Thornton]

I can hear you. Okay.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Speaking of shameful stuff, this week's show was written and reported by Katie Thornton with production help from Max Bolton and fact checking by Graham Hacher. Music and sound design is by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. The show is edited by OTM executive producer Katya Rogers. This series is a production of on the Media and WNYC Studios with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Katie Thornton]

I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their lives. Cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship. Wnyc. Org.