Liberal Northern California Congressdummy Will Push to Reimpose "Fairness" Doctrine

A classic example of lefty blathering:

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (pictured), D-Palo Alto, said Monday she will work to restore the Fairness Doctrine and have it apply to cable and satellite programming as well as radio and TV.

“I’ll work on bringing it back. I still believe in it,” Eshoo told the Daily Post in Palo Alto.

The Fairness Doctrine required TV and radio stations to balance opposing points of view. It meant that those who disagreed with the political slant of a commentator were entitled to free air time to give contrasting points of view, usually in the same time slot as the original broadcast.

The doctrine was repealed by the Reagan administration's Federal Communications Commission in 1987, and a year later, Rush Limbaugh's show went national, ushering in a new form of AM radio.

Conservative talk show hosts fear the doctrine will result in their programs being canceled because stations don't want to offer large amounts of air time to opponents whose response programs probably wouldn't get good ratings.

Eshoo said she would recommend the doctrine be applied not only to radio and TV broadcasts, but also to cable and satellite services.

“It should and will affect everyone,” she said.

She called the present system “unfair,” and said "there should be equal time for the spoken word."

This simple-minded effort by Eschoo (Gesuhndheit!) just proves that liberals have absolutely no knowledge of how broadcasting works. They think that because NPR is still on the radio there's a market for liberal nonsense. In fact, the only reason NPR is still on the air is because the government subsidizes it. Without that, it would fail as quickly as Airhead America did.

The reason that conservative talk radio because such a force is not because there was a evil cabal of conservatives who forced it onto the airwaves, but because there were millions of people who wanted to hear it. And where there are millions of listeners, there are big-money advertisers willing to pay large dollars for ad time. Advertisers will not pay for ads on shows nobody is listening to, and if there's on thing that Airhead America proved it's that there is a very limited audience for whining and complaining.

I doubt if the Fairness Doctrine will be reinstated, and it certainly won't be applied to all the various areas Eschoo (Gesuhnheit!) wants to apply it. She simply doesn't understand that the opportunities for opinion are much greater than they were in the 80's and it will be impossible to stop conservatives from getting their message out.