Every once in awhile, I'm going to post something up that isn't sports oriented, so I apologize in advance if you are offended or annoyed. That's the cool thing about having your own blog site.

As a working broadcaster for almost thirty years, I found the discussion on Fox News with talk show host Bill Press regarding the so called "fairness doctrine" laughable. 

The fairness doctrine is the outmoded notion that I, as a radio station, must allow equal time for those who have opposing viewpoints or for those wishing to refute my views.  Back in the days when stations did editorials, it was common to have a member of the community offer a rebuttal to the opinion of the station.  And in 1953, that was fine.  It's not 1953 anymore.

Here are some of the reasons Press is out of his tree hugging skull:

• Press said several times radio stations get their licenses for free.  That is not true.  There are renewal fees that continue to go up as government falls further and further into debt.  There is also the army of lawyers you need to retain to properly prepare the documents.  No free lunch, Bill sorry.
• Bill thinks that liberal radio can be successful If more stations aired it.  Bill, if it made money, more would, trust me.
• Bill names markets where liberal radio has been successful and they would be the epicenter of the liberal universe.  Of course they work there. Bill.  We call that a free market economy. 
• Bill apparently doesn't believe broadcasters are in the business of selling advertising.  If advertisers in a given market won't support a liberal talk station, then it does the station no good to air the format.  This is not an altruistic business.
• Bill keeps pounding the "serving the public interest" clause of a radio license.  And, for the most part, stations do serve the public interest with news, weather, storm alerts, Amber alerts and public service programs.  No running liberal talk shows neither serves nor under serves the public interest.  That's just fill for advertising revenue. 
  
• What Bill and his friends are bucking for are to force stations to run programming they don't want to run to provide balance.  So, rather than go from Neil Bortz to Rush to Hanity to Savage, Press would like a station to go from Bortz to Rachael Maddow to Hanity to Ed Shultz.  This is block programming and block programming no longer works.  It's like playing Slayer in the morning and Barry Manilow in the afternoon.

Here's what this would cause: Most of the conservative shows targeted by guys like Press are aired on networks.  So, then the question becomes if Rush or Hanity or Savage say something on their show that offends people of opposing viewpoints, does someone in the local audience get to rebut it on the local station, even though the local station didn't originate the programming and is not responsible for it's content?  If that becomes the law (and that's what Press is gunning for) radio stations would be forced to transcribe every show and allow every left wing nut on the air to rebut something that didn't even come from their studio.  This would add a cost of doing business that most radio stations couldn't bear. 

I had a manager once who really believed that he had to allow equal time for Rush bashing Bill Clinton and never believed me when I told him that was not the case.  That's one of the reasons he fired me, I guess.(Boy, I have worked for some dumb S.O.B.s in my time.)

The next thing is that the government, on behalf of the music industry, will begin to regulate formats.  Want to put a sports talk station in Milwaukee?  Sorry, there are already two, but we do have an availability for liberal talk, classical and polka.

It's time to tell congress and the FCC that the fairness doctrine argument is made up of a bunch of people with an agenda that can't otherwise get on the radio.  Not because it is being prevented from doing so, but because it is not commercially viable.  If liberal radio were entertaining and if people wanted to hear it, they would.  But apparently neither is the case and now Bill press, like most liberals, will try to force the government into adding regulations so that listening to bad programming is mandatory.  Sorry, Bill.  That's not free enterprise and that is un-American.  After all, it is called commercial radio.