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Deregulation and Commercial Radio Network News
DEREGULATION AND COMMERCIAL RADIO NETWORK NEWS: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
Richard Landesberg
Ph.D. Candidate
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Office phone: 919-244-1154
Home Address:
106 Eagle Meadow CT
Morrisville, NC 27560
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Paper submitted to the Radio-Television Journalism Division
AEJMC
Phoenix 2000
DEREGULATION AND COMMERCIAL RADIO NETWORK NEWS: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
RADIO-TELEVISION JOURNALISM DIVISION
AEJMC
Phoenix 2000
ABSTRACT
The once vibrant and vital business of commercial radio network news is now a declining industry controlled by just two companies. Yet, radio remains a main source of information for many Americans. This study analyzes the consolidation and decline in commercial radio network news and the role of regulation in that decline. It approaches the subject using qualitative methodology to explore the views of network news radio professionals, both journalists and managers.
It was a scene in black and white from a time of innocence and war. The period was the first half of this century; the location was the American living room. The family was gathered around the radio, listening to network reporters talk about Hitler and war in Europe. Radio was the dominant medium and continued to dominate as long as the pictures remained in the mind of the listener. When the pictures became part of the medium, radio started to fade as television ascended.
In commercial network radio news today, these are the facts:
ù Roughly 90 percent of the industry is controlled by just two companies, CBS and ABC
ù The number of independently owned and operated commercial radio networks has gone from six to two in less than 20 years
ù Any radio station owner can hold as many as eight stations in one market
ù There are no limits on how many stations any one owner can hold nationwide
ù Americans still spend a lot of time listening to the radio
For most of its existence, commercial radio was one of the most regulated industries in the United States. Unique among American media that served a First Amendment function of informing the public, radio and television broadcasters operated at the pleasure of the government and had to follow strict government rules. For radio, those rules started disappearing about 20 years ago.
This study examines radio regulation, and subsequent deregulation, as it applies to a very narrow part of the business, commercial radio network news. It focuses on consolidation in commercial radio network news and the effect that has had on the news American's hear on the radio.
This study asks the question:
1) From the perspective of commercial radio network news professionals, how have deregulation and radio network consolidation changed commercial radio network news and its traditional role of operating in the public interest?
IMPORTANCE
In general, radio shows no sign of weakening or disappearing. The average American spends more than three hours a day listening to the radio and has five radio receivers at home . The National Association of Broadcasters claims radio reaches 77 percent of people over the age of 12 everyday and reaches 95 percent of consumers weekly .
Radio remains popular if, for no other reason, than the fact that television and the Internet, and even newspapers, lack a certain amount of portability, making them difficult media to deal with while driving on the freeway or taking a shower. With a medium so pervasive as to travel with us to and from work every day, the impact of radio news, or the lack of radio news should not be underestimated.
With deregulation a relatively new government policy, and its pace increasing dramatically with the Communications Act of 1996, quantitative data is almost non-existent, and that which is there is difficult to assess in light of rapid changes in the industry. Studies have looked at how news has changed on local radio stations but there have been no studies of commercial radio network news. It is therefore the objective of this study to qualitatively analyze the impact of changes in regulation in order to answer the research question. This study looks at the decline of this once powerful voice and the impact on its practitioners and news consumers through the perspective of leading network radio news practitioners.
This study will reveal the feelings and attitudes of present and former network radio journalists caught in the consolidation that now puts CBS Radio in the position of operating five formerly independent radio networks.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF RADIO REGULATION
Understanding the recent changes in radio regulation requires the perspective gained from knowledge of the history of broadcast regulation. Regulation of radio started before voice transmission was a regular part of the medium. The Wireless Act of 1910 was the first U.S. government attempt to regulate broadcasting. The Act required all large ships visiting U.S. ports to install radio equipment by July 1, 1911. Enforcement of the Act fell to the Department of Commerce and Labor's Bureau of Navigation. Radio regulation would remain a Commerce Department function until the Federal Radio Commission was formed in 1927.
The radio age started on October 27, 1920 with KDKA, Pittsburgh that was, at that time, the only U.S. radio station "licensed to render a regular broadcasting service".
A number of conferences preceded passage of the radio act of 1927, the first regulation aimed at radio broadcasting. Prior to passage of that act, all it took to gain a radio frequency was a postcard to the Commerce Secretary, Herbert Hoover, who would then assign a frequency and hours of operation.
The Federal Radio Act of 1927 sought to "maintain the control of the United States over_. radio transmission_., but not the ownership thereof, by individuals, firms or corporations". Owners only held rights to broadcast as long as their licenses were valid. The act is clear about how Congress viewed radio, saying "the commission, from time to time, as public convenience, interest, or necessity requires_" can regulate radio in a variety of ways . Section 9 calls for the granting of licenses "if public convenience, interest or necessity will be served thereby." In other words, the public owns the airwaves and broadcasting should be consistent with the public interest.
The law creating the FRC was designed to be temporary and had to be renewed each year by Congress or the FRC's power would revert to the Commerce Department. Congress was not comfortable with the "independent" part of this independent regulatory commission. Each year, as the legislation came up for renewal, representatives changed parts of the bill, holding hearings for the purpose of further restricting broadcasting .
The tenuous nature of the Radio Act of 1927 clearly indicated the need for some more permanent way to regulate this fledgling industry. It took seven years, but eventually Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934. The first section of the law stated its purpose as "regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio" in order to develop a "rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication system". It is clearly stated that the regulation of the medium is in the best interest of the government and is vital to the national defense.
The Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission, taking all the regulations applying to radio that had been scattered throughout the government and putting them under the umbrella of the FCC. The FCC had far broader authority than the FRC that it replaced. In addition to radio, the FCC had control over interstate telephone and telegraph services. But title III of the act, "Special Provisions Relating to Radio", is very much like the Radio Act of 1927, again saying that the medium is to be operated in the public interest. The rationale behind the regulation was that the broadcast spectrum was a scarce resource, belonging to the public, which broadcasters were allowed to use as long as they did so in the public interest.
The Communications Act of 1934, and the FCC, kept broadcasters in line for decades, with requirements on how much "non-entertainment" programming must be broadcast each day, limitations on the number of radio stations any one company could own, and regular license renewals which required that stations ascertain the needs of the communities they served.
In 1938, the FCC began the chain broadcasting investigation or monopoly probe . The investigation ended three years later with the FCC deciding that there should be more competition in radio, more ideas should be expressed, and the best way to accomplish this would be through licensing policies that prevented concentration of ownership. The commission was concerned that local control of radio was being ceded to the New York run networks.
The FCC only has power over broadcast stations. A network does not, on its own, broadcast over the air. It distributes programs to radio stations that broadcast over the air. But the commission was determined to break up what it saw as great power concentrated in the hands of CBS and NBC. The FCC wanted NBC to divest itself of its secondary network, the "Blue" network, and took a back-door approach to exerting its power. Having no authority over the NBC network, the FCC issued a ruling that no station could get licensed if it was affiliated with any network running more than one network .
NBC challenged this regulation aimed at diminishing the concentration of power in radio networks . The network argued that the FCC went beyond the regulatory powers granted in the 1934 Communications Act. The court ruled in favor of the FCC and made a significant ruling about the commission's power. The court said that the FCC is not just a traffic cop dealing with technical standards. It also has the duty to choose who gets to use the limited broadcast spectrum. This was the first broadcasting case to come before the high court and established the FCC role in defining the public interest in the limited broadcast spectrum. This is a fundamental aspect of broadcast regulation .
REGULATION AND LITERATURE REVIEW
The idea of diverse voices, even in the unregulated business of network radio, was an unchallenged policy of the FCC until the 1980s. In 1981, the Federal Communications Commission started deregulating radio . No longer would operating a station in the "public interest, necessity and convenience" include requiring broadcasters to set aside a small percentage (5-10-percent) of their day for non-entertainment and news broadcasts .
That opened up a whole new world for radio stations owners, suddenly unshackled from federal regulation which mandated what type of news and non-entertainment programs a radio station had to run for a part of the broadcast day. What followed is a phenomenon radio industry people call the transformation of the medium from broadcasting to narrowcasting. Narrowcasting is the niche formula stations use to attract a specific audience, no longer getting everyone in the tent the way so-called "full-service" radio stations had for years.[1]
With stations no longer needing to run news in order to retain their government licenses, those precious minutes devoted to the latest headlines could be used to program more music, talk or commercials. That meant, of course, that many stations would no longer find it necessary to have a news network provide national newscasts and the advertising spots that go with them. The 1981 deregulation also made what had become a fairly routine license renewal process even easier for radio station owners. The term of a radio station license was increased from three to seven years, giving owners a 99-percent chance of renewal .
Throughout the 80s and into the 90s, the FCC continued to deregulate radio, steadily dropping the limitation on how many stations a network or group can own. The last bit of deregulation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, set no limits on the number of stations any one entity can own nationwide. In fact, one group or network can own as many as eight stations in one broadcast market. When, in 1940, the FCC first set a limit on the number of licenses that one owner could control, the limit was six stations nationwide .
The deregulated atmosphere of unlimited ownership of stations directly contravenes the FCC policy upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943. The policy at that time was aimed at diversity, making sure as many voices as possible could be heard on the airwaves. The current policy is strictly market driven, saying that the market can best decide how many different voices are heard on the air. This change in thinking was well articulated by the FCC when it took up the issue of cross-ownership of radio and television stations, relaxing the rules prohibiting one owner from having both radio and television in the same market. While retaining the prohibition, the FCC said, in 1989, that it would look favorably on relaxing the rule on a case-by-case basis. It took a looser, more market driven approach " to reflect the tremendous growth in the number and types of media outlets in large and small markets in the 18 years since the rules were last examined by the Commission" .
Traditionally, the FCC restricted ownership to prevent any one network or owner from monopolizing the scarce, public resource of the airwaves. After the initial limit of six stations to one owner the FCC soon set the limit at seven-AM and seven-FM stations, with no owner allowed to hold more than one radio station in any market. In 1984, the FCC changed the rule to twelve of each. In changing the rule, the commission cited what it called "truly extraordinary" growth in radio and TV outlets since the early 1950s. It further stated that the "elimination of the Seven Station Rule poses no threat to the diversity of independent viewpoints in the information and entertainment markets" .
Less than 10-years later, the rule was liberalized more when, in 1992, the FCC changed to 18 and 18. By 1994, the limit increased to 20. Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act passed by Congress, there are no restrictions on the number of stations any owner can hold . In the eighteen months following the 1996 act, there were more than one thousand mergers in the radio industry .
Deregulation came amidst a general government policy, started during the Carter Administration with Airline deregulation, and which gained momentum during the laissez faire years of the Reagan Administration, which said the market, not government, should regulate business. Deregulation also exists amid a climate of free-market economics bolstered by looser government attitudes toward anti-trust. According to Steinbock, the courts increasingly look at mergers in terms of "market impact" .
Even 25 years ago, the Federal Trade Commission said there must be some "measurable impact on competition" before anti-trust laws are invoked. Deregulation of radio was aimed at making the industry more market driven and less dependent on government regulation for the way that it operates. The market demands that costs be minimized and profits maximized. In radio, where costs are the same if you reach a lot of people or very few, there is an economy of scale to be realized by spreading costs over a number of different stations. In a system where the technology prohibits the building of new stations, the only way to realize that economy of scale is through mergers and acquisitions. One study of radio, but again not of commercial network radio news, shows that radio station mergers have made radio a very healthy medium, while raising the cost of advertising on radio, as ownership continues to be concentrated in the hands of the very few .
Despite all these changes, the FCC has not changed its view that the broadcast spectrum is a scarce commodity to be operated in the public interest, a view that dates back to the Federal Radio Commission. How that scarce commodity is to be parceled out, has changed over the years. No longer does the government take the lead, which is now left up to traditional business forces in the marketplace.
There are a number of scholarly looks at what the new, concentrated ownership of the media means to consumers and to industry, with much of the focus on newspapers. There is no sense of what this means to the surviving commercial radio news networks. Almost half the people polled nationwide report regular usage of the radio for news . This would seem to indicate that people are still seeking out that medium for information.
Much of the literature closest to this topic looks at television or group ownership of local radio stations. The telecommunications Act of 1996, which lifted the old limit on how many stations one company could own nationwide, is a topic that has been addressed but not in terms of network radio news .
While all of these studies of media concentration are applicable to radio network news, none has it as a focus. If there is any mention at all, it is merely in passing or concentrated in the trade press . Even the trade press tends to concentrate on local radio .
Washington Post Radio writer Marc Fisher has an extensive overview of how news is disappearing on local radio . While he concentrates on local news, he also deals with the news suppliers, the radio networks.
The closest study to the topic of this research paper is an American Journalism Review article by Lou Prato . He explores the current strength of radio news but doesn't delve into many of the editorial aspects and future prospects of the industry.
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study is to establish the perspective of radio news network professionals, from across the spectrum of jobs, on the issues surrounding the decline of radio network news. The qualitative methodology of interviewing was used to learn the thinking of these professionals. This type of data, which goes beyond numbers to thought processes on the decline of commercial radio network news, could not be uncovered by gathering quantitative data. The context these interviewees provide cannot be measured in any statistical way.
Qualitative methods are used to understand the unmeasurable. In this case, it is the reaction to the decline of radio network news as measured by different participants in the process. This kind of methodology is properly used when there are few research subjects . It is mainly concerned with identifying and describing a range of opinions and behaviors and does not concern itself with how many hold a certain view, or how strongly that view is held. The findings are presented in terms of impressions gained. Rather than firm conclusions, the findings are supported by evidence in the form of verbatim quotes . The object of the in-depth interview is to get people speaking freely about their opinions, knowledge, feelings and experience .
The approach is the long interview as outlined by McCracken . These professionals have little time so the long interview, designed for penetrating analysis without prolonged contact, is well suited to provide a manageable methodological context. By talking with the interviewees in this manner, the technique elicits the testimony these radio professionals might otherwise have difficulty articulating. As McCracken says, the long interview in qualitative analysis "tells us what people think and do, not how many of them think and do it" (P.49).
Those interviewed for this study were carefully selected to represent a cross-section of radio network jobs as well as "survivors" and "non-survivors" of radio consolidation and deregulation. Due to the inherent limitations of time and money, the interviews concentrated on a very narrow group consisting of people involved in the first news network mergers, Mutual and NBC Radio, that eventually led to the mega-merger with CBS. All of those chosen were in the industry before the first deregulation of 1981 and worked in the business during the deregulated era.
Of the eight interviews of commercial network radio professionals used in this study, four of the interviews were conducted in person, with the interviewees asked to pick a time and place they would feel most comfortable and relaxed. Two picked their office, one wanted to talk outside on a warm, autumn day, and one wanted to talk at her home, after work. Four interviews were conducted on the phone. Two of the phone interviews were conducted during business hours with people in their offices. The other two interviewees were called at their homes. One is retired. The other is working on his Ph.D.
WHO THEY ARE
Norm Pattiz is the Chairman of Westwood One. In many ways, he can be looked upon as the person who started the recent wave of network radio consolidation. A radio syndicator, he bought the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1985. In 1987, Pattiz became the first radio network owner to control two different networks in almost 45 years. Ironically, it was Westwood One's purchase of the NBC Radio Networks that put Pattiz in that position.
Westwood One also owns the two biggest providers of local news, Metro Networks and Shadow Traffic. Westwood One distributes NBC Radio, CBS Radio, Mutual Broadcasting System, Unistar and CNN Radio. A management agreement puts CBS in charge of running Westwood One.
Barbara Porter is Director of Public Affairs at George Washington University, a job she has held for just over one year. Before that, she had been a news anchor for NBC radio for nine years. She also worked for AP radio and UPI radio. At UPI, Porter was news director. Her other experience included working for newspapers and major market radio stations. Porter started in broadcasting in 1977.
Bart Tessler is the Vice President of news for Westwood One. He started with the forerunner of the company in 1975 and has spent his entire broadcast career with the company in its various incarnations. He is currently responsible for overseeing the news product of Westwood One and negotiating with the company's vendors, such as the Associated Press. He no longer has direct responsibility for the news product.
Rachael Myers Lowe is Managing Editor for Westwood One. Her current responsibility is to manage and edit the Westwood One and CBSRadio.com web sites. She has been doing this for the last 18-months, ever since the Mutual/NBC Radio newsroom in Arlington, Virginia, was closed down. Prior to that, she was the Assignments Manager for Mutual/NBC Radio, a job she was promoted to after holding a series of increasingly more responsible positions with the network. Myers Lowe started with Mutual in 1978. She worked in radio since college in 1976.
Mike McKinley started in radio in 1968 at a college radio station in Michigan. He has done TV as well as radio, working for CBS, NBC, and ABC. His responsibilities included reporting, assignments and producing. McKinley worked for Mutual as a news anchor for five-years, until 1982. He later worked as a University professor before being hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, the broadcast industry-lobbying group where he worked from 1993 until August of 1999.
David Bartlett is Director of Global News Services for World Space Corporation. The company provides programming and satellite leasing for direct satellite-to-radio broadcasting in the third world. Bartlett was Program Director for NBC Radio from 1986, before the take-over by Westwood One, until 1988. He was then vice-president for news for NBC Radio. From 1989-1997, Bartlett was head of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. He started his career in local newspapers and radio and has worked in broadcasting for about 30 years.
Jim Bohannon is host of a nationwide, late-night radio show heard on hundreds of stations coast-to-coast. He started working for Mutual at its then Chicago owned station, WCFL, from 1980-83. He then went to Mutual headquarters in Arlington. Bohannon started his radio career in 1960 at a small radio station and continued on through larger markets and then to the network.
Dick Rosse was Senior News Correspondent when he retired from the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1998. He had been with the company for 36 years and had announced his intention to retire just before the company shut down its Arlington newsroom in 1998. He worked as a reporter, news anchor and bureau chief for Mutual.
INTERVIEW CATEGORIES
The interview subjects can be broken down into three categories:
1) Those who view the world of radio network news as a business.
2) Those who are trained as journalists but have jobs or perspectives that force a hybrid view of the industry as both a business and a journalistic endeavor.
3) Those who view radio network news strictly through the journalist's lens, seeing radio network news as a calling that should, at least at times, transcend business considerations.
Pattiz falls into the first category. Tessler and Bartlett are in category two. Myers Lowe, McKinley, Bohannon, Porter and Rosse are in category three.
It should be no surprise that people who have jobs where the business of news is their responsibility should frame the issue in business terms, and that those with primarily editorial functions should frame it in journalistic terms. What is interesting, but again, not surprising, is how the business is perceived. It is a "product" to those with the biggest business interest.
In their interviews, the two highest placed managers, Pattiz and Tessler, frequently refer to "the product" or "products." Pattiz used the word 17 times; Tessler uses the word 30 times. Among those who spent, or are spending, the bulk of their careers on the editorial side, McKinley used the word "product" five times, Bartlett used it twice, and the rest use it three times each. Rosse, the one interviewee who started in network radio news when the industry was perceived as less profit-driven, never refers to network news or network news programs as "the product."
BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE
When Pattiz first bought Mutual and then NBC, it started a chain of commercial radio network mergers that now sees only two companies remaining in that marketplace, CBS (which operates Mutual, NBC Radio, Unistar Radio, CBS Radio and controls sales, budget and affiliates for CNN Radio) and ABC. It is only because the FCC switched from strong regulation to virtually no regulation that this has been allowed to happen.
As one might expect, those involved in the upper echelon of management frame the changes in radio network news in the language of business. For Pattiz, it was a matter of survival of the fiscally fittest. He says, "the move to consolidate by purchasing NBC was really a move that was more for the benefit of the company than it was thinking long term about the effect it would have on the industry. The fact of the matter is that both Mutual and NBC were networks that were losing a lot of money every year. They were not successful networks. Had we not purchased Mutual or had we not purchased NBC, especially in the case of NBC, I think the network would have gone away. We not only, by purchasing those networks, created two entities that went from losing money to making money, but I think, in the case of at least one of them, and probably both of them, we kept those networks around a lot longer than they probably would have been under different circumstances. Certainly up until the time when we went through our next consolidation phase when I bought Unistar, and then after that when Mel (Karmazin) got us the management rights for CBS, I think that the nature of network radio was such and continues to be such that, 50-percent of the radio stations that are affiliated to our networks don't carry the product.[2] It was even more than that when we bought NBC and when we bought Mutual. That's not healthy. So by consolidating the 2 companies, by making them more cost efficient, putting the news gathering and the back-office functions together, it allowed us to keep both of those brand names on the air even though the product was very much the same. Had we not been able to do that, I think both brand names and both product lines would have disappeared"(Pattiz, 1999).
Of course, the next round of consolidation did force those network brand names to disappear. Pattiz says that the earlier consolidation kept them alive 10 years longer than they would have otherwise survived. The conversation with Pattiz, as well as Tessler, is often punctuated, as one might expect, with references to the marketplace as well as the "product."
HYBRID VIEW
Tessler echoes Pattiz in recognizing the power of the marketplace, characterizing the concentration of ownership as "fewer players, stronger players, pretty much meeting the needs of the marketplace because, at the station ownership level, it's changed so much as well. There is no doubt that there has been tremendous consolidation in radio network news. It's consolidated the operation, which leads to editorial consolidation and business consolidation. It's allowed companies to grow and purchase more products or have relationships or be responsible for more products. In general you do have fewer companies, much more financially solvent, very strong businesses that can really make a difference now producing a news product. Where before you absolutely had more players, making less of an impact, less financially solvent" (Tessler, 1999). Tessler looks at the necessity for change in order for the business to survive.
Bartlett also frames the issue in terms of business but he has a different take on deregulation and consolidation. He says deregulation was just a response to the marketplace, not the other way around. In his words, "A lot of people contend that radio stations dropped news and public affairs programming as soon as the FCC deregulated and allowed them to do it. The fact is that, prior to the FCC deregulation, they hadn't dropped the news commitment because the license required it, but they simply placed all the newscasts between midnight and 4 AM and put the usual public affairs show at 9 AM Sunday morning. I think it's the kind of thing where, if anything, the government's action to deregulate simply reflected catching up with what was already happening in the market anyway. We gotta run news so lets stick it overnight." For Bartlett, with the rise of youth-oriented FM radio and fragmenting of the audience, "It no longer made any economic sense to be a full service radio station" (Bartlett, 1999).
JOURNALIST'S VIEW
Bohannon picks up on the issue of the market but sees it from a very different perspective from management. "Deregulation at its bottom line has really been a worship of the marketplace. We used to talk about the free enterprise triad of capital, management and labor, but really these days, labor is barely tolerated, management is somewhat tolerated though they too face their perils, often with parachutes of a golden hue. Capital is worshipped. That's considered all that matters, do you make money?"
Bohannon says he opposed the lifting of regulations requiring stations to carry news. He says, at the time, he had two reasons for his opposition. " There is the altruistic reason and the selfish reason. Selfishly, there are going to be fewer radio news jobs. It's going to hurt us. Altruistically, it's going to hurt the country because at the time, there was a mandate that any station in the country that had a license to broadcast had an obligation of so many hours a week of news and so many hours a week of public affairs programming. And granted, they always buried the public affairs programming on Sunday morning, but they did it. They performed it. And news, sometimes stations tried to bury news but a lot of stations made a lot of money, frankly, with a good news product and a good sales force. And I said (at the time) there will be a lot of stations out there that will decide this is a blank check to go juke box, the public be damned, we will stick cotton-candy for the brain in their ears and that will be the end of it. And I believe that events have subsequently justified my viewpoint."
While making clear that he is a capitalist and is not against making profit he still says, "when people answer every argument about this with, look profits have never been higher, they totally miss the point. I don't care. I don't care. There's more to life than that. In fact, if that was the case, how come your wives and daughters aren't out on the street selling their bodies because, clearly, you could be maximizing your profit. To which, aghast, of course they would say, we can't do that. And you know why, don't you? Because they do have some standards, just not regarding what the public needs to know. They do have standards. But what the public needs to know is not part of them"(Bohannon, 1999).
With McKinley, the emphasis starts to shift. He frames the issue of consolidation and its effect on the radio network news industry in terms of the public interest. "There's more emphasis again on the ratings, more emphasis on making money and less emphasis on meeting what I consider the Federal guidelines of Public Service...I think the concentration of ownership, the emphasis again from the owner's perspective, has been not so much on meeting their public service obligations, because I don't think the owners are really concerned with meeting those obligations. They're not really concerned with keeping the public informed regarding issues going on in their local markets. They're more concerned about selling advertisements so they can make the necessary money to meet their huge debts that are hanging over their heads." entertainment and less on informing their listeners" (McKinley, 1999).
Myers Lowe approaches the impact of deregulation on the industry not in the framework of business, but in the framework of journalism. "When I first started, we were chasing news, we were writing stories, we were generating news and putting it on the air. We'd go out and set up the microphones and actually cover news conferences. We had a pretty large staff as I recall. We would be there with a crowd of other like folks. Now, this is a 20-year jump, with consolidation, and consolidating, for the bottom line, companies being bought up, you sit in a cubicle and it all comes to you. You don't see the person who is holding the news conference, you are not asking questions. If you were to compare the audience for a news conference today to 20 years ago, it would be 1/10 the size" (Myers Lowe, 1999).
Myers Lowe also looks at deregulation in terms of what she sees as the impact from dropping the requirement that stations carry news. "Radio stations, in order to have their licenses, had to support public affairs programming on their stations and that meant even if it was just one or two people on their news staff. A lot of our (MBS) affiliates were small stations but they had news departments. As an editor and producer, if I had a story breaking somewhere you could feel pretty confident that when you called the station there was a news person there who could help you on the story, go out and do reports, get you contacts, whatever. It just seemed like the difference between night and day with the lifting (of regulations) all of these news people seemed to have been fired, every single one of them. I think it was maybe one, two years maybe three at most when station management realized they didn't have to provide this (news). And they didn't because it is a personnel intensive job that costs money. It didn't cost a whole lot of money because believe me you weren't paid too much."
The editorial, journalistic frame is also the approach of Porter. She says, "I just keep thinking, isn't there some kind of anti-trust rule that's being broken here? It used to be that you could drive in a car somewhere and flip the stations and you could either get ABC news, CBS news or NBC news on the hour. And now it's sort of generic, I'm not sure, news. I don't know who it is anymore. Sometimes they don't even sign off with any kind of tag and you don't know what you are listening to or where it is coming from. It's really strange. I think, to me, deregulation has really caused this huge umbrella factor. You have one company that owns all of the networks and you're getting the same news almost in every market"(Porter, 1999).
Rosse, who was in the network radio news business longer than any of the other interviewees, says consolidation led to a point where distinction between the networks became very unclear. But he has a warning to those who would see concentration of radio network news as something evil. " A lot of people are alarmists about this. I was very alarmed when UPI got out of the viable news-gathering business. You could still (get) UPI (wire service) but it was certainly a shadow of its former self, and I was dreading the time when UPI would fold or become non-competitive with the competition, which is Associated Press, because our system requires competition. The competition keeps you on your toes, without competition you get lazy, you get indolent, you start making mistakes, you're not giving the customer fair value. But to my surprise, and delight, the Associated Press is the only game in town, pretty much, however, they do have competition in the form of the Reuters News Agency, and there seems to be spirit of recognition on the part of the Associated Press that they better not lay down on the job because they are the only game in town, and if they do start acting that way then the Feds will be breathing down their necks and they're going to have legislation. So I don't think, if you can use that as an analogy, I don't think the broadcast networks are going to reach a point where it's really going to be bad for the consumer. You still have, in radio terms you still have the CBS network which is an amalgam now of NBC, and Mutual, and CBS, and you have ABC. And if you don't like those two, virtually every market, every place in the country has an NPR station, and those guys are going to go on forever doing five minutes of news on the hour, and long form news with Early Edition, and All Things Considered"(Rosse, 1999).
CONCLUSION
There has been a clear shift in government policy toward radio. No longer is the government heavily regulating the industry to ensure that the scarce broadcast spectrum is operated in the public interest. While the public interest idea hasn't changed, the method used to ensure that interest is satisfied has. The marketplace now acts as regulator.
There has long been a debate among journalists about whether the public interest is best served by providing the public with what it wants, or what it needs. When radio networks were at their strongest and when FCC regulations required news, insuring a market for the network's product, networks could supply what the public needed to know with relative economic impunity. Of course, as many will be quick to point out, the idea of what the "public needed to know" came from the editorial judgment of network journalists and could easily be considered an elitist opinion.
In the past, radio network newscasts were sometimes long enough to accommodate both what people needed and what people wanted. In a perfect world, this might remain the case. But to argue, in the 21st Century, that this is what is needed and that this is sustainable in a free market economy would be to overlook economic reality as well as where commercial radio network news has positioned itself in the information paradigm.
In 1943, when the Supreme Court affirmed the FCC policy of divergent voices on network radio, radio provided the only way to get news with any immediacy. There are now many such outlets including over-the-air television, cable television, satellite television and the Internet, as well as radio network news. Had FCC policy not changed in the 50 years since the "blue" network was ordered to be sold by NBC, there could be no consolidation on the local level or the national level as we now see it. That change opened the marketplace but, instead of setting the trend, it reflected reality. The FCC noted the increasing number of voices from different media when it relaxed ownership rules.
How does the listener use commercial radio network news best? Many complain that it is just a headline service. While there are no longer many long-form documentaries and long newscasts, the bread and butter of network radio news has, since before deregulation, been the five-minute newscast. That newscast always had commercials in it, allowing little time for actual news content. The newscast has become shorter but its headline nature remains essentially unchanged. There may be nostalgia here for something that was never a large part of the business of radio network news.
With so many different forms of media available, a headline service may be all that is needed on commercial radio. The market seems to indicate that the current way radio news is programmed is a means of survival for at least the two players competing in the commercial news network arena. The public interest is being served if there is enough information in a newscast for people to identify what issues they may need to explore in more depth. Where there is a problem is when the headlines of radio news are fluff and don't provide even that basic information.
Citizens do need to be informed in order to function well in a democratic republic such as ours. But there are enough different media providing news and information that the republic is in no danger if radio news continues to decline. People don't necessarily have to get a complete view of the day's news from commercial radio network news.
Commercial network news may be difficult to find on the radio but it is still there. When there is a crisis, radio remains an important place for people to turn for information. Network radio news is not the same as it was in the 1930s and 1940s, but few things have remained unchanged over half-a-century. What network radio has managed to do is survive, despite fierce competition from new media.
The survival of network radio news has taken the form of responding to the market-place by finding a niche, a typical business end-game strategy. While the market orientation may displease journalists, it has allowed at least some of those radio networks to continue their traditional role of informing the public, thereby meeting the goal set by the government of operating in the public interest.
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[1] The "full-service" stations of years gone by would play music and then break for news at some point each hour. The name derives from the fact that they offered everything a listener could need or want. Even the stations targeted at the youngest demographics would have news and public affairs programs in order to keep their FCC broadcast license.
[2] In many cases, stations don't have to "clear", or carry, the shows offered by a network. Networks sell commercial time on those shows based on the audience to be delivered by stations clearing the show. The fewer stations clearing a show means the lower the advertising rate on that show because the audience is that much lower. It should also be noted that radio ratings don't take into consideration whether a network newscast has been aired by a station. The ratings only consider whether the commercials sold for the newscast have been run on the station. In other words, a station can run the commercials and not the newscasts and the ratings will show the same thing as if the program itself had been run.