Fireside Politics Wrap-up

Fireside Politics proved very helpful. Its in-depth look at the ratio industry provided me with valuable information about the regulatory structure of radio. The book begins in the early days of the Federal Radio Commission, up through the Federal Communications Commission. Even once the FCC was established, there were continuing issues about licensing and advertising. NBC and CBS both refused to air political advertisements except during the “election season”, which was from after the national nominating conventions until the election. This provided problems because the party that was not in power often wanted to respond to claims from the party that was in power, however, the networks would not air this.

I liked this idea a lot because it seems that political commentary dominates so much of television news today. I understand why this is the case; but the idea of only listening to political commentary for a limited time is appealing.

Another interesting idea was how the national networks choose to deal with the party committees. The networks often preempted paid advertised programs with political programs. This worked out well for the networks, as the companies often did not demand their money back from these displaced programs. So the networks got paid double for this airtime. Also, even though the networks did not extend credit to the national committees, they did not demand payment within the standard seven days. This likely is because the networks were worried that if they demanded prompt payment, it could cause them to fall out of favor with politicians who were ultimately in control of the licenses they needed to broadcast.

I now plan to start reading Politics and Television Re-viewed by Engel Lang. I think this will work well as it is about the introduction of television to politics. This will allow me to divide my investigation into two parts. For this semester, I will focus on the effects of newspaper, radio, and network television. In the spring, I will focus on the effects cable news and the Internet.