The Media Wars Are Over—And Radio Won
History, Comedy Classics, and a Pinch of Media Literacy—with “Weather on the Tens”
Rather than write another obligatory postmortem on our Democratic Republic or feature more childish education in a time where childishness isn’t just a phenomenon localized to education—it’s probably worthwhile to tap out and use this post to touch on something topical—cutting edge even—about today’s Media, itself.
Specifically, I want to highlight the most important medium in the world. The medium that was the key to victory for the GOP this past election season.
That’s right, you guessed it: I’m taking about Radio.
First, let’s set the mood. You know, just between us adults:
In the Beginning, There was a Presidential Election
The first commercial radio (AM only, not FM initially) broadcast was transmitted in Pittsburgh, by KDKA in 1920. The first program broadcast? Warren G. Harding’s win in the US Presidential Election results.
Initially, Radio airwaves weren’t regulated, which meant that multiple broadcasters could, and often would, try to send their signals out over the same frequencies in the same geographic areas. This chaos led to the Radio Act of 1927 and the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (now the FCC, Federal Communications Commission). Since bandwidth was scarce, it required some coordination and regulation by the federal government, to make it all properly usable. But once that happened, it was only about a decade for more-than-half of US households to get “a radio” (receiver).
FDR Uses Radio to Save the County
This became a key factor in how the United States, under FDR’s Presidential leadership would manage to dig itself out of The Great Depression. At 10pm ET on March 9th, 1933, on day six of his presidency (March 4th used to be Inauguration Day), President Roosevelt radio audience of maybe 60 million people (about 1/2 of the entire nation) that the next day would be a forced banking holiday. It was the first of his 30 “Fireside Chats” and it was the key to his tactic of a banking holiday working. There had been a panic and a huge run on the banks, as everyone withdrew their money. Picture half the country with their entire savings hidden under their mattress as they listened to the President tell them to trust him and hand it back.
But it worked. After he addressed the nation and told everyone exactly what the plan was, they bought in and suddenly had confidence that the banks, once reopened, would be safe. Within two weeks, people returned more than half of the cash they had been hoarding.
He had become the first person to fully leverage this new technology of Radio. Although he wasn’t the first one to try.
Welcome to Radio ChristoFascism! On Behalf of God, I Want to Say Thanks for Tuning In…
In Germany, lead Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels called Radio the “Eighth Great Power” and executed a plan where by the government would subsidize the purchasing of radios for all the people of the country. Eleven hours a day of programming were transmitted to the average citizen—a constant stream of demagoguery wherein Jews, capitalists (bankers, in general), Russian Bolsheviks, the British, and basically any opposing political factions within German society were villainized.
As covered in this book, in the US, there was also an ascendant Nazi (not “neo-Nazi”, this was the original) movement. As a response to, first, the Great Depression of the 1930s and, later, in rejection of some of FDR’s New Deal measures taken to try and fight the Depression, certain members saw the Nazi movement in Germany as a model for how things could be made better. This was a real movement to overthrow the US from the inside. Twenty congresspeople were in on it. The most important initial aim of the Nazi collaborators in the US was to prevent the US from entering WWII to try and defend Europe from Germany when Germany went ahead with its plans to invade and take over Western Europe.
This movement in the US had its own celebrity leader: Father Charles Edward Coughlin. He was a Detroit area Roman Catholic Priest, who supposedly started broadcasting his sermons by radio in order to “combat Bigotry and injustice”. His radio program was successful enough to generate funds to build a new, national million-dollar church and to elevate Coughlin himself to national prominence. AM radio signals can actually bounce off the ionosphere at night, so AM programs were able to reach regional, multi-state audiences (For example, when I was a child in Illinois, I could listen to NBA games from Dallas, nearly a thousand miles away).
When he started as a priest in a small parish in Royal Oak, Michigan, the entire operation of his Church was strapped for cash. But, he knew someone in the Detroit Tigers organization who managed to get baseball legend Babe Ruth to stop in for a fundraiser and he raised over $10,000 at the event (closer to a quarter million in today’s money). From there, Coughlin’s legend only grew. In fact, it’s estimated that, at its peak, Coughlin’s radio show had 1-in-4 Americans turning in, weekly!
Can you picture one-fourth of the country stopping everything they’re doing and all engaging with the same show, today? The Super Bowl, maybe, right? But, every week?
Here’s a newsreel about his so-called origin story, fighting the KKK (this never really happened and an actor is playing the good Father).
But, to tune into Father Coughlin’s show was to hear much of the same messaging as what Herr Goebbels was saying in Germany: FDR was a communist. Hitler was great, etc.
Well, after Japan (Germany’s ally in WWII) attacked the US Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii, the US declared war on Japan and a few days later Germany (and Italy) declared war on the US—and so the primary aim of the Nazis around the world had failed. The US was now going to rush to Europe’s aid. And you know the rest: we led the allied forces to victory.
This spelled the end of the America First movement (what the US Nazis called themselves). Father Coughlin (and all Nazis) had to go underground. The federal government was poised to bring sedition (ie: treason) charges against Father Coughlin, but the Roman Catholic supervisors of Father Coughlin cut a deal with the government. They took him off the air and the US moved on to more important things.
Coughlin, who once spoke weekly to 1/4th of the country, died in obscurity.
Comedy Radio Classics
After the war, radio perhaps hit its Golden Age (until about the mid-fifties). During this era, the talent was remarkable. Although some radio shows were built on the star power of established movie stars, like Groucho Marx (from the Marx Brothers), Bob Hope, or Bing Crosby—other radio shows started there but later became best known for classic runs as hit TV shows, like Dragnet and most famously the Western genre drama “Gunsmoke” (the #1 show in 1960 and was in the top-ten in ratings for half the decade, including still in 1968 and 1969).
Since Radio was a natural emotional amplifier, this meant that comedy was just that much funnier, too.
In the 70s, in east-central IL, if you stayed up late into the early morning there was a show (called the Comedy Spot) that broadcast comedy albums from The Smothers Brothers or Woody Allen, as well as replay old classic comedy bits from the 1940s and 50s radio: Like Bob and Ray. I already mentioned being able to listen to sports that weren’t otherwise featured on TV.
And the 1970s saw the beginning of Garrison Keillor’s legendary show (itself, a parody of radio-shows) A Prairie Home Companion. Here’s one of its countless, classic bits (performed live as most of his shows were):
In the 70s, two LA-area DJs (“disc jockeys”—what we called radio hosts, because they spun “discs”, ie, vinyl albms) became perhaps the greatest radio sketch comedians of all time. They were Bob Hudson and Ron Landry.
Hudson and Landry put compilations of their skits on vinyl albums and they were immediate underground hits. Here is “Ajax Liquor Store”, a skit that was actually nominated for Grammy award!
Since this essay is about the power of radio, think about this as you listen: Would this be any better if you could see the actors? Or would that just be distracting?
Video Killed Created the Radio Star
As the highway systems were rolled out in the US during the mid 20th century, the suburban lifestyle, including driving to and from work daily, became more of a thing. TV became the ubiquitous medium in the home Radio became something that people listened to while they drove. Or music lovers might listen to it at home, too.
Clearly radio’s heyday was in the past. Although the shenanigans that we all imagined were going on at radio stations were fodder for some of the best TV comedies of all time. Here, see if you can spot the guy who would later become the most influential individual on the Internt…
But, there were still signs that radio had remarkable power to foment popular movement. For example, we could always look back on Disco Demolition Night.
Young Men and Radio Shock Jocks
When I was in junior high and high school—and then later, living nearby as a young adult—I listened to a lot of Chicago radio. My favorites were Steve Dahl and Garry Meier.
Steve and Garry were my guys. Garry was the news man and, despite also have a biting sense of humor himself, he mostly played straight man to the very clever and irreverent Steve Dahl.
Steve was one of the original “Shock Jocks”. But, beyond that, he was a first-rate raconteur. One time, when the station’s transmitter was down, he went into the transmitter facility and just broadcast directly from there (he started out as an engineer/intern) with no prep. Mostly he just described the facility. It was one of the funniest three hours I’ve ever heard. He just had a knack for making the mundane hilarious (“The other day at the restaurant my steak arrived overcooked—Terrorists. They’re everywhere.”)
Steve was precisely what young men of that era aspired to be: a cocky, self-made millionaire who played by his own rules. For example, on any given week, he was as likely as not to have pissed off the station management and been suspended. There was a special 1-888 number (that he paid for) that the audience could dial in to find out the details of what he had said to get himself kicked off the air. And of course, he’d go into even greater, more hilarious detail upon his return.
He would broadcast actual arguments with his wife (a non-practicing attorney, who seldom lost). He called a company overseas, Islamic Fried Chicken, to try and order chicken for the US Hostages in the middle of an international hostage crisis. He broadcast his own Vasectomy on-air.
To put it mildly, he pushed boundaries. Later, Howard Stern would say that Steve was someone he had listened to and learned from when he was starting out.
Steve gained a sizeable following for pretending to blow up disco records on the air (this was a reaction to the reflexive changing of so many stations that had changed formats from rock to disco, what had cost Steve his previous job. His not so subtle motto: “Disco sucks”).
So, as a promo, disc jocket Steve Dahl (age 24 at the time) was supposed to blow up some disco records (for real) in the outfield in-between double-header games between the Detroit Tigers and the hometown Chicago White Sox. The attendance for that night was triple the usual crowd.
Basically, after the explosion the fans (who had been given discount tickets to see the double-header) decided to mob the field and went on a bit of a, well, riot. The second game was cancelled and it was the only time in Major League Baseball history that a game had been forfeited due to a riot.
Since then, in an example of presentism—people have said the entire episode, event and audience reaction—was an example of bigotry (disco being seen as representative of LGBT or minority culture). And there surely may have been some of that; but, as Steve often points out, it wasn’t about race for him.
“We didn’t blow up Jimi Hendrix records. We didn’t blow up David Bowie records. It was really just a rock-and-roll versus disco thing.”
—Steve Dahl
But it certainly struck a chord. It seems fair to say that it was about a cultural shift that seemed to be forcing a new, somewhat vapid, type of music on audiences. Hundreds of popular rock stations converted to Disco in a matter of a couple years. And back then, remember, it was all or nothing. A station would only play one type of music, so as to be able to guarantee what kind of audience it could deliver to advertisers. #MediaLiteracy, remember…
Dahl did a parody disco song to demonstrate the attitude behind it.
So How Do You Brainwash a Generation?
From HG Wells broadcast of his “War of the Worlds” radio play (that caused such a panic in New York that the police tried to break in and interrupt the program because of all the emergency calls they were getting from the public) through to Disco Demolition, clearly, radio had power.
That power seemed to be based on at least two things: first, there’s radio’s obvious ability to speak directly to us, one-to-one, with only our own minds (“theatre of the mind”) to paint the pictures for us. And this is combined with the freedom to mentally react/respond, in the moment, in any way we please. Not like a movie theater, where we constrain ourselves or are prompted by the folks around us.
But, then, when a radio personality calls for you to show up at a live event, and you find out that there are others who are showing up as well—you assume that they all felt precisely the same way, that they were reacting to the same things, as you did when you listened to the radio personality. This is a powerful dynamic. It’s a two-step: first, you listen and form your own connection. And then you congregate and come to believe that everyone is just like you. Oh, there may be discussions to flesh it out. But, by at large fandom becomes something closer to a religious rally—thing about how Star Trek conventions, and later comic book and “Cons” in became a cultural touchstone just as the Internet was taking off.
This is a powerful dynamic. It’s a two-step: first, you listen and form your own connection. And then you congregate and come to believe that everyone is just like you.
The Nineties and the Naughties saw the rise of Right-Wing Radio as a thing. Removing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which forced radio stations to give equal air time to each of our political parties, as well as the 1996 deregulation of the radio industry which now permitted monopolies both served to clear the way for a single company—Clear Channel (now iHeartradio)—to purchase about 1 in 20 AM radio stations, including most in the big markets, to reach a vast swatch of listeners across the nation. And then it converted them to largely conservative talk radio (since all were owned by the same national company and not locally, local talent was bypassed in favour of national figures, like the demagogue Rush Limbaugh.
One problem with all this enthusiasm about electronically wiring the citizenry to the Washington policymaking machine is that in a sense, it’s already happened. Politicians are quite in touch with opinion polls and have learned not to ignore the Rush Limbaughs of the world, with their ability to marshal rage over topics ranging from Hillary to the House post office. Public feedback fills Washington fax machines, phones and E-mail boxes.
—from Robert Wright, “Hyperdemocracy” (the actual title of the cover story)
Around 2011, I remember, in a legal services (process serving) office where I worked part-time, the office played some local right-wing personality (this was Cincinnati, as a matter of fact); and the announcer was calling for armed revolution in the streets against the Obama administration, calling them Communists, and so forth. This was a show that would have been right at home being broadcast by Father Coughlin.
The proliferation of these programs led to a mental reshaping of millions of Americans. This reshaping (or perhaps reinforcing) of middle-america’s most base instincts: xenophobia and anti-lgbt bigotry and so forth, was well captured in the 2015 documentary: The Brainwashing of my Dad. In the film, the Director’s father changes from an apolitical Democrat to a right-wing Republican, and eventuallly back again when his family steps in and starts allowing him to listen to a more balanced media-diet (instead of all AM radio). Although he was a member of the Greatest Generation, this also played out with many Boomers and people of my generation, Gen X.
Twenty-First Century Faux (News) — Podcasting
Now what happens if you take this immensely, personally powerful medium of radio and make it digital—that is, you no longer have to ‘tune in’ at a specific time to catch the broadcast, but you can listen whenever you want. And what if the shows aren’t constrained by commercial breaks, schedules and can run as long as the host likes? You have podcasting.
Professor Scott Galloway, in his recent Substack, “The Podcast Election” powerfully makes the point: while it’s not quite up to FDR fireside chat level reach, Joe Rogan’s podcasts’ reach alone is just about larger than much of legacy media (TV, Radio, etc) put together.
Almost half of adult Americans, 136 million people, listen to at least one podcast a month. The global audience is now 505 million, a quarter of the Internet’s reach (this graphic is from that post).
Now, one could rightly point out that VP Harris had plenty of celebrity endorsements, too: Oprah, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and “White Guys for Harris” types like Bradley Whitford and Jeff Bridges. But these were all legacy media stars and their endorsements were mostly one-offs. Joe Rogan, as with all podcasters, has two things those other celebrities don’t have: that emotion-multiplier ‘magic of radio’ thing I mentioned and a direct line to that key advertising audience: men under 45.
Because, for an entire generation (Millennials), Joe Rogan is for them what Steve Dahl was for me, on steroids (perhaps, literally, if you’ve seen his physique, lately). Yes, that guy that we saw as one of the lesser ensemble players on the tv show “News Radio” has gone on to be the top media celebrity in the world.
He is the ultimate influencer (a term that sort of gives up the game, no? They’re not hosts or entertainers, but rather ‘influencers’).
I know Millennials who were fans. They all outgrew him. One in particular explained the appeal: besides being clever and funny (as a stand-up comic and former comic actor) he sort of fills the role of cool uncle. You know the one: the one that’s just as irreverent as your teenage self, but puts himself out there as being a little more worldly-wise.
However, in service to his advertisers (and perhaps other funders, who just want to shape his message) his brand of “wise” turns out to be that demogogic technique of “just asking questions”—that is, inconspicuously proving a point with their question while clearly avoiding stating their stance or feigning neutrality.
By “just asking questions”, it allows the host to normalize what would otherwise be outrageous—and even contemptuous—ideas. Plus, there is nothing like actual journalism going on, here. No sources are being vetted. No information is being corroborated. Because it’s all done in a conversational interview format, it comes off as much more reliable. Hey, as long as we’re here chatting, I’m gonna just ask some questions…
And here’s the final key: This also allows hosts like Rogan to platform the most outrageous guests, in order to garner higher and higher audiences, which leads to higher and higher ad revenues. As a side-effect, it also keeps the window of ‘acceptable’ discourse shifting farther and farther to the extreme.
Believe Nothing Your Hear, and Only Half of What You See
In Rogan’s case (he is pretty good at it) this allows him to claim he has always been a liberal while platforming anti-vaxxer and all manner of conspiracy nuts and, ultimately, formally endorsing Trump for President.
The internet has caught on to this, a bit. This rhetorical technique, sort of a twisted socratic method, has become a meme and is sometimes called: “JAQing off” (Just Asking Questions).
By the way, in Professor Galloway’s framing of this year’s presidential election, those young men are the key audience not so much for their own votes, but also for the votes of their moms and days, who want those boys to have more opportunities so that they can move out of the proverbial house and launch their own lives and careers. What any parent would want.
Tune In Next Time…
In sum, it seems to suggest that we all might want to take even greater advantage of podcasts as a medium); maybe find some healthy and diverse podcasts, with actual journalists backed by actual journalism organizations behind them, from which to get our news.
And we need to be mindful that no one source is to be trusted completely, and that we need to measure our own reactions to what we hear—since Radio/Podcasts seem to have a direct line into our Emotional Works.
As God is My Witness…
Well, we started with WKRP, and Lo!, the holiday season is upon us. So, there’s only one way to wrap this up:
Take Care, Everyone!