enjoying the new Jerry Williams book

[Donna Halper]

At 02:20 PM 3/9/2008, Dan.Strassberg wrote:
>But wasn't there a fairly long stretch of years during which the FCC
>outlawed the broadcast of live phone conversations over the air? And
>wasn't some new technology required to legally make such broadcasts
>without running afoul of the FCC rule? If so, what was the rule? What
>was the new technology that made it possible to legally air phone
>conversations live (actually with a few seconds of delay)? And when
>did the new technology become commercially available in a form
>reliable enough for radio stations to accept it and at a cost that
>radio stations could afford?
>
>I think if Donna's book is going to be accepted as the definitive work
>on talk radio, it will have to answer those questions.

I am not sure my book will be the definitive anything-- I'm gonna try 
to answer as many questions as I can, but my book is part of a series 
so I doubt they'll let me go on as long as I'd like to!  The reality 
is I've found only a couple of mentions of the government saying 
"don't put phone calls on the air"-- back in 1923, the Department of 
Commerce, trying its best to separate commercial radio from ham 
radio, did issue such a statement, but it's pretty obvious that by 
1926-7, everyone was ignoring it, as there are numerous stories in 
the mainstream press of stations occasionally putting a call on the 
air.  The problem seems to have been the quality of the phone lines, 
as well as the extreme expense of long distance calls in those 
days.  The need for a delay seems to also have been based on various 
readings of FCC comments about "personal attack"-- this can't be 
explained in a short e-mail (since I'm on a deadline) but the impetus 
for the personal attack rule and the Mayflower Decision came from the 
fear the government had in the late 30s/early 40s that the media 
could easily be taken over by "subversives" who would use 
broadcasting for the purpose of propaganda (the way "Tokyo Rose" and 
others did during WW2).  There was great concern that these alleged 
'subversives' in the US might try to undermine democracy by putting 
anti-American propaganda on the air.  There may indeed have been some 
truth to this, since some of the foreign language shows turned out to 
indeed be screeds against the US, but it was an exaggeration to say 
such shows were common.

Anyway, beginning in 1938-9, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis 
was created, to encourage schools to teach anti-Nazi  courses, but it 
also encouraged that these courses stress that the US never engages 
in propaganda... Anyway, in the 1940s, that great fear of propaganda 
persisted, leading to the 1949 decision that stations COULD 
editorialize as long as they presented both sides, and a later 
decision that if somebody was personally attacked on the air, he or 
she had a right to respond (see the Red Lion decision from 1967, if 
my memory serves).  Bottom line-- stations feared that letting a 
caller go directly onto the airwaves could lead to personal attacks 
and obscene language.  Many early hosts paraphrased calls, even when 
technology permitted them to be aired, to avoid having the FCC come 
down on them-- and back in those days, the FCC was a lot more 
pro-active.  Other hosts began to use a delay and a beep, but that's 
a subject for another post.   But my research shows that delays were 
being used in the mid 1960s.  Some shows may have used them earlier, 
but they became common at that point.