50 Years Since Barry Goldwater’s Nomination I: The Role of a Talk Radio Host in Making it Happen

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Republican National Convention that nominated Barry Goldwater for president in San Francisco. Goldwater lost a crushing landslide in 1964, but his campaign of ideas helped shape the modern conservative movement.

Barry Goldwater (Senate.gov/artandhistory)

The Right Frequency details how conservative talk radio host Clarence Manion helped make Goldwater a star years before he entered the presidential race.

From The Right Frequency:

In 1957, Senator Barry Goldwater got welcomed national exposure as a guest on the show. Clarnnce Manion talked Goldwater into writing a book that the he thought should be titled a “Conscience of a Conservative.” The book was ghost written by L. Brent Bozell II. But the publishing industry was not receptive, so Manion founded Victor Publishing Company, and the book launched Goldwater’s forward to the 1964 Republican presidential nomination and influenced the politics for generations.

“Clarence Manion was very important to the conservative movement. His weekly program was very well read and carried on many stations,” said Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation. “The transcripts of his broadcasts were then reproduced and distributed widely in the conservative movement. It was always regarded as a mark of your standing if you were a guest on the Manion Forum. He was a major player.”

To learn more about Manion and his influence on the conservative movement and Goldwater’s campaign, read The Right Frequency.

 

Why Alternative Media is Better than the Good Old Days

The rise of new media has produced too much “advocacy journalism” according to Larry Atkins a journalist and attorney.

Walter Cronkite (NASA.gov)

From Huffington Post

Over the past 15 years, as newspaper circulation has declined, more and more people are turning to advocacy journalism via websites, talk radio, cable TV, and blogs to get their news. …

Advocacy journalists do not set out to inform; they set out to advance an agenda, whether it be conservative or liberal. While FOX News and conservative talk radio show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the worst offenders, liberal television hosts like Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow also fall into this category. They are all giving their opinion and reporting news with a goal and a biased agenda.

In light of the explosion of media outlets ranging from cable news outlets, talk radio, blogs, and websites, we need to be more savvy news consumers. As I tell my journalism students, it’s important to consider the source of the information before we make our judgments.

Atkins is both right and wrong.

Neither Rush Limbaugh nor Rachel Maddow are journalists, and have been known to omit facts to push their point of view.

However, Atkins longs for the good old days that never really existed, of The New York Times setting the agenda and Walter Cronkite telling America, “That’s the way it is.” Today we know that establishment media had their own agenda and framed debates in one way.

So the public should be more savvy news consumers and always consider the source of information. That’s always been the case. What’s better about today than Atkins’ mythical yesteryear is that an alternative media has produced multiple sources to check both politicians and media.

To learn more about how talk radio established a successful commercial model for the exploding alternative media universe of today, read The Right Frequency.

First Radio President

This week marks 92 years since Warren Harding became the first president to be heard on the radio. It was still a new medium and few new how potent it would become in defining American politics by the 1990s.

Warren G. Harding (Library of Congress)

It was on June 14, 1922 when Harding addressed a crowd dedicating the memorial site for Francis Scott Key, the composer of the Star Spangled Banner, a fairly non-controversial event. It was nevertheless historical day for media in America.

Harding was also the first American president whose election was called on the radio, by KDKA in Pittsburgh, the first radio station in America to broadcast election returns.

From the History Channel:

Harding was an advocate for advanced technology. In 1923, he recorded a speech on an early “phonograph” that recorded and played back sound on wax discs. Harding was also the first president to own a radio and was the first to have one installed in the White House.

Harding’s Francis Scott Key memorial dedication was heard by 125,000. President Coolidge’s inaugural radio address reached 23 million via the radio. … It was not until three years later, however, that a president would deliver a radio-specific address. That honor went to President Calvin Coolidge.

To learn more about how presidents successfully used radio to shape public opinion, read The Right Frequency.

 

Top 10 Again! Right Frequency Climbs Amazon List

The Right Frequency on Friday hit the #6 spot on Amazon’s History & Criticism category.

The book was also #25 in the overall radio category.

This makes four consecutive months that The Right Frequency has been on an Amazon bestseller list.

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.

 

 

One Year After Release, The Right Frequency a Bestselling Radio Book

One year after its release, The Right Frequency stands strong on Amazon.

The Right Frequency, released in August 2012, reached the Top 20 over the past week on Amazon’s Radio History & Criticism category for Kindle books. This book reached the top 10 on Friday, Aug. 30. The Right Frequency also returned to the bestseller list in Amazon’s Radio category.

The Right Frequency paperback edition also returned to the bestseller list for Amazon’s History & Criticism category.

The book, that chronicles the history of talk radio from the days of Walter Winchell through Rush Limbaugh, has been an Amazon bestseller for four consecutive months.

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.

Boston Globe post on National Radio Day

The Right Frequency was featured on The Boston Globe’s website in a posting about National Radio Day, Aug. 20.

Of the day, the article said, “[O]ne trend that appears obvious is the shift to talk radio away from music radio due to the demand for music being satisfied by iPods, YouTube and a variety of electronic factors.”

“And when it comes to talk radio, one of the very few experts on the subject, Fred Lucas, author of ‘The Right Frequency,’ a history of the remarkable influence talk radio has had on Conservative politics in the United States, is well aware of the trend.”

“Radio is becoming more widely used than ever before,” Lucas said. “There are more portals through radio, and I mean talk radio, flows today than ever before. When one considers the portable electronic devices in use today, the numbers are staggering. Talk radio influence appears to be never ending.”

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.

‘Radio Has the Best Pictures’

A post on One News Page discussed the upcoming National Radio Day and The Right Frequency.

“Radio communication was around since the 1800s in some form, but became a commercial force in the 1920s, when commentators such as H.V. Kaltenborn ruled the airwaves. The story of these early radio voices through the current talkers such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck is told in “The Right Frequency: The Story of the Talk Radio Giants Who Shook Up the Political and Media Establishment” by Fred Lucas (History Publishing Co.),” the post says. 

It continues, “National Public Radio enthusiastically declared in 2011, ‘That’s right – one day is set aside to celebrate radio. At NPR, we honor it every day, but we’re happy to have an excuse to pay it extra special attention.’ Seeking to answer the question, “Why would anyone want to celebrate radio in this digital age?” NPR asserted three points: 1.) “Radio is one of the nation’s most accessible forms of media.” 2.) In times of crisis, radio can be the only source for emergency information, and 3.) Quoting NPR correspondent Susan Stamberg, “Radio has the best pictures.”

The Right Frequency explains how radio talkers spanning two centuries from Walter Winchell, Bob Grant and Sean Hannity have painted the clearest pictures, rarely leaving ambiguity on the hot political and social issues of the day.”

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.

Radio Surived and Thrives Through Media Revolutions

Silobreaker, a publication on technology, carried a recent posting on The Right Frequency.

The article said, “The book explains how radio not only survived but thrived despite various media revolutions over the past 90s years. It also details milestones in the radio era such as the Payola Scandal of the early 1960s and the end of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s, both of which contributed in its own way to the proliferation of talk radio.”

The piece was posted just days before National Radio Day on Tuesday, Aug. 20.

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency. 

Sean Hannity in Trouble with Fox and Cumulus?

This past two weeks produced a whirlwind of rumors about Sean Hannity’s future, with both the Fox News Channel and Cumulus radio networks.

Earlier this month, reports surfaced that both Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would lose 40 stations if they are dropped by Cumulus. This week, more reports surfaced that Megyn Kelly would replace Hannity in the coveted 9 p.m. time slot on Fox News.

Hannity, the number two talk radio host in the nation, had a tough road to be where he is. In The Right Frequency he describes himself as “born to argue.”

Below is an excerpt on Hannity’s career from The Right Frequency.
Though he sort of came up on it by accident, Sean Hannity
managed to make a good living from what he’s just naturally done
his whole life. “I was born to argue,” he once said. “I don’t know
why. I mean, from arguing with my teachers and, on occasions, my
parents. I think I’ve mastered the art of argument at a fairly young
age.”704 He has used that gift to soar to the number two spot on both
talk radio and cable news, and has done what both Limbaugh and
Beck could not do, maintain a huge following on radio along with a
longstanding TV presence.
The Iran Contra affair may have been the low point for the otherwise
successful Reagan presidency, but it gave Hannity the opportunity
to do what he loved with an audience to listen.
When allegations that the Reagan administration had sold arms
to Iran in exchange for hostages, and used proceeds from the sales
to illegally fund the Contras in Latin America, the Senate—controlled
by Democrats after the 1986 midterms—leapt to investigate
the matter. The main witness prompting the must-see TV moment
at the time was Lt. Col. Oliver North. Hannity heard the senators
haranguing North, and routinely called into conservative talk shows
to give his two cents.
Hannity was never a fan of handouts. In the late 1980s, he was a
contractor, painting houses, because he did not want to rely on his
parents to pay for his tuition at New York University. He dropped
out and headed west to California, continuing to work in construction
to save enough money.
“I was a contractor. I was working my way in and out of college.
Didn’t want my parents to help pay for college. So, I’m, I’m running
out of money all the time. So, that’s how I was making my living and,
I’d be 40 feet up in the air on radios, calling into talk shows,”
Hannity, who grew up on Long Island and continues to live there
today, recalled in an ABC News interview.
“The things I had to say began attracting more feedback,
spurring more people to call, until sometimes I was getting bigger
response than the host,” Hannity wrote. “Before long it dawned on
me that I ought to be on the other side of a microphone as a host
rather than a caller.”
“People say, ’I want to talk to that guy that just says what he just
said, because I loved what Ollie was doing’” Hannity recalled.707
His course in life was set.
“I’d grown up listening to Bob Grant, Barry Gray, John Gambling
and Barry Farber,” Hannity wrote. “That experience taught me early
on that a passionate argument, well made, could make a difference,
even if the person was speaking as a private citizen.
He volunteered his commentary at radio station in KCSB-FM,
the station for the University of California- Santa Barbara. It was
not a good fit, as the station did not like his politics after he
expressed opposition to homosexuality at a liberal university.
Reportedly, a lesbian caller to his program said she had a baby after
being artificially inseminated and Hannity responded he felt sorry
for her child. The university fired him, or at least banned him from
volunteering, for supposedly “discriminating against gays and lesbians.”
Interestingly enough, the ACLU Foundation of Southern
California came to Hannity’s defense. The university backed down
and told Hannity he can have his airtime, but at this juncture, he
didn’t want it.
“I was too conservative, the higher ups said, and they didn’t like
the comments one guest made on the show. So much for free speech
on a college campus!” Hannity wrote. “The station was dominated
by leftwing public affairs programs, including a gay and lesbian perspective
show, a Planned Parenthood show, and multiple shows that
accused Reagan and Bush of being drug runners and drug pushers.
The leftwing management had a zero tolerance policy for conservative
points of view and I was promptly fired.”
The northeasterner left the West Coast to go south. A talk radio
show opened up at WVNN Huntsville, Alabama in 1989 for $19,000
per year that he took, “because they gave me a microphone.” He
occasionally did a local TV debate show with liberal David Pearson,
whom Hannity described as a “fierce defender of the left.”
“When I got there, the first thing I discovered was that my New
York accent—which I never even noticed—didn’t go down easy in
the south.” But he said, “I tried to connect with callers. I read everything
that I could get my hands on, scouring newspapers and magazines.”
The program took off and was a spring board to Atlanta’s
WGST-AM, a top 10 market. Hannity moved to WGST in 1992—
as talk radio was on the verge of becoming a powerful political force
—to replace the legendary Neil Boortz, who had jumped to WSBAM.
However, because of a no compete clause in Boortz’s contract,
Boortz could not go on the air for several months on WSB. Hannity
used this time to build an audience. And it worked due in part to
Boortz’s hiatus.
Hannity became the top rated show in Atlanta, and often interviewed
Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich, the House Minority
Whip. Then, the ultimate opportunity came when he got to be the
guest host for the Rush Limbaugh Show on a few occasion, giving
him his first national exposure. After that, he was brought on as a
conservative pundit for CNN’s Talk Back Live. Roger Ailes, then
head of CNBC, liked him so much he brought him on for a few
shows on that network. He also got other TV appearances on
popular 90s talk shows hosted by Phil Donohue, Sally Jesse Raphael
and Geraldo Rivera.
When Ailes took the job running the new Fox News Chanel in
1996, he hired Hannity in September of that year to do a debate
show with New York liberal radio show host Alan Colmes. It was to
be the Fox version of Cross Fire, the long time Left-Right debate
show on CNN.

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.

Does New Fairness Doctrine Threaten Internet Freedom?

The Internet is the next battleground over the Fairness Doctrine, a recent Naples Daily News article warns.

“In more recent years, such individuals see things like conservative talk radio as the bane of our democracy, and that such enterprises need to, in the least, be reined in. Many such folk do speak of the good old days of the Fairness Doctrine, a piece of legislation which is in reality the antithesis of free speech. Not surprisingly, many of these individuals hail from a liberal/progressive camp,” the article says.

It continues, “No one is left to solely rely on radio and television, nor do they necessarily have to contend with programming schedules. There’s a universe of information on the Web that can be accessed on demand by computers, tablets, and smart phones. You can get the news that the mainstream media offers, and you can also go to alternative sites. Many libraries across the country are going digital, and you can download books and other materials from their websites for free.”

“It’s out there. All a person has to do is take the time and effort to look for it,” the article further states. “Unfortunately the future of the Web is uncertain. Just as some have been clamoring for the return of the Fairness Doctrine, there have been demands that speech on the Web be regulated and restricted.”

The piece speaks to the potential threats of the Fairness Doctrine. The Lyndon Johnson administration engaged in a “challenge and harass” strategy by using the power of the government to silence radio critics of the administration. These abuses are detailed in detailed in Chapter 5 of The Right Frequency,

Below is an excerpt from The Right Frequency on the Fairness Doctrine.

***

The story of how Democrats used Nixonian tactics before Nixon was ever elected president began in the fall of 1963 when President John F. Kennedy wanted to get the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union approved by the U.S. Senate. The treaty had bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition, thus was
expected to be a close vote. A big concern was criticism of the treaty by the Revs. McIntire and Hargis.
Kenneth O’Donnell, the appointment secretary for President Kennedy sought the advice of former New York Times reporter Wayne Phillips on forcing stations to provide equal time. A behind the scenes effort prompted the front group Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which targeted talk radio. The Rudder & Finn public relations firm, which coincidently is the same PR firm the DNC used, did publicity for the committee. Each time McIntire or Hargis took a swing at the treaty, the committee sent letters to the stations that carried their programs. States where these show aired that had senators on the fence were specifically targeted. A special program was taped specifically for responding in each of those stations. When the Senate ratified the treaty by a surprising 80-19 vote on September 24, 1963, the administration saw how the Fairness Doctrine can be used for high priority legislation.
In January 1964, after Johnson had taken office, Phillips began monitoring conservative radio. “It soon became apparent to me that the extreme right-wing broadcasting was exceptionally heavy on particular stations and in particular areas of the country, and that the content of these broadcasts was irrationally hostile to the president and his programs.” Phillips eventually came on board in a more formal role as the Director of News and Information for the DNC. He hired Wesley McCune, head of Group Research Inc., which did research for the DNC, to help him with full time listening duties.
The DNC prepared a kit that it delivered to voters and activist explaining, “how to demand time under the Fairness Doctrine.”
Phillips also brought Fred J. Cook, a friend from his journalism days, into the fold to write a piece for The Nation magazine lashing out against conservative talk radio. Cook had just finished a book “Barry Goldwater: Extremist on the Right.”
The talk radio piece in The Nation ran in the May 25, 1964 issue with the headline, “Hate Clubs of the Air.” It said, “The hate clubs of the air are spewing out a minimum of 6,600 broadcasts a week, carried by more than 1,300 radio and television stations—nearly one out of every five in the nation in a blitz that saturates everyone one of the fifty states with the exception of Maine.”399
According to Friendly’s book, “Because of the close association of James Row with President Johnson and also because of [DNC Chairman] John Bailey’s standing as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, there is little doubt that this contrived scheme had White House approval.”
Bill Ruder, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Johnson administration recalled, “Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenge would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.”
The DNC mailed out thousands of copies of Cook’s Nation article to Democratic state and local parties and Democratic officials. The DNC also mailed the article to radio stations, with a letter from DNC counsel Dan Brightman warning that if Democrats are attacked, demands will be made for equal time. When McIntire criticized Brightman for sending the letter, the DNC demanded and got free airtime to respond on about 600 stations. Then, when Dan Smoot assailed LBJ during the Democratic National Convention, the DNC got free airtime to respond on 30 stations, though others declined.
Democrats believed their strategy was successful and decided to accelerate things, setting up another front group called the National Council for Civic Responsibility that took out full page newspaper ads that said, “$10 million is spent on weekly radio and television broadcasts in all 50 states by extremists groups.” Picked to head the group was Arthur Larson, a liberal Republican who had served in the Eisenhower administration. Larson insisted at the National
Press Club, “The council’s formation had nothing to do with the presidential campaign or with the right-wing views of Republican candidate Senator Barry Goldwater.” Though, he later came clean that leading the organization was not his proudest moment. “The whole thing was not my idea, but let’s face it, we decided to use the Fairness Doctrine to harass the extreme right. In light of Watergate it was wrong. We felt the ends justified the means. They never do.”
He also added, “As soon as I found out the Democrats were putting money into it, I wanted out.”

Click here to order a copy of The Right Frequency.