RUSH: We’re going to Detroit. This is Lisa. Lisa, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Oh, Rush. I’m a relatively new listener. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you. Welcome to our program.
CALLER: Good. Good. I just wanted to let you know — and maybe you can help me out with this — I called Dick Durbin’s office this morning, an issue when immigration was going on about the Fairness Doctrine being pulled back in. I was speaking to one of his aides, the man who answered the phone, and he was going on about how we need this or that. ‘Are you going to do anything about the newspapers, the cable stations, et cetera?’ And he said, ‘Do you know why MoveOn.org [sic Air America] failed?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think I can surmise, because nobody wanted to listen to them.’ He told me, ‘No, it’s because the radio stations charged the liberal broadcasts three times more than they charge the conservative broadcast programs.’ I said, ‘Gee, I just can’t believe that’s happening.’
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, well, hold it a second.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I want to make sure that I understood every word of what you just said. You said that somebody in Durbin’s office told you that the liberal talk radio network failed because the stations carrying the network charged the network three times what stations charge shows like mine?
CALLER: Yes. And I said, I find that hard to be true, bulled I would call the FCC, and I did call the FCC, and they said they were not aware of that. They were going to look into the —
RUSH: Oh, come on no, no, no, no, no, no. The fact of the —
CALLER: Well, I called a couple of radio stations —
RUSH: Look, you’re — you’re speaking to the world’s foremost authority on this, and I can tell you —
CALLER: Okay, good.
RUSH: — that this is, frankly, absurd. I try not to talk about other broadcasters on this program. Since you’ve got — since — since Turban’s assistant told you this, the dirty little secret is that the liberal talk radio network you spoke about could not get on decent radio stations because the programming was lousy. They bored people to death. They were on small stations where the signal goes straight up. You’d have to be in a high-rise no more than 20 floors up to hear ’em. The fact of the matter is, they were paying stations to carry the program, and they defaulted on the payments.
CALLER: Well, then he also told me that his mother, this — this person who answered the phone for Senator Durbin’s office e told me his mother was one of the founders of — of the — the Air America —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: I said well — anyway, you know, I just wanted — I’m trying to find out, you know, what — what really is going on here. And then, you know —
RUSH: Sue.
CALLER: — during our — during our discussion I — I asked him if they — if they — if the Congress was also going to look into balancing, you know, the free press, you know, there’s several liberal newspapers —
RUSH: Ah, they’re not — Fairness Doctrine is — as they’re contemplating it right now, would be applicable to talk radio. It would not be applicable to capable, because cable is not broadcast, doesn’t go over the public air waives, it would not — it would not apply to newspapers because of the First Amendment. It wouldn’t apply to television network news. This is — this is — this is industrial something that’s being targeted at talk radio because the libs can’t control it and they can’t — haven’t found a way to silence successful hosts on — on conservative talk radio in — in the marketplace, so this is — this is — liberals are Stalinists. If you say things they don’t want to hear, they’re going to try to shut you up one way or the other. The best way they can figure to do it is power of government. But I’m going to tell you there was no station paying Air America. Air America was paying these stations and then defaulting.
I don’t know about their current iteration, I don’t know how they’re — you know, they’re trying to come back, but in the old days — and that’s not how it works anyway. I can’t get into — I’m just going to tell you, that is a flat-out, at best it’s a glowing example of pure ignorance. At worst, it is a flat-out lie. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Turban and his guys believe this, because they think — what they’re saying, the problem is there’s too much consolidation of ownership and all the owners are rich Republicans and conservatives, which is, frankly, BS as well, but that’s what they’re trying to say. So if they believe that, then they might believe that these stations were charging Air America three times what they’re charging. Ladies and gentlemen, let me — let me — the only way — I just want to say this one time. The only way a radio program or radio network pays the station to carry it is if the radio program couldn’t get on the air on its own weight. There are a number of hosts — and I’m not going to identify them — there are a number of current hosts whose networks pay stations to carry them. If you’re doing that, you are guaranteed to lose money. That is not the business model. That is not how it works. The — it’s not the stations charging, it’s the stations refusing to carry, and the network says, oh, yeah, how about if we pay you? We’ll pay you this and we’ll buy some of the available spot locations during their program, too, we’ll do all that, in order to get it on — some of the names would stun you, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not talking about liberal Air America. There are a whole bunch — but this is — this is — it ain’t the way it happens. It just — that’s not the successful route. Thank you — thank you, Lisa.