RADIO

Five Radios in Every Home

Radio continued throughout the 1980s to be the most pervasive medium in America. Ninety-nine percent of American households owned radios in the 1980s (compared to 98 percent who owned televisions), and each household had an average of 5.5 radios. Those figures do not take into account automobile radios, which had become standard equipment in most of the 5.5 million passenger cars sold each year. The American radio audience tended to be younger, better educated, and wealthier than the television audience, though Multimedia Audiences, a sampling of media choices at specified times, indicated that 91.7 percent of Americans were likely to be watching television as compared to 85.3 percent who were listening to the radio.

Local Origins

Radio and television differed significantly in the origin of their programming. The three major national television networks dominated prime-time programming, and though FCC rules stipulated that a certain amount of the broadcast day had to be reserved for locally originated programs, network shows were the meat of the television schedule. Radio programs almost always originated locally. Radio networks provided some feeds and owned a handful of stations, but radio was a medium of independent stations airing local programs. The radio listener had access to more than nine thousand stations in the United States (as compared to 1,362 television stations in 1988), though most could only be picked up by listeners within about a fifty-mile radius of the broadcast center. Those were about evenly divided between AM and FM broadcasters by 1989.

The Rise of FM

The most significant change in radio during the 1980s was in the rise of FM programming. In 1980 AM stations outnumbered FM broadcasters by about 3-2, and about nine hundred new FM stations were authorized by the FCC during the decade. Quality of signal was the reason. FM broadcasts had greater fidelity, less superfluous noise, and could be easily converted to stereophonic reception with standard equipment. AM broadcasts, on the other hand, had a built-in staticlike noise, and though the FCC authorized the production of AM stereo broadcasts in 1982, there was no standard, and stations were unwilling to commit to the expense of equipment to improve sound quality that might not meet whatever standard emerged. As a result no standard was established, and FM became the medium of choice for listeners who appreciated clearly reproduced music. Slowly AM became the home of talk radio—news, sports, and call-in programs.

Shock Radio

In notable instances FM radio acquired a rebel character. Alternative programming was far more common on FM bands, and rock music calculated to shock adults as presented by irreverent disc jockeys was a staple of progressive stations in most large markets. In 1986 Susan Baker, wife of Secretary of Treasury James A. Baker, led a group called Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC) to lobby Congress for legislation to prohibit radio broadcast of songs, specifically popular rock 'n' roll music, with sexually explicit lyrics. The issue was broadened when listeners complained about disc jockeys whose programs featured obscene language and explicit sexual content—their programs were called shock radio. In November 1987 the FCC ruled that indecent programming was allowed, but only between the hours of mid-night and 6:00 A.M. The ruling was in keeping with a general inclination during the decade to avoid unnecessary regulation of broadcasting. In 1981 broadcasters had been freed of the fairness doctrine, which required equal airtime for political opponents; the restriction limiting commercials to no more than twenty minutes an hour had been lifted; and radio broadcasters had been relieved of many FCC reporting requirements

NPR

National Public Radio (NPR), on the other hand, brought the voice of civility to FM radio. All Things Considered and its rising-time counterpart Morning Edition won awards and attracted record audiences for public broadcasting, but the network also faced a budget crisis. In May 1983 NPR president Frank Mankiewicz announced a surprisingly large debt that had been masked by accounting errors and promptly resigned. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that included NPR, negotiated a multimillion-dollar loan and initiated an aggressive fund-raising campaign. Beginning that year NPR may have been commercial free, but during specified weeks it gave a significant portion of its programming to pleas for donations to support operations. The tactic worked, and by the end of the decade NPR was a significant radio presence, as the most successful nationally based news radio network.