Introduction

Since the Reagan administration's suspension of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the United States has experienced a surge in right-wing media production. This surge is not simply the result of the doctrine's demise, however; the doctrine was just one of numerous victims of communications deregulation. Deregulation and, more specifi cally, the growth of cable television that deregulation enabled, led to a dramatic increase in the number of available broadcast outlets. While this would eventually culminate in the emergence of Fox News in 1996, in the 1980s the fallout was often less right wing than bathetic. Late-night TV was suddenly dominated by infomercials for timeless products such as the Flowbee (yes, you can cut your hair with a vacuum cleaner). Afternoons were taken over by syndicated strips of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (syndicated, 1983-1985) and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (syndicated, 1985-1986, 1989-1992) cartoons. And the early evening saw the rise of Entertainment Tonight (syndicated, 1981-present), Hard Copy (syndicated, 1989-1999), and other cheap news-magazine shows.¹

The new content enabled by deregulation was hardly "apolitical," but it would be excessive simply to label it "right-wing" across the board, even if G.I. Joe did shamelessly support military spending. That is, even as we acknowledge that a rightward turn in American politics has coincided with a rightward turn in communications policies, we must be careful not to fall into a conspiratorial fugue as we seek to understand the complicated coincidence of these two turns. Television became both more conservative and more liberal in the wake of deregulation in the 1980s.

Radio, on the other hand, swung right more ferociously in those years. Freed from the limits of "fairness" (though still theoretically beholden to specifi c regulations regarding "decency"), talk radio expanded rapidly, often tilting to the right. It was here that conservative political candidates were promoted, free-market economics were advocated, and reproductive rights were opposed. Rush Limbaugh began coining his neologisms: his friends were "dittoheads"; his enemies were "feminazis," or worse. At the same time, shock jocks pushed at the boundaries of "decency" and aired increasingly risqué material. Broadcasting the sounds of women performing genital acts with ping-pong balls—acts that have probably never even occurred to most people (except, perhaps, seriously kinky Flowbee users)—is, in and of itself, neither left wing or right wing. It's just funny, disgusting, immoral, or misogynist, depending on your point of view.

It is easy to say that deregulation created right-wing media, but it would be more accurate to say that deregulation led to the creation (and the elimination) of many kinds of media. Deregulation specifically enabled the rise of niche media. If The Rush Limbaugh Show (syndicated, 1992-1996) served a niche TV audience, so did Star Trek: The Next Generation (syndicated, 1987-1994), a program with flawlessly liberal credentials. And if Glenn Beck (HLN, 2006-2008; Fox News, 2009-2011) would never have thrived and found national sponsorship in a highly regulated environment of communications scarcity, the same is probably true of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB, 1997-2001; UPN, 2001-2003), a highly serialized program that never came close to drawing a blockbuster-sized audience. In other words, there are damn good reasons to be skeptical about the effects of deregulation, not only on content (the rise of profit-driven news being an obvious issue of concern) but also on labor practices, ownership, and so on.² But, at the same time, we also need to admit that deregulation did affect content in some positive ways. Deregulation is a complicated phenomenon, and we aren't telling the story properly if we stick to the all-too-common notion that deregulation had only negative effects on American media and regulation had only positive effects.

In the regulated pre-Reagan environment, news coverage did indeed attempt to be "balanced," but regulation often seemed to promote not so much political parity as utter blandness. The Fairness Doctrine theoretically required broadcasters to cover "controversial issues of public importance," and when covering controversy, broadcasters did have to provide...