Well done...

An excellent defense of your position, my friend. Excellent!

I have nothing to say regarding most of your post... I really do think I understand your position very well... but I wanted to point out where I think you don't see mine.

You wrote: "I ended up watching th entire hour (unplanned, I had a wagon load of to-do's that day). And the idea that Beck, under your plan, would be forced to surrender 20 to 30 minutes to Oberhman, so he could tell me once again that Dick Cheney is the source of all evil in the world, is enough to make me nauseous. "

As I explained, this ISN'T what the doctrine required. No one would be forced to have opposing views interjected into a specific show... only that the broadcaster itself provided opportunity for the opposing view to be presented from the same company, should someone choose to present it.

So, in your example, Hannity's show would remain unchanged while Fox News would be required by the FCC to allow Olbermann to air his diametrically opposed point of view at some point on the same network. Thus, Sirius/XM radio would be immune to charges of violation of the requirements because the polar opposite viewpoint is presented only a button-push away on the very same dial setting, should the listener want to hear it.

Historical examples of this abound... but none is better than Buckley's Firing Line. How many years did that program run? 40+? Buckley was famous for his debates with people he did not agree with... but he interviewed hundreds of people that shared his conservative views, and no one claimed he was violating existing FCC regulations, because his broadcast company provided alternative points of view programing as a matter of course. It's not the SHOWS that are causing the problem with claims of (real or imagined) political bias... it is the broadcasters/publishers that network exclusive content of one viewpoint alone that is causing the problem.

Furthermore, looking abroad, we can see that the benchmark of journalistic excellence that we remember from our youth (or even further back, perhaps) did not actually exist at the same time in places like the UK. "Tabloid-esque" news has been the standard in Britain since before WWII, but it is only in the last 30 years or so that it has taken over most of the mainstream newspapers in this country.

None the less, more regulation is not the ONLY solution. In fact, I agree that it might not be the best solution. I am saying that it is not the WORST solution, though... and if the far left are going to continue to advocate such a course of action, it cannot benefit them in the end if their position is fundamentally flawed from its very inception. As long as the First Amendment stands, and the Courts recognize that there is no Constitutional obligation for the Fairness Doctrine and that it does not violate the First Amendment (which it did not in its past incarnation), the fact that the traditional conservative view is the more beneficial to American society can only be furthered because of the doctrine.

Wilkow, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al... they can tell me that the Fairness Doctrine is the end of AM talk radio all they want... but it isn't true. As the doctrine stood before, it can only help to ensure that equal opportunity for both cases can be made via the same broadcast medium... which is exactly what Sirius/XM, Fox, and most AM Talk stations already provide. Nothing would change there at all... even at Fox, as near as I can tell. They have liberals with their own shows, they have staunch Democratic supporters on the air, and they routinely offer insight and analysis from liberals when presenting conservative views... and it is the better network because of it, as the ratings and view polls show.

None of this negates what Ryan said though... it is the listener/reader/viewer that determines what is popular and viable, not the Fed and its regulations. The free market of subscriber/viewer revenue is what should drive the decisions of who is doing what kind of shows, and the First Amendment provides the protection that any point of view is valid enough to be presented.

That said, let me reiterate that I was NOT defending or advocating the Fairness Doctrine. I was only making the observation that there is a marked difference in how media is presented in this nation from when the doctrine was in place to when it was no longer applicable. History shows us that the press in this nation have a lot of power... enough to start wars, in fact... and the press of today seems to me to be far more akin to the "yellow" press of the turn of the last century than to the benchmark standard that our media established since the end of WWII. Were this not the case, then why are the papers and media outlets that still adhere to the Doctrine the most successful and best respected outlets in the world (Wall Street Journal, CSPAN, Washington Times, New York Post) while those that have thrown it away are becoming less and less influential across the globe (New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR)?