We Interupt Rush Limbaugh for This Important Message...

It should come as little surprise that, the likes of Air America having failed so miserably, the "progressive" left is abandoning (yet again) the notion that it can compete in that metaphorical “marketplace of ideas” better known as talk radio. Their solution?

...any effort to encourage more responsive and balanced radio programming will first require steps to increase localism and diversify radio station ownership to better meet local and community needs. We suggest three ways to accomplish this:

-- Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.

-- Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.

-- Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.

So, in a nutshell, the perspective here is that because leftist talk fails to “compete” in one particular news and information medium regardless of how predominant it may be in all the rest, the public interest justifies greater regulation to require its inclusion, the public's actual preferences be damned.

On a personal note, I’m not a big fan of most of the programming from the big radio chains (or, for that matter, conservative talk radio) any more than I am of the boringly identical mall chain stores and restaurants one finds everywhere in America these days. I search out Mom & Pop restaurants when I am traveling and I miss the (often cheesy) programming of independent radio and television stations of my youth. But whether my preferences are optimally served by changes in these markets is irrelevant to whether this poses some sort of action requiring public interest crisis.

But what I find most amusing about these recommendations is the third. Thank you, Center for American Progress, for frankly, albeit indirectly, acknowledging that “public broadcasting” is an essentially left wing enterprise.