It’s not a matter of the Fairness Doctrine so much as it is three decades of Big Radio thinking they could find a cheap, easy, and consequence free source of programming for their AM signals.

Conservative talk isn’t that hard. Every middle aged white DJ sees Rush Limbaugh as the model of where to go and what to do once you get too expensive for your FM morning show. As long as you managed to repeat what Rush and the Fox News hosts were saying you could do reasonably well. And you probably thought you were talking to other middle aged men who wanted to be mad in the car. Now they have discovered that some people in the audience wanted to kill some of the daily villains they had been serving up for years. Talk radio will go under the microscope in a serious way for the first time since Oklahoma City 26 years ago.

Cumulus and Entercom will bail immediately now that they believe they face legal exposure over this. Cumulus is afraid of losing licenses. Iheart siloed all of their conservative syndicated talk shows on the lesser AM station in a market where they own more than one AM stick years ago. . Salem doesnt care.