It took FM radio 20 years before the public really took an interest in it. When FM started, corporations and AM stations had the spectrum in a stranglehold, using FM to simulcast their stations already being heard on AM. This system didn't change until the government passed non-duplication regulations, which meant that “in cities of more than 100,000 people, radio stations with both AM and FM could not duplicate more than 50 percent of their programming on both bands simultaneously.”1 This “helped promote much more enterprising exploitation of the medium,” including a near, albeit brief, takeover by the underrepresented but outspoken community, the counterculture.2
Traces of the 60's counterculture date back to the people who first championed
FM in the 40's; a group looking for a purer sound and hi-fidelity listening
capabilities. While they became more obsessed with the sound of the music, commercial
radio became more obsessed with mass-market appeal and record sales. Back then,
FM's offering of “fidelity listening - a new, avid, artistic celebration of
sound itself - was what FM DJ's promoted and what listeners sought.”3
The spectrum, however, wasn't able to live up to its promise as long as corporations
with no interest in audio quality and FM altogether held the licenses to those
frequencies.
The FCC's ruling on duplication changed all of that, paving the way for institutions,
government-backed organizations, and other community groups to acquire new radio
real estate. The counterculture, in particular, was eager for change. They “wanted
their lives to be less programmed, less predictable,” which was a style they
were going to have to find somewhere other than AM radio.4 They took
to the airwaves, and shortly thereafter, the spectrum's potential was realized
and the medium was reinvented practically overnight.
While the counterculture's take over of FM began with a desire for a higher
fidelity audio experience, it quickly turned into a social movement all its
own. When they “worked their way into the FM radio stations they deliberately
used their positions to challenge every aspect of what people heard and how
they heard it.”5 The DJ's answered to no one but themselves, including
public pressure, record companies and even station managers. It didn't matter
if a song was two minutes or nine, if they wanted to play it they would. Commercials
were non-existent, except for the few, local businesses that truly supported
this kind of underground programming. A group once ignored by the media now
had everyone's ear, and the counterculture had turned their desire for no static
broadcasts into “an aesthetic, cultural quest for an alternative media outpost.”6
Unfortunately, as soon as this FM revolution took hold of a larger audience,
it was co-opted by big business, and major corporations were now profiting off
the underground style created by the counterculture. Networks used the status
these stations gained among the youth to their advantage, while simultaneously
“purging it of left-wing politics and too much musical homogeneity.”7
Yet, it was the counterculture's “anticommercial, anticorporate ethos in the
1960's that caused FM to flower.”8 Without the counterculture, current
radio would be very different. Many stations of today have reverted to practices
that were popularized prior to the emergence of FM, but the medium's potential
to reshape the national dialogue and return the power of the airwaves back to
the people still exists.
1 Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio And The American Imagination, From Amos ‘n’ Andy And Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack And Howard Stern (New York: Times Books, 1999) 263.
2Douglas 263.
3Douglas 274.
4Douglas 268.
5Douglas 269.
6Douglas 267.
7Douglas 277.
8Douglas 259.