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C. Stage Three: Free Market Access (1956-1977)

From the Radio Act of 1927, it has always been understood that an important criterion for retaining a broadcasting license is "public service" broadcasting. Just how much public service time is necessary has never been explicitly defined, but it has always been clear that religious programming constitutes public service. In 1960, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that there was no intrinsic relationship between sustaining-time and public service. The implications of this ruling were monumental, for both religious broadcasters and local stations. Under the ruling, local stations could sell airtime for religious programs and still get FCC "public interest credit." Under the ruling, evangelical broadcasters found cause to renew their commitment to buying religious airtime. Their faith was buoyed. Market forces explain the rest of the story. The ensuing competition between religious broadcasters for religious airtime became fierce. Fierce competition greatly

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enhanced the value of the air-time, which fact, in its turn, prompted many local stations, which had previously abstained from selling air-time to religious broadcasters, to cash in on the new demand. [37]

In the course of the next two decades, the landscape of religious broadcasting was transformed from the rule of sustaining-time to the dominance of free market access. By 1977, ninety-two percent of all religious broadcasting in the U.S. was paid-time programming [38] the overwhelming majority of which was being purchased by evangelicals. [39]

The 1960 ruling of the FCC was a watershed in the long struggle of evangelicals to gain access to the airways. I have identified 1956 rather than 1960 as the beginning of this free market stage of religious broadcasting, because that was the year that James DeForest Murch became the executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters. Murch took several important initiatives that quickly made NRB a big player in the communications business. The most important step was to take the annual meetings of the NRB to Washington, D.C. In his autobiography, Murch explained his reasoning:

One of Murch's early and most important moves was to call on Sol Taishoff, editor and publisher of Broadcasting. Murch persuaded Taishoff that evangelicals had a legitimate complaint and created in Taishoff a champion of NRB's campaign to purchase airtime. Murch and other NRB leaders also found their way to the offices of the FCC and pleaded their case for

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Soon enough, evangelical broadcasters moved beyond gaining mere parity with religious broadcasters of the "mainline" religious traditions. Eventually, evangelical broadcasters acquired absolute dominance of the religious airwaves, a dominance, which they have maintained until the present. Just how have they maintained this absolute dominance? NRB continues to hold its influential annual meetings in Washington, D.C., meetings which perennially feature an appearance by the President of the United States and which attract the faithful attendance of the Commissioners of the FCC. One former FCC Commissioner recently commented that the religious broadcasters "have a lobbying capability that makes the National Rifle Association seem like a bunch of rank amateurs." [41]

Liberal Protestants and Catholics have attempted to check the dominance of evangelical broadcasters along two lines. [42] First, liberal Protestants and Catholics have argued that a license to broadcast is a public trust, that those who hold this trust are obliged to offer sustaining-time for religious programming, and, further, that mainline religious traditions ought to be the recipients of such gratis air-time. Second, liberal Protestants and Catholics have assailed the worthiness not only of evangelical broadcasters, but also of television as a medium. The argument runs roughly like this: televangelists are scoundrels using a medium that is inherently corrupting. [43] In short, liberal Protestants and Catholics find difficulty in arguing for entitlement to gratuitous access to a medium that they barely trust. But this ambivalence towards the broadcast media is one they have lived with for the better part of the century.

The growth of syndicated religious broadcasting occurred during the 1970s as individual televangelists purchased airtime station-by-station. During the 1980s the marketplace of syndicated religious broadcasters became saturated. This led to increased competition that drove the cost of air-time beyond the

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means of the broadcasters to pay, i.e., beyond their capability to raise money from the small proportion of the viewers who were willing to send in a donation. One theory advanced regarding the underlying conditions precipitating the scandals was that the market had become saturated and some broadcasters were covertly seeking reduced competition. [44]