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This entire discussion becomes a double-edged sword on many fronts.

First, if anyone writes rules to bring mass diversity to AM...then the courts will be clogged with lawsuits over why it doesn’t apply to FM, to music choices, public access TV, or regular TV.

Then you get into the profit mechanism that AM currently uses. If you devise a system where AM stations go under...then you kinda become responsible for it (hinting of bailouts for years or decades). I could easily see a station in west Texas with little competition making $300k a year under the current scheme of things. With a change and shift...they might make barely $150k...so they are losing half of what they could typically make.

Then we get into the shift. Rush and the others already have plan B ready to put into action...between internet and satellite radio. Satellite radio has been stalled for several years on subscriptions and has almost bankrupted itself in waiting for something to occur. This is likely the “something” that they always hoped for. So you will naturally pay for this privilege of listening to various progressive radio talk shows...but at least you get what you want.

Finally, at the tailend of this whole game....are at least one hundred radio stations that will likely disappear by the end of 2010...unable to make enough money to play this game. In some communities....where there wasn’t any real competition....you might lose the one and only AM station within ten miles of your house.

If fairness and diversity were such important things, then you’d demand those on TV programming and have openly gay TV shows, proactive American Indian detective shows, Latino hospital shows, and Scientology’s version of Doctor Phil on each afternoon. For some reason, we really don’t care much about diversity or fairness.