Sue Wilson didn't like what she saw happening to radio over the last couple of decades. So the broadcast journalist decided to do something about it: make a documentary.

Broadcast Blues is a call to arms for disaffected media consumers everywhere, but especially those upset by the proliferation of ideologically bound talk radio. Wilson, who has been traveling the country for screenings of the 72-minute video, hopes to persuade audiences to goad the nation's broadcast regulators to roll back media concentration and enforce the rules requiring TV and radio to serve the public interest.

It's a David-and-Goliath battle. Not quite a dozen people turned out in the rain this past Saturday night in Racine to hear Wilson and see her film. A couple of nights before, a showing in Milwaukee drew about 75 people, Wilson reports, while an Appleton viewing drew 90. “It does much better in more conservative areas,” she says. “The people in those areas understand that their voices are not getting heard. In San Francisco, they yawn."

Meanwhile, the single biggest name in radio, Clear Channel, owns 1,200 stations nationwide, including six in Milwaukee, and claims more than two-thirds of the nation's population listens to its stations each month. No question who’s got the bigger audience, at least for now.

Still, Wilson soldiers on. Her movie covers territory well beyond broadcasting alone. It includes an indictment of media failures generally, such as the absence of media skepticism toward Bush Administration claims that Iraq was stockpiling poison gas or even developing nuclear weapons -- claims the administration used to justify invading Iraq in 2003.

But its central message is the way talk radio, 90 percent of it from the political right, has all but supplanted news and information programming on the airwaves. One in five Americans say talk radio is their primary source of news, the documentary asserts -- and it then goes on to demonstrate repeated and systematic distortions promulgated by the medium. For example, the film airs a clip of Rush Limbaugh claiming Congressional Democrats didn't applaud President George W. Bush's appeals to "victory" and "freedom" in a speech on Iraq -- then shows video that demonstrates just the opposite, complete with whimsical cartoon fingers pointing at the applauding Democrats.

Along the way, she also takes aim at media consolidation, made possible by a series of deregulatory moves, including the 1996 telecommunications act signed by President Bill Clinton, which lifted the ceiling on radio station ownership. Wilson's documentary blames consolidation not only for the dominance of right-wing talk radio but also for the shrinking of local coverage of all kinds. One segment relates how, during an ammonia spill that poisoned the air in Minot, N.D., killing one resident, no stations aired emergency warnings because they were all automated (and six were owned by Clear Channel).

The 2002 Minot incident, as Jack Shafer noted in Slate in 2007, has become a signature part of the media reform narrative. Shafer's account tells a more complicated story about the incident, though it was rebutted in part by Peter DiCola for the Future of Music Coalition.

Wilson's movie is made with the skill of a broadcast professional. She also has the broadcaster's knack for extracting a punchy message from a morass of details and nuance: "The media is killing people in this country. Literally," she says -- and points to, besides the death in Minot, the death of a woman in Sacramento who took part in a radio station stunt to see how much water people could drink and hold their urine. 

Wilson's Wisconsin visit drew the ire of WTMJ's Charlie Sykes, who claimed on his blog that Wilson wanted to "shut down" conservative talk radio. But Wilson says that misses the point: Her aim, she says, is to open up the airwaves to a greater diversity of points of view.

"I am afraid that we are losing our ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, we are losing our ability to have a real debate and discourse in this country," she said after her Racine showing. 

She's especially critical of the Federal Communications Commission, which has a distinctive role in the communications industry. Because the broadcast airwaves represent a limited resource, they belong to the public, and their use is governed by the Depression-era agency. In recent decades, though, the agency has been far too lax in fulfilling its public interest obligations, Wilson says. For example, she contends, the FCC should step in in response to the Sacramento water-stunt death: "If you will not take away the license of a station that killed a woman, when will you take it away?"

What Wilson does want to do is encourage listeners to challenge the FCC licenses of radio and TV stations on the grounds that they are ill-serving the public interest through bias and sensationalism. To that end, she's set up the Media Action Center and is recruiting like-minded activists to monitor local broadcasts, engage with station managers to change their ways and then petition the FCC to revoke licenses of offending stations. Licenses are granted for eight-year terms and come due on a state-by-state basis; November 2012 is when Wisconsin's radio stations would be subject to challenge.

"You only have one year to organize," she told her Racine audience.

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Several years ago Channel 4 launched a news-like entertainment show, “The Morning Blend,” whose signature feature is that the guests and other featured bits are often sponsored and paid for by advertisers. Now the concept has seeped over to the sibling AM radio station owned by Journal Communications.

Earlier this month, afternoon drive newsman John Mercure posted an item on the station's website singing the praises of the Volkswagen Passat, along with the disclaimer that it was a paid endorsement. The item first appeared on his blog, but it was soon taken down and moved to a different page, under what appears to be a new feature "Test Drive with Mercure."  He's posted two more valentines to the Passat since then.

Tempting as it might be to bemoan the naked commercialism of the news in this way, it's really nothing new. On-air endorsements by news readers have a long if not particularly worthy tradition in TV and radio; the late Paul Harvey was famous for the practice. 

But one only has to think back to the recent controversy  over the deal with Reebok that ESPN's Erin Andrews had to see the potential for problems here.

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