Paul Matzko - The Radio Right

PAUL MATZKO

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Matzko, Paul, author.

Title: The radio right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the

Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement / Paul Matzko.

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019033846 (print) | LCCN 2019033847 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190073220 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190073244 (epub) |

ISBN 9780190073237 (updf) | ISBN 9780190073251 (online)

Subjects: LCSH: Radio in politicsUnited States. | Radio in religionUnited States. |

Radio broadcastingPolitical aspectsUnited States. | ConservatismUnited States.

Classification: LCC HE8697.85.U6 M38 2020 (print) | LCC HE8697.85.U6 (ebook) |

DDC 384.54/430973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033846

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033847

To Jessica, my love, and George, my bud

To Evelyn Austin Matzko (19182018)

Many of this books best ideas began with offhand remarks by my mentor, Philip Jenkins, whose first spoken words to me were, We are going to war! I owe a special debt to Amy Greenberg, who went the extra mile when she did not have to do anything at all. This project ultimately began in a graduate seminar with David Farber and flourished under the generous ministrations of David Watt. The supply-demand metaphor comes from a class with Roger Finke, who has the gift of making every person he talks to feel like the most important person in the world at that moment. Special thanks go to John Matzko, who taught me how to write even when he may wish he did not. Thank you also to Lincoln Mullen, who created the radio station measles maps; I am glad you settled in Canterbury.

My research depended on the work of many dozens of archivists and library staff, but I want to honor in particular the kindness of Tim Nutt at the University of Arkansas, Darrin Rodgers at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Kenneth Henke at the Princeton Theological Seminary Library, and Meredith Sommers at Milligan College, each of whom went above and beyond the call to help me ferret out interesting documents or who took a poor graduate student out for a meal. Also, this project relied on financial support from the following organizations: the Institute for Humane Studies, the Penn State College of Liberal Arts, the Penn State Democracy Institute, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, and the Billy Graham Center Archives. Finally, I would like to thank my editorsCynthia Read, Hannah Campeanu, and Jennifer Hammerfor shepherding this book through the publication process.

A portion of chapter three was previously published as Do Something about Life Line: The Kennedy Administrations Campaign to Silence the Radio Right, Presidential Studies Quarterly 48:4 (January 2018): 115. Part of chapter six was published as The National Council of Churches versus Right-Wing Radio: How the Mainline Muted the New Christian Right, in The Lively Experiment: Religious Toleration in America, from Roger Williams to the Present, eds. Christopher Beneke and Christopher Grenda (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015): 267286.

A local campaign official located the source of the problem; if Kennedy lost, it would be because every hate-monger, radio preacher and backwoods evangelist is being stirred up for an assault which will make 1928 look pale by comparison.

Although the campaign did not specify who these radio preachers were, the radio preacher with the widest coverage in the state at the time was Carl McIntire, a fundamentalist minister based in New Jersey. He might not have That prospect alienated many Protestant voters in West Virginia. This was the power of radio broadcasting in 1960; from a relative handful of stations, right-wing broadcasters could reach thousands or even millions of listeners with their criticisms of Kennedys faith and politics.

Biographers covering Kennedys 1960 campaign invariably note that he participated in the first televised presidential debates with a haggard-looking Richard Nixon, but what is less well known is that he was the first presidential candidate forced to deal with the phenomenon of conservative domination of independent radio. Conservatives had taken advantage of changes in the radio industry in the 1950s to build an informal network of radio stations spanning the entire country.

The election of 1960 marked the first time these conservative broadcasters flexed their political muscle on a national stage. A quick look at chart , which counts the radio stations that aired McIntires program, illustrates both the precipitous rise of right-wing radio and the scale of the problem confronting John F. Kennedy.