Report: Cumulus Refused to Let Garner Air Buttigieg Interview

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, July 22, 2019

Blair Garner

Cumulus has created quite an uproar when it refused to let syndicated and National and Country Radio Hall of Fame air personality Blair Garner air a pre-recorded interview with 2020 Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg last week. According To CNN, the idea for it came from the Buttigieg campaign, and Garner welcomed the outreach. If you want to hear the interview, it's only available on Garner's personal SoundCloud page.

"Since Country music tends to lean in a conservative direction, I was surprised" to get the opportunity, Garner wrote afterward. "The only candidate who asked to be on my show. My employer decided I couldn't air it - but I did get permission to post it on my personal Soundcloud account," he said in a Twitter post.

In an op-ed for USA Today, Kurt Bardella, the publisher of the daily country music email newsletter "The Morning Hangover," said, "I hope the executives at Cumulus take the time to actually listen to the whole conversation, reconsider their directive, and give Blair the go-ahead to air his talk with Mayor Pete."

Cumulus said it wouldn't allow the interview because of federal rules that require stations to provide equal time to political candidates.

"Cumulus Nashville's programming managers made the decision not to air Blair Garner's pre-recorded interview with Mayor Pete Buttigieg because of the large number of political candidates currently in this race," the company told CNN. "The decision was made by local programming management based solely on concerns related to the application of the FCC's Equal Time Rule. The effects of the FCC's Equal Time Rule are widely understood and considered whenever these types of issues arise."

According to experts who have studied the equal time rules, a news interview does not apply in this case. Media researcher and communications professor Dylan McLemore wrote in a Twitter post, "The equal time rule is indeed 'widely understood' ... to NOT include 'bonafide news interviews,' even by entertainment hosts like Garner. Cumulus knows this. So what's the real reason?" He also cited late-night talk show interviews as an example in which the equal time rule does not apply.