Many of the radio broadcasters of the far right talk shows  originally  were clergy, including Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, Clarence Manion, and many others. An umbilical connection between religion and politics was also nourished. The more conservative the religion the better. Conservative politics met conservative religion and the offspring were often inbred monsters.

Many of these religious pundits did not agree on religion, except that what united them was opposition to hated liberal theology. They wanted that old time religion. They also hated the superior John F. Kennedy at least until he died. Then they forgave him for his sins. Their politics was grassroots conservative activism on a huge scale. Kennedy multiplied the audits of radio stations after he worked hard to introduce the fairness doctrine.

 The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was first introduced in 1949 and it was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. It sounded good in theory but was sometimes difficult in actual circumstances.

It was a dog a dog whistle for the conservative right. It did actually tamp down right-wing radio until Jimmy Carter, an evangelical liberal, which seems very odd these days, brought in de-regulation of the airwaves and allowed right wing radio to be born again. This formed the foundation for the golden age of right-wing hate ushered in under the near divine regime of  Saint Ronnie Regan. It also reinforced the views of the conservatives that modern media was biased against them, not an entirely fictious belief.

Paul Matzko tells in his history of talk radio showed how Kennedy reacted to the hatred by sending tax auditors to harass conservative broadcasters who reacted with more and more venom.  He relates how, by 1963, Kennedy was so alarmed by the rise of the Radio Right that he ordered the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Communications Commission to target conservative broadcasters with tax audits and enhanced regulatory scrutiny via the Fairness Doctrine. Right-wing broadcasters lost hundreds of stations and millions of listeners. Not until the deregulation of the airwaves under the Carter and Reagan administrations would right-wing radio regain its former prominence and then it did so with a vengeance when it discovered its magic elixir–hate.