Critics said the policy violated broadcasters' First Amendment rights. (The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.) Critics also charged that the threat of penalties for violating the FCC rule had caused broadcasters to avoid covering some issues at all. .
Reagan vetoed a bill in Congress that would have made the Fairness Doctrine a law on June 20. On August 4, the FCC voted unanimously to abolish the Fairness Doctrine. But a few members of Congress vowed to renew efforts to enact the policy into law.
Rock-oriented stations in the United States in 1987 dominated radio. Also continuing a trend, FM radio stations brought more listeners than stations on the AM band, which usually made their formats news, talk shows, and sports. .
In February, Garrison Keillor, host of the program "A Prairie Home Companion," announced he would discontinue the show in June. The program, broadcast on Saturday nights from St. Paul, Minn., since 1974, was distributed to 4 million weekly listeners by public stations nationwide. "A Prairie Home Companion" was a fond celebration of Americana that recounted, in Keillor's folksy narrative style, the tales of a fictional town called Lake Wobegon, Minn. It was a place, he said, "where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." .
Women Artists burned up the charts in 1987. In June, Whitney Houston's second album, Whitney, was the first album by a female to debut at the number-one spot on Billboard' s top pop albums chart In March, Janet Jackson's album Control became the second album ever "after Thriller, recorded by Jackson's brother Michael "to produce five "top-five" hits "songs in the top five places on the chart of best-selling recordings. In January, Madonna's "Open Your Heart" became her 10th straight top-five single, the longest series of top-five hits since the Beatles had 15 in the 1960's.
