Bob McCarty Writes

Covering topics that range from financial and political news to reality television and college football, stories worth reading this Monday morning appear below:

• The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that radio station ad sales are way down, but they pale in comparison to what’s likely to happen if the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” is reinstated.  It might be time to buy stock in online and satellite radio companies.

• As a sidebar to a larger story about the election of Barack Obama as president, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers today an audio slideshow under the headline, in your own voices.  Unfortunately, the only voices heard in the piece are those of Obama supporters.  How about a Fairness Doctrine for newspapers?

• Still on the subject of Obama, The New York Times offers a piece today about Nate Silver, the blogger behind FiveThirtyEight.com who has perfected the art and science of predicting the outcomes of baseball games and, more recently, presidential elections.  I look forward to his 2012 predictions — of a conservative victory, that is!

• The New York Post shares news about a soon-to-be-broadcast Fox television series, Secret Millionaire, which takes a millionaire out of his or her plush lifestyles and plunks him down — undercover — in the crappiest part of town for a week with no money.  When the week is over, the millionaire reveals himself to the people and groups who have helped him — and then writes out a big fat check for them. Perhaps the same sort of show could be done with a person posing as a lobbyist who heads to the nation’s capitol and offers bribes to members of Congress.  Those who do not accept the bribes — there won’t be many — will be congratulated, while the crooked ones will be exposed.

• NewsOk.com says the Oklahoma Sooners could reach the national title game by winning out.  Not surprisingly, I agree!