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"I wondered if Bill Clinton had any idea the monster he was creating
in 1996 when he signed the Telecommunications Act. . ."
Murder Off Mike, page 138
Okay, okay. No one person "killed" radio. But the soul of the medium we knew and loved is so comatose, someone might as well have ripped out its heart and stomped on it.
So what happened?
The bad vibes started back to the mid-1980s, with the fanning of the flames of deregulation by the Reagan Administration. In the case of the radio industry, it meant, among other things, relaxing the requirement for stations to broadcast local news and public service programming. Hundreds of one-person news departments (think Les Nessman in WKRP in Cincinnati) and thousands of hours of public service time disappeared.
Equal time? Oh, sure. . .
De-regulation mania also brought about the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. Remember the days when stations offered equal time to "responsible spokesmen from opposing viewpoints"? Just try asking your local station for equal time to reply to Limbaugh. Or Schlessinger. Or Savage. Yeah, right.
The early Nineties saw the rise of the LMAs, Local Marketing Agreements, contracts between two or more competing stations to sell commercial airtime as one package. You can almost hear the collective musing of the suits: "Look at all the money we saved consolidating sales staffs. Gee, do you think it would work for programming?"
Then came the Telecommunications Act of 1996, wiping out the laws that had up until then restricted the number of radio stations any single company could own, both nationwide and within a single city. Coincidentally, digital broadcast technology broke through big time right about the same time, making it feasible for the first time to program dozens of stations from one location and still have a clean air sound. Why pay for a team of local disk jockeys, when a couple of announcers in a studio in, say, Austin, Texas, can make it sound as if they're broadcasting from your home town?
Did someone say Cheap Channel?
Today you have one company--Clear Channel Communications--owning 1,225 radio stations (as of this writing). Just as a basis of comparison, the station I worked at circa 1988-1993 was owned by Westinghouse Broadcasting, Group W Radio. Group W was considered one of the Big Boys, a major player in the radio industry. At the time, Group W owned all of around a dozen stations in cities across the country.
Fast-forward to 2003, when you're allowed to own, say, nine stations in one market, as Clear Channel does in San Francisco-San Jose. Obviously, there's no need to rent nine different offices, fund nine different news departments, or hire nine different overnight disk jockeys.
One estimate has it that 10,000 radio people have been "consolidated" out of a job in the past seven years.
But what does this have to do with me?
Well, for one thing, have you ever wondered why the new music scene has sucked so much the past few years? Could it be because the traditional vehicle for introducing new music has sold its soul to a few major corporations focused solely on profits?
Again visiting our friends at Clear Channel, it turns out the corporation owns not only a thousand-plus radio stations, but also concert promotion companies (including the legendary Bill Graham Presents) and amphitheaters. So, like, what chance does your garage band have of even scoring a regional hit, if you don't have the pull to land any airplay on a Clear Channel station?
Yeah, but . . .
. . . isn't this the way it should be? The free enterprise system at work? Just like all those Home Depots and Borders driving the downtown mom'n'pop hardware stores and book shops out of business. It's too bad, but isn't that the price we pay for an open market system?
Well, yes, except . . . a broadcast license is supposed to be a public resource, just like our national parks and public libraries. You can't just decide, unlike a hardware store or a book shop, that you want to open a radio station, put up the money, and then go on the air. There are only a finite number of broadcast frequencies available, and the federal government decides who gets to have and keep a radio broadcast license. The feds are supposed to be watching out for "the public interest." Instead, they've done the equivalent of allowing Disney to install Mickey's Half Dome Adventure in Yosemite National Park.
The original law governing the broadcast industry, the Radio Act of 1927, says that radio stations are supposed to operate in "the public interest, convenience and necessity." Is it really in the public interest when every city in America has a station airing the identical "Mix" music format, the same right-wing rantings?
Who killed the radio star?
It's not the first time someone has written radio's obituary. In the early 1950s, television was supposed to drive radio out of business. In 1982, MTV came along and video allegedly killed the radio star. Both times, radio re-invented itself and bounced back, stronger than ever.
This time it's different. Radio isn't being threatened by an outside force. It's being slowly poisoned by the very organizations you'd think would be watching out for its welfare: the National Association of Broadcasters and the Federal Communciations Commission.
Video didn't kill the radio star. Corporate greed killed radio.
One of the greatest Top 40 disk jockeys of all time, Dr. Don Rose, writes in his Web site of colleagues who managed to get out of the radio business with their souls intact.
I'd like to think that Murder Off Mike and its sequels are my attempts to reclaim a bit of radio's soul.
For Further Reading
www.salon.com Eric Boehlert's excellent series is must reading!
www.drdonrose.com Offical Web site of legendary Top 40 disk jockey Dr. Don Rose.
www.sfgate.com Interesting article from San Francisco Chronicle about Clear Channel's impact in the SF Bay Area.
www.reclaimthemedia.org Grass-roots organization attempting to raise concern about the concentration of broadcast licenses in the hands of a few big corporations.
www.futureofmusic.org The Future of Music Coalition raises issues of concern to musicians, including radio station consolidation.
www.cheapchannelradio.com One of the better Clear Channel satire sites.
www.clearchannel.com Official Web site of you-know-who.
Take Me Home
Take Me to the Top
