Driver3

Listening for a heartbeat
By Tyler Driver

The autopsy would say, "Death from Greed." The first great edifice of the airwaves, the medium appointed to carry the banner of technological change to the masses, has come this far to die.

The dying remains lying at our feet is not the result of natural causes, as some may one day proclaim; rather, the soon-to-be-departed was murdered. The murder weapon: The Telecommunications Act of 1996. The cooling corpse: Radio.

And what a quick death this is becoming. Before 1996, a radio broadcast company could not own more than two stations in a single market and no more than 12 nationwide. Those restrictions were lifted with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, allowing the megalith Clear Channel Communications dominion over a large portion of the airwaves.

This Fortune 500 company is now larger than the more famous media giants Hearst and the New York Times Co. In fact, what is clear about Clear Channel, from simply noting the sheer number of stations it has acquired across the country, is that it rules radio like no other company in any other media industry.

With more than 1,200 stations, Clear Channel owns a full 11 percent of the commercial radio dial. Astonishingly, the percentage is even higher in larger markets. This domination is most grievously seen in the rock radio sector, where Clear Channel now controls 60 percent of the stations nationwide, according to FCC records.

To support this empire and to expand its reach, Clear Channel also owns SFX Entertainment, the largest concert promoter (an important marketing vehicle for rock radio). Deep inside the business, out of sight from the purview of most listeners, Clear Channel owns syndicated programming, radio trade magazines, radio research companies and an airplay monitoring system.

Added to all of this are hundreds of thousands of billboards and 19 television stations.

What kind of impact does such enormous consolidation represent? Speaking to an audience at a recent National Association of Broadcasters’ radio convention, Bruce Resse, president and CEO of Bonneville International Corp., owner of one the nation’s most influential rock radio stations, WLUP in Chicago, attempted to answer that question in a speech, which he opened with a self-described "cautionary statement:" "I'm concerned about the potential for undermining a terrific business in the interest of meeting short-term goals," he said. "Radio is an old business, but consolidating radio is a very new business. We're still trying to figure out what it is. I'm not sure we know how to run 1,200 radio stations -- I'm not sure we know how to run 200 radio stations as a group...My concern is that we're eliminating too much management, too much research, all in the interest of meeting those short-term projections and keeping [Wall Street] happy. Some of the experiments we're running may threaten localism, which would be a terrible thing to happen to this business. In my view, we are not helping ourselves to grow audiences, to grow revenue, to grow long-term profitability by some of the cost-saving decisions that have been made."

While cost cutting via employee layoffs has become an economic reality in many business sectors, the scale of Clear Channel’s measures show a drastic change in the shape and nature of the radio business. According to industry reports, some of their AM stations have even cut news departments from 15 full-time employees down to one.

Another example of a cost cutting move by Clear Channel includes the use of "voice tracking," whereby a single on-air radio personality is used on other radio stations in other markets. Clever editing and pre-recorded splices give the illusion that the person on the air is only a radio signal distance away. This same mechanism gives Clear Channel the ability to run call-in contests nationwide that sound local, but really aren’t.

Despite defenders of these new trends, mainly radio executives who point to radio’s 82-year history of surviving threats from television and even CB radios, Todd Spencer, former managing editor of Gavin, a now-defunct radio trade journal, puts the impact of consolidation of radio ownership in perspective. In an article for Salon.com, he said, "In their experiments radio execs starved their stations of manpower and research and music testing and polluted them with extra commercials and digital disc jockeys. They’re betting it will all work out just fine."

Southern rocker Tom Petty doesn’t think it will. In his newly released single, "The Last DJ," Petty sings, "And there goes your freedom of choice. There goes the last human voice." Maybe Tom Petty is just paranoid. On the other hand, maybe a rock star knows a thing or two about radio that the FCC doesn’t.

There is no question that the actions of a company like Clear Channel appear to be the result of a failed regulatory policy. As Todd Spencer pointed out in a recent article for Salon.com, "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was written and ratified for the very few people in this country who buy and sell radio stations --not for the people who make radio, and not for the people who listen to it."

It’s easy to think nostalgically about the earliest days of radio, when the medium itself was often the news of the day; when this technology reverberated in the homes and consciousness of a country coming to terms with a destiny of the nearly unimaginable. Most of us remember hearing stories from older family members about the impact of radio, about how what they heard had changed them. It was a dazzling world of the imagination captured in all of those moments of repose and anxiety, when amazement immediately turned into delight or disquiet.

But the point of this is not what happens to radio going forward; it’s what happens to us, when the former diversity in programming information and choice is replaced with a single voice on hundreds, if not thousands, of radio stations across a nation. We sold diversity, localism and connection to others now mostly outside our community for a few dollars that we didn’t even get. And, in exchange, we are hearing an evermore-monotonous drone, as people and businesses pursue consolidation and uniform programming as the "solution" to radio’s economic situation.

We have always been a country known to the world by what we allow and what we believe. While we are busy defending these principles, others vilify us for our irresponsible use of our freedoms and for squandering our opportunity. If we want to maintain our freedom, then we must protect those things that support our freedom, and critical to this are diversity of opinion and an open marketplace of ideas.

But who, when the winds of change are at our back driving such a huge change in our communications abilities through massive consolidation of the radio industry, will protect us from ourselves?

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