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Sen. Feingold Reintroduces Radio Competition Bill
jonerik writes "Billboard is reporting that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) has reintroduced his Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act, which is aimed at limiting the concentration of radio stations and concert promoters in the hands of a few large companies, such as Clear Channel. In addition, the bill would close loopholes in payola laws which currently permit 'pay-for-play' deals between record companies and radio stations 'unless an appropriate sponsorship identification announcement is made.' The bill's introduction comes as the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation prepares to hold a hearing Thursday on the problems of radio consolidation, and the committee's chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is expected to sign on soon as the bill's co-sponsor."
Every radio station in every city that's making any money is probably 9 times out of 10 part of ClearChannel's vast network (dare I say monopoly) of radio stations across the United States.
The same Top 40 songs are heard day in and day out in every city. Nothing changes. Only artists with big media contracts (Sony, Columbia, etc.) can afford to buy air time.
I often wonder why there's been little innovation on the radio. Bands like Radiohead come along, but I've probably only heard one song of theirs on the radio, and that was once or twice even.
Let the little guys get some airtime. Fight this consolidation. I urge you to contact your representatives in government.
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Payola is one of the factors that made record companies the giants that they are today.
This is old news anyway. Read this article written in 1956.
STF
in the car, i've got a subscription to XM, which is diverse enough that no matter what format I want to listen to, its available. true, its 101 stations run by one corporation, but truly the best part about it is the fact that since its subscription based, most channels aren't advertising-revenue driven, so there's no incentive to play the latest hit single four times an hour.
i don't know, if XM goes to hell, back to CDs for me.
The full text of the bill, as proposed, is available here in PDF format.
Note that this is not the first time that he has done something like this before.
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The point is, 'complete and total freedom for the individual' is not in the best interests of the majority of individuals. The richest and most-powerful indivuduals tend to get richer and more powerful, taking wealth and power away from the little guy.
The laws we have in place now, and what is being proposed here, are designed to put a 'cap' on power and wealth so that the little guy does not get taken advantage of.
I just recently moved to WI. I will definitely be voting for Russ Feingold in the future.
For those of you in Southwest Virginia (where I used to hail from), there is someone equally worthy to vote for, though he's a representative rather than a senator. Support Rick Boucher as well. He's introduced the recent act to limit the DMCA.
CC and the others put on that type of radio BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM MONEY.
yes, EXACTLY! as an example, here in st. louis, there used to be two "alternative" radio stations about 6 years ago. one of them, the obvious sellout, would do the whole 5 song playlist (a few of them clearly NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ALTERNATIVE) and split it up with 40 minutes of commercials per hour. the other one was more of an "underground" station that did more of what it wanted. their playlist was huge and had lots of great music and few commercials. then one dark day a group (i think it was a mormon group out of utah...i think the same one that bought walgreens so they could stop it from selling alcohol) bought out the popular station to shut it down! all of the sudden the lesser station was the only one in town of its kind. can you guess what happened? you got it, that station has since become the sellout, bringing me such alternative hits as emminem's song from 5-mile, "because i got high", avril's new one and many more. and YES they claim to be alternative. "st. louis' new rock alternative" to be exact. as soon as they were able to pull in the big advertizers from the other station, they went straight to the money, forsaking their great station's integrity...its sad really
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And who was it who made sure the law had a time limit? I think it might have been him as well. (I heard whoever it was say "if it is a good idea now, it'll be a good idea in seven years") Not always the best way to pass laws, but possibly helpful in this case.
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While I cannot profess to have read the article or the bill, I wonder suspiciously what might be behind this.
I just had a quick look over the bill (you can find the text here: http://feingold.senate.gov/rcbill.pdf) and while there were some passages that seem to back up your suspicions, I could not see any specific measures that would actually have the result or reviving the Fairness Doctrine.
Here is the bit that looks most suspicious:
(7) There is a substantial public interest in promoting the values embraced by the first amendment to the Constitution, and the public interest, convenience, and necessity, by increasing the presence of independently-owned and locally-produced content on radio.
(8) There is a substantial public interest in promoting the value embraced by the first amendment to the Constitution by strengthening the diversity of voices provided through media such as radio.
However, this stuff appears in the sections that identify the aims of the bill, not in the sections that actually amend existing laws. Some of the new measures in the Bill do require that the FCC revisit old regulations and formulate new ones. The specific identification of a "diversity of voices" with the "public interest" might be an attempt to push the FCC towards reviving the Fairness Doctrine in these new regulations.
There are alternative radio stations in St. Louis for alternative music. What about 93X? They are, in my opinion, better than 104.1 Extreme. Try them out, you might be pleasantly suprised.
never heard of Skynard or Pink Floyd?
Heck, we got a station here (WHTQ) that's virtually nothing but Floyd (all the Dark Side of the Moon you want), Skynard (Sweet Home Alabama), and Zepplin (Stairway to Heaven fo'ever and ever...)
Probably every market has a "Classic Rock" formatted station. That's where you hear this 20-30 year old stuff (Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Night" was on Alive in 1975 i think...so it's probably 30 years old as well...
Clear Channel's WTKS does play new stuff on the weekends and rare and obscure stuff. They do pretty well with it. During the week it's FM Talk including Stern, Monsters, Phillips, and Garabo. Probably the worst show they have is Hendrie, since his content isn't "real".
Campaign finance reform trys to limit the corrupting influence of big money on politics. It doesn't affect your freedom of speech at all - money is not speech. When a corporation gives money to a political candidate, it is not exercising free speech.
Limiting political contributions is not a radical idea. There are already laws on the books against this, dating back to 1907. McCain-Feingold simply closes some of new loopholes.