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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."
I like hearing the same 12 songs on 10 different stations.
Making sure every station, every where, sounds exactly the same!
Banaaaana!
So I guess I'm not surprised to see him take the lead on something like this. I also won't be surprised to see the bill totally tank after all sorts of unrelated legislation and water-downs are tacked on by his fellow employees.
With the loss of Paul Wellstone, Russ Feingold is one of the strongest supporters of liberal ideals and causes left in the Senate. It's good to see him getting support from the Republicans in the form of McCain. Democrats certainly can't afford to go it alone in their current minority status, so to get any decent laws passed, we're going to need to have Republicans crossing party lines to support bills whose bottom line is not aimed at increasing the wealth of the wealthy for once.
After they finish that vital piece of entertainment-oriented law-making, I hope they will turn their attention to legislation aimed at getting Joey to date Phoebe.
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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Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
I really do think this Feingold guy is pretty decent. He, as I recall, was the one guy who stood up and voted against the horrific Patriot Act, which for those who are unaware, was about taking away some of our everyday freedoms, etc. Nobody in the senate seemed to give a rats ass but there he was on C-SPAN basically saying "are you guys crazy? This isn't right!" Now look at him taking yet another potentialy unpopular (to moneyd interests like Clearchannel, anyway) stand for what's right.
I'm proud to say he's from my home, Wisconsin.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
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
Why use the goverment to quiet those with whom you do not agree?
Every now and again, after the cynicism and the corruption and the payola and the lobbying... our government comes through.
I get so depressed, reading about DMCA suits & SLAPPs, reading about corporate (*cough* Coble) whores. You get to thinking that the government is just trying to screw us all.
And yet, there are good guys. There are champions of the common man.
I feel pretty good.
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Can you elaborate? I don't quite follow what you mean by 'hate' -- shock jocks, ultra right-wingers, racism? All I get on the talk part of the dial are sports, religion, and gasbags, but nothing I'd classify as hate...
I loved being from Wisconsin for a reason :).
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 only guy in the Senate with the balls to vote against the PATRIOT Act. Thanks, Russ. When the rest of them panicked and stampeded to trade our liberty for security, you were the one true patriot.
All you nerds in Wisconsin better vote for this guy when he comes up for reelection. A good Senator is a rare thing indeed.
Good question, but how are we (or anyone for that matter) going to fight that much money any other way?
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
It's unfortunate that what he stands up for is often unconstitutional. Think restrictions on political speech in the campaign finance reform legislation. What part of "Congress shall make no law..." are they having trouble with?
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What about the problem with BREAKING UP radio stations? Many might go under or have severe financial problems due to restructuring and cutting off from their main backup cash source (companies like ClearChannel). I'd hate to see a single station go down or be forced to let a bunch of staff go just because they are essentially forced to by a bill...
Don't get me wrong, I hate ClearChannel just as much as anyone; I'm just wondering about the individual stations in the event that this passes...
Every now and again, ... our government comes through.
I'd say it's more like every now and again, some individual comes through despite the best efforts of the rest of the government--but never for long.
I hope this bill passes. It would be great to be able to listen to the radio and hear music I enjoy, rather than the commercialized crap they play now. I haven't listened to the radio since my favorite classical station switched to a talk format about 5 or 6 years ago.
At the same time, I doubt this bill will pass. Feingold is in the minority in Congress in his ability to ignore the payoffs offered him by big media conglomerates. The political system is corrupt, and will remain so.
Oh well. If only we lived in a free country...
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
It's been attempted before, and while that works here and there, ever paid attention to Microsoft's tactics or (back in the day) Standard Oil's? If it looks good try to starve it's business by dropping prices temporarily (since you've got enough money in reserve to do this sort of thing), and if it still pulls through, buy it then hole it off in a corner somewhere.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
Finally a reason to be proud of a) being A Wisconsinite and b) having voted for Feingold.
I hope that this movement goes through, everything around here (Milwaukee) seems to be Clearchannel. The radio, atleast 3-4 stations, 2 of the TV, and a large majority of the billboards and the such are all clearchannel.
Go Feingold Go
I'm a little tea pot.
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.
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
So I'm reading all of this, and I get to the last past and see the quote at the bottom of the screen that /. has so graciciously given us. 'Twas from Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 by Pink Floyd:
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
I'll tell ya what, Clearchannel is nothing but bullshit ads and everything else controlling the population. I remember after 9/11, they had a list of songs they wanted their stations to 'opt out' of or something like that. Songs that even mentioned the word jet in the lyrics were thrown out. Pathetic. Nothing works better than denial. Plus, all their stations only play what they're being paid to, causing most people to buy from the same places over and over; effing mindless automatons. But hey, whatever; I listen to Beefheart and Zappa, and that's the way I likes it.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
So, radio stations must pay copyright holders to broadcast their songs, but in order to charge for the otherwise free advertising they're giving these songs, they need to say "paid for by Warner bros."? What happened to freedom in this country. Why does the govt. feel they need to regulate everything? If a radio station wants to play unknown stuff from independent artists, let them. If they want to take cash to play stuff from artists with deep pockets, why shouldn't they be able to? Radio station have the right to free speech, not the obligation to play music without compensation.
Vote for Pedro
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 wanted to send out props to KBFR, Boulder Free Radio at 95.3 evenings and weekends... when the feds don't work. :)
Take a listen next time you're in Colorado, or try out the stream at KBFR.org.
All random shit. All the time.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sick of how all radio stations sound the same because there are only a few companies controlling them. When I moved from central OH to KS, I could have swarn that the local radio stations were the same in both places, just with different call letters. All the hosts even sound exactly the same. The contests the stations do are identicle. You can't tell the difference, because they are controlled by the same companies, and made for mass market (not local tastes). At least with TV it's obvious who controlls things(NBC, CBS, Disn^H^H^H^HABC, etc). But with radio they almost never make it easy to find out who they belong with. Your best bet is to guess by where they get their top of the hour news ("Now this from our ABC affiliate...")
It's really nice to see legislation that will most likely make a difference like this have a good chance. All I can say is I hope another bill comes down soon: one to prevent the Disney-ABC type thing. How only 3 or 4 companies own the major networks, most cable network, the movie studios, and everything else. I don't know about the rest of you, but the national morning news shows are some of the most thinly veiled infomercials for movies and TV shows that I've ever seen.
I know I'll be telling my Senators to vote for this, I hope you all do the same.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
XM is going under - investment is futile.
I sometimes think that the attention span of the average radio listener must be on a half life of a year or so. Eventually we'll get to the point where the radio will literally play the same rotation of songs, restarting at the top of the hour. We're already at the point where the rotations repeats every 4 or 5 hours on some stations (with the more popular songs peppered in a few extra times for good measure). It drives us nuts, but it must be making money, and for it to be making money, people must be buying into it.
This is another one of those fights where we're going to lose because we don't understand our enemy. Clearchannel is not the enemy. Congresspeople are not the enemy. OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY who don't understand what's happening are the enemy! The majority of consumers probably don't know who clearchannel is. We must EDUCATE them so they know that each time they put in a dollar vote to the latest pop sensation, they're helping to kill free market capitalism and create free market socialism.
Get out there and tell EVERYONE you can at every opportunity that we need to stop supporting the big record companies. Introduce them to indies and older music! A lot of kids who listen to modern rock (translation: the reconstituted garbage of yesterday) probably never heard of bands like Lynard Skynard or Pink Floyd. They'd probably like it if they did though. The wider a selection of music you introduce to these people-sheep the more choices they'll realize they have. The whole effect will snowball, and they'll start experimenting with new things. This can only lead to good things... personally, I'm not going to lose any sleep if I'm responsible for the owners of Clearchannel having to move out into the street.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
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the 1st being rep. boucher, who's working to extend fair use rights.
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/1381471
nice to see that the slashdot voting bloc is gaining momentum.
anybody else want to get in on the ground floor?
disponibile
I am increasingly growing fond of McCain.
Of late he's introduced some risky legislation (think of his recent proposals on carbon dioxide emissions) that has set him apart from his party but make him stand out for his clear-thinking and integrity.
I want this guy for President in 2004.
I wonder if the real motive isn't a return to the Fairness Doctrine of a decade or two ago, requiring radio stations to give equal time to a variety of viewpoints? Democrats have tried and tried again to get their own talk show going, and it fell flat on it's face every time. But, if they can do it through legislation, I bet they would.
I hope this is not the case, but with Feinstein, one of the most liberal in Congress, behind this, I'm all but positive this is a huge part of this whole thing.
That's what Clear Channel has done. They've taken control of most of the more popular radio stations. Only people with enough money to hold them off or a small enough market share that they're not worth it can stay independant. Of course, someone with enough money would be hard pressed to turn down a price that only makes sense to a monopolist. As Clear Channel controls more of the market, they'll alswo find it more worthwhile to go after smaller, and smaller stations.
Once a company has gotten a stranglehold on a market, FCC rules make it very hard for a competetor to start up. At that point the monoply holder has an effective stranglehold on radio speech in that market, with the government quieting any nascent dissent.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Have you ever in your life heard of a market externality? Or a monopoly? Do you have any idea how bad these things can be? Obviously not.
As for your argument that this is a war against freedom, you need to understand that radio has always been regulated, from the content available to who owns can broadcast on what frequency. To say that what exists now is based on market forces, but that laws passed to change how it is are anti-market is totally wrong. Maybe it would be nice to just blow it all up and start over and see where "free market" takes us, but it sure as hell isn't going to happen.
Oh, and how in the world is a "free market" the purest form of democracy in existence? Voting with your wallet means people with larger wallets...get more votes. Not democracy my friend. Not at all. Anyway, in a democracy, the power comes from the people, not the corporations. I think you're thinking of a different political system.
"competition in Radio And Concert Industries aCT", hereafter known as the 'RACICT' (spoken like 'racist'). Where do they come up with these names?
Radio station have the right to free speech, not the obligation to play music without compensation.
Not exactly -- not while they are using my airwaves.
In America, the airwaves are owned not by radio stations but by the American people. *If* the act of accepting money to play particular songs is bad for the people, than the people have the right -- as owners of the airwaves -- to change the rules that the radio stations have to play by.
When the people own the medium (television, radio), than the people have the right to determine how that medium is used.
For a good time, check out Free Air Time to find out about a similar regarding the television frequency range.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
There are a few, overshadowed by the many. This includes Texas representative Ron Paul who appears to possibly be running as a liberterian in 2004.
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
Don't forget that Russ Feingold is the same Senator who introduced a bill to halt research on data-mining technology by the Dept. of Homeland Security until Congress can investigate it.
I'm proud to have voted for him.
Story here.
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.
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.
A couple of years ago, I was in a band with commercial promise. We found a group of investors, comprised of money men, attorneys and others with industry contacts, to back us financially. We understood from the beginning that playing in a garage until discovered only worked in "That Thing You Do". We understood that incessant touring with no radio play only works for a very minimal amount of bands. We understood that marketing and promotion were more important than the songs themselves (at least in the are of financial success).
We took their money and our purposely catchy "written for radio" songs to the Hit Factory in Miami (an uber-studio, with clients like Creed, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, etc) and recorded alternative rock Radio Hits (tm) with the best producer we could afford. We came out with a CD that sounded so good, I'm still glad to have myname associated with it.
Since we were not signed to a label, we had no "in" with the local "independent promoter", who "owned" the rock radio market in our area. Clear Channel is the monopoly in our market, and will play the songs that the "Indie" pays them to promote, at a price that is unfair to non-megacorps. The "Locals Only" show was on only on Sunday nights at midnight (how typical). There was no way for us to get on the radio.
Then, we had the brilliant idea of buying Advertising time (as in commercials) on the station and playing our songs. One of the investors on our team had an "in" with the marketing company that booked most of the time for ads on the 3 rock stations in the market. We recieved very favorable rates per thirty seconds, and it actually would turn out cheaper than paying the "indie", if we had access to him.
Long story short, after 6 days of strong ad-time and experiencing a jump in concert atttendance and merch sales, our ads were pulled (while still having 8 days left on the current ad contract). It turns out that the Indie was receiving complaints from a higher-up and threatened to drop that particular station from his list (which would make the station lose access to the latest hits. Remember that hits=ears=money). We were outraged. We couldn't even bypass the payola system in place, even though we were still paying to get heard on the radio.
The moral of this story is that Russ Feingold and anyone else with the balls to stand against corporate radio money needs all the support he can get. Even when you have the backing to do it yourself, you're still not a Label-Slave(tm). You are not to be considered for airplay.
Governments are not necessary.
I need to check this out further, but a read over the press release shows no mention of Internet Radio.
I certainly support the bill * can I get an amen? * and I suppose you have to pick your battles, but doesn't Internet radio need a little fairness also?
I would like to see parity between Internet broadcasters and FM broadcasters regarding what is required of them by the RIAA. The RIAA doesn't want independent Internet radio stations to succeed and is imposing stifling reporting requirements (i.e. song, title, time played, listener's IP address, listener's blood type etc.) and exorbitant copyright compensation fees. As it stands now, independent Internet radio stations are dying.
I believe that radio will eventually be "broadcast" almost exclusively over IP networks with the wireless component being handled by ubiquitous, low-power, ultra-wide band radio in the city and satellite radio in the country. I think an explosion of music could happen if the RIAA would just get out of the way. Instead, they seek to hinder this explosion because it is not something they understand or feel that they can control.
I urge you to consider that "small and independent" radio is increasingly going to be an Internet phenomenon and we future station owners need your help.
Thank You
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Sure, but they are groups of people.
Everything a corporation does is done by people. And everything they say is said by people, who have the right to free speech. So I don't understand how the people/corporation distiction would change anything.
I've heard the United States referred to as the "Great Experiment". I believe the experiment has been successful, but the test of time has shown some weaknesses in our Constitution and in democracy in general. We need to patch a few serious exploits...
Our rights do not come from the Constitution. Our Constitution is an acknowledgement by the government of certain rights which we posess simply by virtue of being human. Among those rights is the right of self-government. We would not be outside our rights to abolish the existing Constitution and reaffirm our belief in democracy with a new one. I think the Founding Fathers would quite approve.
But of course, there are not enough honest politicians in Washington to entrust our government with that task today!
They say that ClearChannel has no real competition but it's not true -- check out CheapChannel Radio, a satiric competitor with a voice tracking program to rival even the big boys. Voice tracking is the system ClearChannel stations use to have a DJ in Houston pretend he's from cities all around the country to give canned stations a little "local" flavor. CheapChannel is a project of the Prometheus Radio Project, which was recently featured on the PBS's McNeil News Hour for their work promoting Low Power FM stations. The first site is fun, and the second is interesting, if you're concerned about media consolidation.
It strikes me funny that lawmakers are concerned about anti-competetive practices among corperations (Clear Channel, Salem, Cumulus, et al), and not look at the environs that are creating such large entities...
For example: K-localstation with a potential audience of 100,000 is humming along fine playing POP/AC along with web simulcast.
Firstly, the RIAA managed to get legislation passed to receieve royalties, RETROACTIVELY - I might add, and therefore has to shut down the webcast and figure out how to pay for the previous casting...an expense no one could have reasonably foretold.
Secondly, HugeRadio Corperation decides to entire the market, first by trying to purchase the local station for a mere pittance of actual value, then muscling in by sheer force, offering advertisers lower advertising, greater transmitting, etc....
K-localradiostation cannot, already finacially strapped due to the RIAA, bad economy, etc, cannot possibly compete and eventually sells out, not to the first corperation, but to a compteting one.
I don't see who breaking up these corperations are going to save the local stations without removing some of the legislation and "fees" that are killing them in the first place...smells like relection legislation to me.
As I understand it one of the arguments against allowing microbroadcast licenses was that all of the small, not-for-profit channels would drive the local, for-profit stations out of business. These stations after all have (or had) staff and facilities to pay for, and a limited broadcast market to recoup those costs. Along comes clearchannel, with remote broadcasting and consolidation. Clearchannel can afford to run on a smaller slice of each market, since their cost per market is reduced. They have eliminated staff and facilities, centralizing broadcast centers and management.
I believe that the consolidation of radio stations has removed the competition argument against microbroadcast licensing. With their increased financial base they no longer need market protection from community radio.