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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.
Well, at least we know what's causing the people of Liberty City to be so violent. Britney on repeat is enough to drive anyone to violence and insanity.
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.
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
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.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
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.
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
I disagree, to be certain, but understand that I'm not going to try to change your mind. I recognize this as one of the fundamental differences people have in politics and I still don't believe there's one right way to do things.
My perspective is that the Constitution, as with the rest of law, is not immutable, and that utmost respect must be given to both the wishes of the founders as well as to the world we're trying to live in today and the wishes of the people living in the country. The Constitution was a good start, but we've amended it in the past to fit better the ideals of the nation while stripping away parts that did not (examples of both aren't hard to think of).
Campaign finance reform, in my opinion, is more about restoring the speech of the people than it is about silencing them. The majority are heard on very little anymore because money speaks louder than words, and while this has made pretty good business sense it's made attention to non-profit-bearing issues pretty minimal over the last fifty years, not to mention creating (or continuing in some peoples' opinion) a government that largely favors the moneyed. Sen. Feingold sticks out not because he is a maverick but because the system itself has forgotten its duty to serve citizens instead of stockholders and CEOs.
Corporations.
Aren't.
Really.
People.
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!
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!
-Dr. Weird
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.
Radio station have the right to free speech, not the obligation to play music without compensation.
This bill doesn't ask them to play music without compensation if they don't want to. It asks them to be honest with us, the listeners, when they do so, to encourage them to choose to play music that's good, rather than music that's being promoted in expensive ways.
What happened to freedom in this country.
As far as I can tell, companies like CCC bought it.
Rhetorical questions like that are not an effective way to convince people. Keep in mind that since not everyone agrees with you, the answer someone else gives to such a question may be different from what you expected. For instance:
Why does the govt. feel they need to regulate everything?
You're expecting an answer along the lines of "Because we're control freaks, because we want to institute a totalitarian regime, muahahaha!" But the fact is that for many people, the answer is "Because we do have to regulate everything." The way to convince people--or better yet, mutually arrive at a truth that may be different from anyone's initial views--is to ask, without sarcasm, why we would be better off this way.
In case you care, my answer to that question is that the government should regulate cases such as this because it benefits the consumer, whose rights should always outweigh the rights of corporations. This is because, simply, people are people, and real, whereas corporations are simply groups of people. Situations that benefit corporations benefit the individuals who are members of those corporations, whereas situations that benefit individuals in general benefit all the same people, and many more.
Now somebody will respond saying that I've oversimplified this, and my preemptive response to that is that to do this subject justice would be to write volumes on it. I think what I've said above captures the essence of the liberal view.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
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'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!