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More on Media Consolidation
A few more links on the important FCC decision coming up in a few weeks (see our previous story for more). Common Cause has a good set of background information and advocacy. The Washington Post has a story about the decision, focusing on how independent television stations will be squeezed even harder. This article about ClearChannel is a useful primer about the future of mass media.
From any perspective, Clear Channel is an entirely commercial endeavor. Whenever the corporation isn't promoting "sponsors," Clear Channel attempts to promote labels sponsored by the RIAA. Modern radio is a commercial medium, not an exhibition of artistry. "Corporate America" regards you as a "consumer," not a "customer."
Do you like German cars?
good cartoon on the topic
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Anyone else think whenever 'ClearChannel' is mentioned the Imperial March should play in the background?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Media Fight Focuses on Local TV Stations
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2003; Page E01
If broadcast networks such as ABC and Fox are prevented from buying more local television stations, viewers may soon have to watch NFL games on cable or satellite, meaning football fans who depend on free, over-the-air television would be out of luck.
Or if they are allowed to buy more stations, they would use their increased muscle to force network programming onto independently owned affiliate stations, even when they would rather show local programs or preempt network programs that may offend community standards.
Either and both arguments may be true. Local television station autonomy is at the heart of one of the media ownership rules set to be changed soon by the Federal Communications Commission. It was also Topic A yesterday at a Senate hearing chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) but starring Viacom Inc. President Mel Karmazin.
"Costs are going up, audience is going down, competition is increasing," Karmazin told the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Viacom owns CBS, 35 television stations and cable channels such as MTV and Nickelodeon. "The only way to help is to relax the ownership rules," allowing networks to buy more stations and increase revenue, he said.
On June 2, the FCC is scheduled to vote -- and likely pass -- several rules that will make it easier for media giants to buy more newspapers and radio and television stations. Several lawmakers and public interest groups oppose relaxing the rules. The FCC "is putting us on a glide path for big media conglomerates to gobble up independent stations," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said yesterday.
(Yesterday afternoon, Democratic FCC commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein asked Michael K. Powell, the agency's Republican chairman, to postpone the vote, a request typically honored under FCC tradition. Usually, such votes are rescheduled for the commission's next open meeting, about one month later. Powell said he will respond promptly. Republican commissioners Kathleen Q. Abernathy and Kevin J. Martin want the vote to proceed as scheduled.)
Perhaps the most controversial of the six major media ownership rules teed up for review is the "35-percent cap" on station ownership. Networks are not allowed to own a number of stations that combine to reach more than 35 percent of the national audience. Thanks to waivers and shifting market shares, all of the major networks hover around the 35 percent figure, with some actually above the limit, anticipating its lifting.
The FCC's media bureau has recommended raising that number to about 45 percent. Powell is sympathetic to Karmazin. The chairman has said that broadcast television needs regulatory help to continue providing free public-interest programming. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are steadily losing audience to cable channels. For the first time last year, the aggregate cable audience surpassed that of the combined networks. About 85 percent of viewers have cable or satellite service.
Further, cable channels have two revenue streams -- advertising and subscription -- where broadcast has one. The smallest major network, however, still has an audience larger than the biggest cable channel, meaning networks can charge advertisers more for commercials.
The rising cost of programming, especially rights fees that networks pay sports leagues to broadcast games, means that networks lose money by putting their shows on broadcast stations instead of cable, the networks say. "Sports content will be the first to go to cable," Karmazin warned, noting that CBS paid $6 billion to broadcast the NCAA men's basketball tournament for 11 years. "Then other [programming] will follow."
The surest way to save free television, the networks argue, is to let them to buy more stations, which routinely log profit margins of 20 percent to 50 percent.
Not everyone agrees. Last week, Rep. Richard Burr
but they have bought every radio station station in the Houston area that didn't suck, and even a few that did. So I drive cross country, I find another radio station. I listen to it, sounds kinda cool, then you hear "Thank you for listend to KXYZ, the ONLY station that doesn't suck, a Clear Channel Communications station." So they admit that all their other stations suck?
I wanted to boycott them for taking off my morning show, and using the trained monkeys that borderline politicaly correct (the previous guys would never be mistaken for anywhere near politicaly correct) from New Orleans to broadcast to the entire Gulf Coast. Sounds like cost savings to me, but it really ruined the mornings for me.
So I swallowed my pride and listened anyways. Before Clear Channel bought everything I stopped listening to one of our local stations because I couldn't stand hearing "Did somebody say McDonalds" 13 times in a 30 second period. Now nearly half the commercials ClearChannel plays assume I can't get my dick up and I need to hear the phone number of the fixer 12 times because I can't dial a damned phone. I assure you neaither is a concern in my case. The quality of radio sure took a dive when they came in.
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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Think yourselves lucky your president doesn't own most of your commercial media.
Over the past few decades or so the U.S. Government has learned many lessons about media coverage and international dealings. The whole dynamic has changed radically from the times of journalism in say Vietnam vs the "inbedded" reporters of this recent action. General Franks and Colin Powell, whos son is pushing he deal, "Cut their teeth" commanding forces in vietnam and they relaize that tight media control is the answer to help the people accept the actions of the government.
This plan is another step in narrowing and refining the information that the public sees. With top political officers havving ties to large corporations, it's hard to tell the lines in which corporate money, goverment money are drawn.
Be afraid.
I just type my sig in the reply form...
All sources of news and culture have their biases. Unfortunately, consolidation means that diversity decreases over time. This is why we don't hear about major international events, and most of our news sources look the same. Thus, even if we have "freedom of the press", the de facto freedom is constrained by commercial interests. The recording industry is getting so cozy with the radio stations that there is little variation in content there as well. I hope that we can fix this, however the economy of scale which drives this process may be very hard to overcome.
Clearchannel has singlehandedly destroyed radio in the US. Five years ago, I had quite a nice variety of stations to pick from, with all twelve of my presets going to something that, depending on my mood, I would enjoy.
Now, I have two stations I listen to... A local college station, and NPR. And I don't even like NPR, but angry lesbians amuse me more than the same top-10 pop songs played over and over.
Clearchannel, as an "experiment" in media conglomeration, should end. Revoke its corporate charter, dissolve it, return control and ownership to each individual station. And more importantly, we need to IMMEDIATELY stop further Borg-like activity on the part of media megacorps.
I want decent independant radio back.
Why are they losing audiences to cable channels?
Can it be because the programming they offer flat out sucks?
Can it be that people aren't as stupid as they've assumed since the 50s?
That they dont want to see another sitcom about a family with a precocious little kid that runs the house, or 5 20-something hipsters drinking coffee and making dumb wisecracks?
Can it be that they've reached the puking threshhold with this reality TV crap? That people dont care which of the 40 masked guys that some whore chooses?
Can it be that the old standbys of Leno and Letterman kissing hollywood ass is frankly BORING?
I mean there's a reason I'd rather watch some longwinded documentary about the treasures of King Razamatooten from the 3rd dynasty; as dry and uninteresting as it is, it's better than anything NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX and the DUBBYA-BEE have to offer.
Perhaps just getting "known star" to do a sitcom for 2 million an episode doesn't guarantee ratings anymore.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...the media companies are working hard at making themselves irrelevant.
News is an important issue, and I get my news from multiple unrelated companies, ideally from different countries. As for entertainment on commercial TV and radio, there ain't none!!!
"Costs are going up, audience is going down, competition is increasing"
Competition increasing is a good thing, and the proposed bills seem to be destroying that aspect. As for the high costs/low audience problem, do you think that spending ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER LEAD CAST MEMBER PER EPISODE on a show as tired and utterly rehashed-to-death as "Friends" might have something to do with that?
Maybe if the media companies started paying their stars less money per weekly episode than most people gross in a decade their costs would go down. Maybe if they spent a TINY amount of money on writers with creative and new ideas, their audience would go up.
But no, it's easier to make money through legislation and monopolies than to actually do your job.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
MoveOn has a page where you can send a letter to your members of Congress and add your name to a petition to stop the June 2nd decision.
as I have pointed out in the past There's a petition to the FCC about this issue that is worth reading. It has been signed by many prominent musicians, and they are looking for as many listeners as possible to listen.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
"Lowry Mays is the Big Daddy of radio. The founder and CEO of Clear Channel, Mays oversees 1,233 radio stations with some 100 million listeners across all 50 states, and runs a company with $8 billion in revenues and a $23 billion market cap. But ask Mays about what he does for a living and you won't hear much about musicians or how to bring up ratings or who's the best DJ. Those things don't interest him much. Truth is, Mays isn't that passionate about what goes out over the airwaves. As long as his broadcasts sell ads, he's happy. "If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company," says Mays, 67. "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products.""
On a different topic but related to Corporate consolidation, I think we should just do away with our current government and let the country be run by mega coporations. You see the way it would work is whoever paid the most money gets the most power and favor with government. So if you wanted to expand your company so that it owned every media outlet in a particular area you could just dump money until your able to do what you want. You'd be able to set up monopolies in whatever industry you wanted, be it Cable, Telecom, or hell even the software industry if you wanted. The "President" and "Vice President" really wouldn't be politicians, they would businessmen with strong ties to big corporations and they would give favor to their former companies once they got in power. You konw sort of like a bonus for "making it to the top".
I know my ideas are little crazy, but maybe its worth a shot.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
They can't count how many radios are tuned in, you're absolutely right. The boycott would work by making them look less appealing to advertisers.
Having a bumper sticker/T-Shirt with the name of your favorite radio station is one way to make the station look valuable. If people who are prospective advertisers to a radio station happen accross people displaying a radion stations logo during their daily routine it shows that station as a good place to spend their advertising dollars because the person who's wearing that shirt and many more will hear their ad.
Calling in to be the 13th or whatever caller. If you help in making every line to the radio station busy in record time it proves you were listening to the radio. Giving away $1,000 is a good way to get people to listen for the word go, and right before the word go is given is an excelent time to play an ad.
Music is just a good way to get people to stick around long enough to listen to the ads and controlling what the target audiance is. The rest is to make money.
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where are all the libertarians crying out in joy? isn't this great - capitalism in action! more and more of those pesky government regulations being whisked out of the way!
and now you guys all have your free-market radio stations where you - yes, i mean YOU! - can make choices about which radio station will be #1! yes-siree-bob, all those companies are entirely dependant on your happiness with their programming decisions.
isn't it just GREAT!
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
1. PBS and FOX: This would be something like a collision of matter and anti-matter. New shows: "Firing Line meets Celebrity Boxing"; "When Barney Attacks!"; and "Bill Moyers investigates Monica's Thong"
2. ABC and WB: The dead eating the dead. Is that cannibalism or Night of the Living Dead or neither?
3. New York Times and E!: Oh, the possibilities: "Jayson Blair Investigative Reports: Anna Nicole Smith -- What's real and what's fake?"; "E! Hollywood True Story: All the President's Men -- the Post was really just making up Deep Throat...we should know!"; and "Talk Soup for the Lazy Reporter"
4. CNN and Playboy: All T&A, all the time. Show your tits, Judy Woodruff!
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
San Fransisco and LA have KPFA and perhaps one or two other radio outlets that are operated similarly to the way KBOO is. But nationwide our options for true community controlled media has become very very limited.
There are several reasons why corporate control of our airwaves remains an issue that is important to understand:
It amazes me how little the citizens of this country care about being controlled or manipulated. Perhaps it has come down to the power that can be purchased by a few people who have large sums of money and big desires that remain unfulfilled.
If you are a terror to many, then beware of many. --Ausonius
They have a license to use the public's airwaves for the public good. They are in gross violation of that license. Someone needs to organize a campaign to protest the re-newal of a stations liscense, they need to be re-newed every 8 years
Free cell phone tracking
The FCC has already decided that it will allow companies to own much more than they can now. The FCC director stated that this oh so important decision does not need any debate. He tried to shut down the debate by refusing to fund town meetings around the country debating this and informing the general public. He has definitely been bought by the likes of Clear Channel. This will further erode democracy in this country, and if you now hate DMCA and its ilk, wait until the next pass. Laws like DMCA and PATRIOT 2 get passed because there is a lack of healthy debate. It has been shown time and time again that Clear Channel refuses to report on such items. If you don't believe me, when was this particular debate even mentioned on any of Clear Channel's stations? The only time that I saw this reported was on a PBS program called "NOW with Bill Moyers". This was an excellent program that tried to look at the issue from all sides. You can find an in-depth discussion at http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/bigmedia.html
Little by little our rights are being taken away from us. Just look at all of the recent laws implemented, DMCA, copyrights, PATRIOT act etc.
We need to act now, before the decision has been rendered. Once it has, there is very little chance of getting it changed. What's at stake is the very nature of democracy in this country. There is no way to rectify this if a bad decision is made. How do we rectify this in 10 years from now, once Clear Channel has bought up the few remaining independent stations? Do we really expect that at that point, a healthy debate about breaking up Clear Channel will be allowed by Clear Channel?
Clear Channel says it needs to be allowed to buy the remaining independent stations in order to become profitable. If they haven't become profitable at this size, what makes us believe that will become profitable when they have taken over the rest? Lets face it folks, these guys are lying to us saying that they are not profitable. They are quite profitable now, and what's really driving this is pure greed at the expense of this country's core values. They are destroying this country at the expense of a few bucks. Enough is enough.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
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