Corporate radio sucks

It's 1972. Enter Lowry Mays, aspiring San Antonio banker. Mays co-signs the note to purchase a local FM station as a favor to a local investor. Thirty-one years later, Mays owns 1,225 stations in 250 U.S. markets and an audience of 66 million. Mays is the founder and CEO of Clear Channel, a $25 billion media conglomerate currently manipulating local entertainment options somewhere near you. \nSenator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) introduced the "Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act of 2003" bill at the end of January. He (supported by Zell Miller [D-Ga.]) is asking Congress to rethink the wording of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 where the Federal Communications Commission eliminated national ownership rules for radio stations. According to the bill, since the Telecom Act was passed, radio station owners dropped from 5,100 to 3,800, a 25 percent decrease. Concert ticket prices increased by 50 percent. Now the top 50 radio groups collect 62.5 percent of radio station revenues. Feingold says these corresponding increases are no coincidence. \nClear Channel in particular, the largest owner of radio stations in the U.S., is in the center of a worried maelstrom of musicians, senators, music industry leaders and the media. Locally, the company owns Verizon Wireless Music Center, exclusively books the Murat Center and does some booking for other nearby venues including the IU Auditorium, Conseco Fieldhouse, Emerson Theater and Roberts Stadium. Clear Channel also owns X103 (WRZX) and Q95 (WFBQ) in Indianapolis. (The company also owns some 776,000 billboards in the nation -- check how many X103/Q95 ads are up on your next drive to Indy). Folks are starting to connect the dots between owning radio stations and venues in the same area, and Feingold's bill takes this into account. His bill says the consolidation has caused some stations to set up exclusive agreements with promoters, charge fees for playlist monitoring and limiting radio promotion of concerts to artists playing at venues they own. \nMays denies any such practices, and says his company takes local flavor into account and sticks it into Clear Channel's many rotations.\nYet, the company has had legitimate legal trouble. Two years ago Florida officials fined Clear Channel $80,000 for not telling participants to a radio call-in show that they were competing against listeners from across the country, instead of locally. The FCC fined Clear Channel $8,000 the same year for accepting money from a record company to play a Bryan Adams song -- this practice is called payola, one of the causes that started federal regulation of the airwaves in the first place. A Bryan Adams song -- is it worth it?\nDecide for yourself. Is the same music played in Minneapolis what fits in Indiana? Would Minnesotans not want more Husker Du and Replacements than Guns 'n' Roses and Blind Melon? Listen to a Clear Channel station here and one in your hometown, and see if Mays' claim that his company provides for local listening is true. \nIf you want at least part of your music and media back, call your senators and ask them to support the bill. Look them up at www.senate.gov.\nWe saw the demise of music diversity in Indianapolis when Power 105 (WTLC) got bought out in Indianapolis. Corporate radio has, and still does, suck.\n--Jessica Halverson for the Editorial Board