Musea looks at RADIO

In this issue, Musea looks at the current state of radio. We begin with excerpts from The Isthmus an alt weekly from Madison Wisconsin. It seems their state of radio is the same as ours in Texas:

[quotes from 2 cover stories on local radio , The Rise of the Chains, and The Decline of the DJ by Rich Albertoni]

The Rise of the Chains:
"The ... Telecommunications Act of 1996, allow one company to own as many as 8 stations in large markets and six stations in markets like Madison that broadcast a total of 15-29 stations... Today, Clear Channel owns 1,179 stations. Together, Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting (owned by media giant Viacom, which also owns CBS and MTV) control 1/3 of all U.S. radio revenue and up to 90% in some markets... Clear Channel's vertical integration of radio stations, radio shows, concert promotion and concert venues, has its competitors - even right here in Madison - claiming unfair business and fearing worse to come... as more corporate owners influence program decisions for local markets, critics contend that the soul of radio - its community flavor - is being lost. ... "To compete with concerts we look over at Clear Channel and see them owning radio stations, the major concert promoter and more and more of the venues." (Glen Gardner) . Clear Channel also owns SFX (which became Clear Channel Entertainment this summer), the mega-worldwide promoter of 26,000 events attended by 62 million people per year,' according to the company's Web site... Clear Channel's increasing control over multiple segments of the music business is alarming local music insiders across the country.... a"Radio has so much potential for connecting people to their community, and when it's homogenized, it really harms our civic and cultural lives.... The Clear Channels of the world don't trust the intangibles of investment in a community." (Scott Thompson). ... The FCC's plan to promote grassroots broadcasting ... has been crushed. Last year, the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio joined forces to convince Congress to overturn the FCC plan to license hundreds of low - power FM stations across the country. The end run around the FCC caused U.S. Senator John McCain to say that the 2 organizations 'should be ashamed of themselves." ... Bush's choice to head the FCC is regulation foe Michael K. Powell, son of Colin Powell. According to the NYT, Powell "has repeatedly criticized many existing restrictions on the largest media and telecommunications companies and indicated that he intended to review whether these rules are necessary."

The Decline of the DJ:
"For stations that play older music ... the playlist is established by the program or music director using focus-group data from national music research companies. The data measures 'likeability' scores by audience demographic for thousands of songs ...Gone are the days when DJ's had the musical taste-making power to decide what new songs to break. That duty falls to the program director, who is besieged by independent promoters representing record companies. It has long been illegal for a promoter to offer a program director or DJ cash to play a song, but these promoters routinely offer stations 'vacation getaway packages' or other such items that can be awarded to listeners in exchange for breaking their artists. ... "This is radio," says the DJ who asked not to be identified. "It's supposed to be fun. Now it's like working at IBM." All this can be applied to Dallas radio without changing a single word other than the name of the city.

(Thanks to Susan Boren for sending this in Fo/mo/info www.thedailypage.com)

BORDER RADIO

The following quote is from Texas Music magazin'es review of the book "BORDER RADIO by Paul Goldsmith, article by Gene Fowler & Bill Crawford "For a good chunk of the 20th Century, the entire world tuned in to a handful of outrageously powerful radio stations just south of the Rio Grande operated by maverick American Broadcast Pioneers (including Wolfman Jack)... For anyone with a radio in the 30's,40's,50's and 60's when the night skies over the Rio Grande were bell-jar clear, border radio ruled. ... Texas border radio was the first radio capable of reaching the entire U.S. and much of the rest of the world. The signal would roll like thunder across the river and clear across Texas; through the Great Plains, and on up into Saskatchewan and over the pole to Russia, where the KGB used it to train agents in English; east to the great industrial cities of Cleveland and Buffalo and New York, where people often sat on their rooftops on summer nights when the air was choking thick with humidity and exhaust; westward over the Rockies to California and the expanse of the Pacific where the signal was often picked up by homesick American sailors."

Quote from Newsweek
This from a story on the 2 satellite radio services XM and Sirius: ".. on .commercial radio today: playlists of a couple hundred familiar songs designed by media conglomerates to appeal to specific demographic groups, with up to 20 minutes of commercials per hour. 'Radio got consulted out of any creativity it might have had, ' says Joe Capobianco, senior vice president of content at Sirius

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