Craig Bickhardt - Creativity And Aging

Hijacking The Airwaves: Clear Channel And The Death Of Diversity
© 2004 Craig Bickhardt
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If you are too young to remember the days when you could turn on the radio and hear different cuts from thousands of LPs, when you could discover obscure new artists on your FM dial that were out of the mainstream, when you could listen to your favorite station for an entire eight hour work day and never hear the same song twice, then maybe you don't need to read this. Maybe you're content with things the way they are. But if you're wondering what's happened to all the diverse and interesting music that used to be so readily available, read on.

In recent years there have been significant changes in the way radio and TV stations are owned and operated. When the FCC deregulated the broadcasting industry in 1994, it opened the door to all kinds of questionable activities including the large scale domination of a few corporations such as Clear Channel that own numerous radio stations across America. The extreme measures taken in order to maintain secrecy in the broadcasting industry make it nearly impossible to obtain statistics about exactly how much of the market is controlled by each company, but Clear Channel owns more than 1,200 radio stations and is responsible for staging and promoting about seventy percent of all concert events in the U.S..

Clear Channel's national play-lists (the songs that get regular airplay) are designed with the help of demographics research companies that specialize in careful consumer surveys geared towards advertising revenue, not musical tastes. Since 1994 the number of new acts successfully established or "broken" by record labels has dwindled to little more than a handful each year because of these severely restricted play-lists that sometimes consist of as few as fifteen current records. Promotion expenses have risen due in part to Clear Channel's "Pay For Play" policy, which allows record companies to purchase time to get their records on the air, and also due to the rising cost of advertising on Clear Channel owned stations.

Clear Channel has also driven up the price of concert tickets with the complicity of a few superstar acts who have bought into the new business model. In some cases as much as 30% is tacked onto ticket prices as a dubious "fee" for Clear Channel's power brokering. As Damien Cave puts it in his Rolling Stone Magazine article, "No other company in recent history has had so much power over what the world hears -- and so few top executives with a background in music." If Clear Channel is successful at launching a record label, a project they are rumored to be considering, you can bet the bank that they will be marketing even more carefully selected, statistically tested, and corporately packaged acts that have been groomed by Madison Avenue. With annual revenues of 12 billion dollars, this behemoth isn't going away quietly any time soon.

Real diversity on the airwaves is threatened. In fact it's already becoming a thing of the past. As musical trends change, the entire nation seems to swing in unison because Clear Channel radio stations shift their play-lists in lock step with each other.

Some will argue that large TV networks haven't seriously undermined the diversity in television programming, so why would Clear Channel spell the death of diversity in the music market? The answer is that there's a fundamental difference behind the purpose for the two media formats. TV is geared towards consumers who do not purchase the actual product that the networks package, i.e. the TV shows themselves, but rather, they purchase products made by advertisers that in most cases have nothing to do with the TV programming. Although Radio also contains advertising, it was built on an entirely different model. From it's early days it established a symbiotic relationship with the record industry and its products.

There have always been power issues between radio and the record companies. But now the tail is wagging the dog. Clear Channel has effectively hijacked the airwaves and holds the recording industry and all of its artists hostage. It's as if NBC decided to buy the Screen Actors Guild in order to drive down the cost of programming. Clearly this would be an anti-trust violation.

There is a glimmer of hope in the new Streaming Internet and Satellite radio formats, but these are only available to a small percentage of the music buying public who can afford high speed Internet and monthly subscriptions to Sirius. And what's to stop Clear Channel from buying up these formats when they are ripe for the picking?

As a result of the daunting task of finding good new music, and in rebellion against the monotony of radio and an ever desperate record industry that churns out conformity to Clear Channel type standards, many young people have turned to their peers and begun file sharing their favorite CDs illegally. In Verlyn Klinkenborg's New York Times article he comments, "As long as the recording industry lives and dies by the blockbuster, music listeners will be looking for ways to see deeper into the music catalog. For some listeners, file sharing has become a way to experiment - to try out new music without first shelling out $16 or $17 for a CD. There was a time when radio gave listeners a chance to hear lots of new music. Thanks to conglomerates like Clear Channel, those days are dead."

Although CDs aren't selling like they used to (RIAA estimates claim the record industry has lost nearly one-third of its market), a recent Harvard study determined that free downloading actually isn't harming sales by even as much as 1%. There are other reasons why sales have declined. This "blockbuster mentality" and the loss of diversity, as well as the general lack of real artistic substance in much of what is marketed today are certainly more significant than the piracy issue.

What will our musical landscape look like down the road? How will the artists of the future fare in a climate that isn't conducive to either gaining radio exposure or receiving fair royalty payment? As Stephan Manes, contributing editor of PCWorld puts it, "… if pilfering persists and pirated content drives out the real thing, expect hardworking artists to look for vocations that pay. Classic content will be free for the swiping, but most new stuff will be the product of well-meaning amateurs..."

This business model can't continue much longer with complete disregard for the consequences. We must act now to control Clear Channel and their ilk. And yes, we must be sensible about what we're doing to our artists and ourselves by opting for royalty free music. If not, we can expect our musical choices to be even more restricted by media barons in years to come.