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First, you should read the articles in the "Essential Reading" links category. We hope, after reading these excellent articles, you'll agree with us. If you do, you should check out "What can I do?" to find out how to bring about change in radio.
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ClearChannelSucks.org is a free speech website dedicated to educating the public about entertainment giant Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment (aka SFX, one of their more well-known subsidiaries) owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N'Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in the U.S. and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly
to control the entire music industry. If you find this alarming, ClearChannelSucks.org is the place for you.
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Sure, Howard Stern may have become the target/victim of the FCC's recent witchhunts and subsequent fine-fests. But is the nation's largest shock jock really all that upset at being dumped from 6 Clear Channel stations? Probably not.
And here's why:
Howard Stern's show has received enough media attention in the wake of the FCC fines and CC's well justified drop of the program to bump him back to number one in his home market, New York.
Monday's release of the Arbitron ratings showed Stern with a morning drive time total audience share of 7.2. 22 percent higher than last fall's ratings that marked Stern as a waning #2. These are the show's best numbers since the fall of 2000.
Stern was also returned to the number one spot in Los Angeles for ages 25-54 and fourth in total drive-time audience. Chicago ratings show Stern up 23 percent from 15th place to 9th.
Aside from heightened media exposure, one explanation for Stern's ratings jump may simply be that he now has something exciting to say. How long can a shock jock remain entertaining if he doesn't have anything left to shock you with? After being dropped from 6 major markets Howard has ammunition for ranting on the federal government, censorship and Clear Channel. Most Americans and certainly anyone reading this article would find these topics to be of considerable interest if not concern.
In a market where any asshole with a mic can launch a winning drivetime shock radio show, it's tough to continually innovate and find new material to rant about. It's an even more daunting task to keep your rants relevant on a national level.
My favorite asshole with a mic, Russ Martin, is the number one shock jock in the Dallas/FW market. He continually creates new material based on local events. Despite his creativity and mic presence, there's no doubt (in my mind or his) that Russ would eventually run dry and lose his effectiveness on a national audience just as Stern seemed to be doing before his FCC/CC troubles began.
On a whole, Clear Channel may have inadvertently saved Howard Stern's career by dropping him from their lineup. With ratings improving on the remaining 35 Infinity stations that still air his show, the company will gladly continue to cover the nearly $2 million in fines Stern has received from the FCC since 1990.
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Posted by jmj on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 03:35 PM CST (14 Reads)
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Nobody In Particular Presents, a Denver Concert promoter, has won an early legal battle which will allow them to present their case against Clear Channel to a jury. NIPP has alleged that Clear Channel used its influence on radio airplay in the Denver area to attempt to stifle competition from independent concert promoters. Obviously, this is something we've been talking about for quite some time, but it's nice to see it's going to be fleshed out in court. Judge Edward W. Nottingham's ruling was not all good news for NIPP, however, as he ruled that Clear Channel did not have a monopoly in concert promotions in the Denver market. Court documents suggest NIPP has a strong case, with emails and various Clear Channel internal documents indicating Clear Channel was vehemently attempting to crush competition in the concert promotions industry by denying airplay to artists who used other concert promoters. Rolling Stone has the full story.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 02:32 AM CST (101 Reads)
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In an email response to one of our users, Jim Richards, the Program Director of KIOZ, defended Clear Channel's position on dropping Stern from the six stations which carried his syndicated program. Richards said "The issue isn't CC censoring content for the public...rather it's us trying to protect our license under a new, more aggressive enforcement policy established by the FCC. If they want to revoke one of our licenses, they can." While we can certainly understand Clear Channel's position in this particular matter, it's certainly unfortunate that today's regulatory climate allows such lax ownership policies of our media but at the same attempts to enforce 1950s era morality on our broadcasters. Many thanks to icarius for posting his response.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 02:05 AM CST (78 Reads)
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Here's a link to a Reuters story about Clear Channel cancelling distribution of Stern's show on about six of their stations. Coming from the company that was proud of Bubba the Love Sponge, it's actually a little shocking.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 04:28 PM CST (174 Reads)
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Clear Channel is in the AFL-CIO's sights for execessive executive compensation. The AFL-CIO has started a new website, Paywatch.org, to highlight corporate board members who were directly responsible for approving high executive compensation packages. Clear Channel's compensation committee is chaired by John Williams, who the AFL-CIO seeks to convince shareholders to not re-elect to Clear Channel's board. Nice to see we're not the only ones who think the nepitism running rampant at Clear Channel isn't quite proper for a publically traded company.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 04:19 PM CST (73 Reads)
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The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has lodged a complaint with the FCC regarding offerings by Sirius and XM Satellite Radio, which are delivering local news and traffic reports to their subscribers. NAB's position to the FCC states that:
"This foray into local content is directly contrary to ... repeated and express promises that satellite radio service would be limited to delivering national programming to serve the unserved and underserved," according to Reuters.
Satellite Broadcasters are also looking to use GPS technology to tailor the broadcasts to the geographic location of the subscriber. How dare they! Slashdot is also covering the story.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 04:07 PM CST (165 Reads)
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Boy, we're sloppy site maintainers (I'm sure many of you have been saying this for months). I've finally got the site back up after a month or so worth of it being down. Our machine was potentially comprimised (according to Brent, I never checked it for comprimise, I think it just ran out of disk space), so we've now moved to a new machine (better processor, more disk). Performance should be slightly better now.
OK, we're going to try to bring you some updated content. Clear Channel's all over the news these days, so I figure we ought to cover it here. If anyone's interested in writing for the site, please send me some email (address at the bottom of the page).
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 03:55 PM CST (59 Reads)
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We're Back! After an outage of I don't know how long, I've finally gotten around to fixing the site. My deepest apologies to all of you who emailed me telling me the site was down, but unfortunately being that I'm rarely in the US these days, this ranks fairly low on my priority list these days.
Which brings me to my second point, which is I'd like to get the CCS userbase to being implementing content changes on the site, since as you can see it hasn't been updated in quite some time. I'm really a bad site maintener, as I have an incredibly short intention span for things such as this. I still care, unfortunately I'm plagued by having a job which sends me to the Caribbean 3 weeks out of the month :). As word begins to get out we're back up, lets start a discussion on the message boards to talk about who the community feels would be good to maintain news postings etc for the site. Thank you all for your continued patronage even after my outright laziness.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Friday, October 10, 2003 - 06:39 PM CST (639 Reads)
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Take Back The Media has an interesting commentary on their site regarding connections between Clear Channel and George W. Bush. CCS has not verified the information in this article, and it is listed as commentary. However, upon first inspection the connections provided seem accurate based on current knowledge and other sources we've read. Radio Ga Ga is a highly recommended short read. Thanks to angry_droid for the tip.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 11:56 AM CST (4975 Reads)
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It turns out that most of the pro-war rallies have been organized by and sponsored by Clear Channel Entertainment, under the name of "Rally for America(tm)," in a faux-grassroots campaign known as "astroturfing." Writes The Chicago Tribune, "The sponsorship of large rallies by Clear Channel stations is unique among major media companies, which have confined their activities in the war debate to reporting and occasionally commenting on the news." "I think this is pretty extraordinary," said former Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia. "I can't say that this violates any of a broadcaster's obligations, but it sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news." In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece (free registration required) criticizing CCE for their amazing gall. Clear Channel's intent is clear: supporting the administration can only help reduce government threats against CCE expansion. It helps, of course, that Secretary of State Colin Powell's son, Michael Powell, is the head of the FCC.
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Tuesday, March 25, 2003 - 07:02 PM CST (5972 Reads)
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Today, the FCC held a hearing to reconsider the regulations that limit the number of media outlets that a single corporation can own. Currently, there are restrictions on how many radio stations that a company can own in a single market, and this is all that is preventing Clear Channel from achieving further dominance. FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who is widely believed to desire an end to these restrictions, said that if this commission is unable to justify the anti-competitive standard, "the rule will go away." Rolling back these restrictions is likely to result in immediate, rapid, unstoppable growth on the part of Clear Channel, who will be able to purchase as many radio stations as they want. The AP has the story
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 04:47 PM CST (1368 Reads)
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The New York Times (free registration required) had a piece in yesterday's issue entitled "The Trouble with Corporate Radio: The Day the Protest Music Died," regarding 60s-era protest songs. Political songs protesting the Vietnam war and the government became mainstream hits in the late 60s and the early 70s, but that's not possible now, posits author Brent Staples. "A comparable song about George W. Bush's rush to war in Iraq would have no chance at all today. The odds against such a song reaching the air are steep from the outset, given a conservative corporate structure that controls thousands of stations. Record executives who know the lay of land take the path of least resistance when deciding where to spend their promotional money. This flight to sameness and superficiality is narrowing the range of what Americans hear on the radio — and killing popular music."
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 01:32 PM CST (3909 Reads)
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Clear Channel's KFBK and KSTE have had a memo leaked that provide details as to their commercial plans in the case of war with Iraq. They've already developed detailed plans for how they're going to use not-even-declared war to their own advantage. "Our Coverage will be called America's War with Iraq." "Make sure we own being FIRST." " People will be angry, frightened...the emotion of America IS part of the story. Use it!" "It is in these first few minutes or hours we'll either win or lose the image." "Remember, no fishing shows, gardening shows. We are AT WAR." Except, of course, we're not.
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Thursday, February 13, 2003 - 08:19 AM CST (1651 Reads)
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An internal memo entitled "Columbia Coverage" from Clear Channel President Mark Mays to CCE employees has been leaked. Within the memo, Mays brags that Clear Channel "blew away" the competition with their coverage of the Columbia shuttle disaster, says that Don Henley "paint[ed] a tainted pictures" of CCE during the recent Senate hearings, and refers to the Spanish Broadcasting lawsuit as "frivolous and false."
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 10:57 AM CST (1141 Reads)
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Posted by Waldo Jaquith on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 - 04:07 PM CST (1275 Reads)
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Clear Channel has recently given exclusive access to their urban market stations to three independent promoters, who have in turn raised promotional rates to record companies more than 50%. This is a stark difference from what Clear Channel President Mark Mays' position has been recently, siding largely with the record labels on the problems with the independent promotion system. Reportedly, Randy Michaels, former CEO of the Clear Channel Radio division, was ousted because of bad relations with the music industry. The LA Times has the full story. Free registration is required.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Friday, September 06, 2002 - 11:49 AM CST (2028 Reads)
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Pulling from within its own ranks, Clear Channel has promoted John Hogan, formerly COO of the Radio division to the group's CEO position after the unexpected shift of flambouyant exec Randy Michaels to CEO of a New Technologies division. Clear Channel hopes Hogan will bring a less controversial image to its Radio division, as they have been far from flying under the radar. Recent controversies over Clear Channel station ownership, concert ticket prices, and lawsuits have kept Clear Channel in the news and may have hurt Michaels position as CEO, but rumor has it that it was relations with record companies which finally led to his ouster. Reportedly, Mark Mays (President of Clear Channel and son of CEO Lowry Mays) flew with Randy Michaels to meet individually with heads of the major record labels, and upon seeing the discontent the industry apparantly felt for Michaels, made his decision to bring in someone with image of professionalism to Clear Channel's Radio division. We will see if the leadership change at Clear Channel's Radio division changes the culture or is simply a publicity manuever to help re-inflate their stock price.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 02:28 PM CST (1947 Reads)
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Clear Channel is allowing employees to buy more stock in September. The 10%-of-salary stock purchase option (at a 15% discount from market rates) has been increased to 20% for the month to allow employees to buy up more stock as the price remains at a low point. CC says it is "undervalued".
CCU is also one of about 50 companies that may be facing unexpected cash payments due before the end of next year. Bloomberg reports that Clear Channel has two convertible bonds worth a total of almost $1.58 billion maturing by April and will use part of its $3.3 billion bank credit lines to repay the bonds.
Bloomburg also says "Its shares would have to rise at least 125 percent in one case and almost quadruple in the other to avoid a cash payment.
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Posted by deepthroat on Tuesday, August 20, 2002 - 10:35 AM CST (1761 Reads)
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Eric Boehlert has continued his excellent series on Clear Channel at Salon.com with his latest installment, "Radio's Titan Hits the Skids" published today. His latest piece covers the latest news on Clear Channel, including the rash movement of Randy Michaels out of the Clear Channel Radio CEO position, as well as their recent stock hit and recent lawsuits against the company. As always, Eric's articles are a must read.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Wednesday, August 07, 2002 - 02:58 PM CST (1607 Reads)
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Spanish Broadcasting has expanded their original suit against Clear Channel, alleging that Clear Channel scuttled a possible merger with Hispanic Broadcasting, which is scheduled to merge with Univision Communications, the largest Hispanic Television broadcaster. Clear Channel owns 26 percent of Hispanic Broadcasting. SBS is seeking $500 million in damages.
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Posted by Clint Sharp on Thursday, August 01, 2002 - 10:05 AM CST (1918 Reads)
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