adio sucks.  I think we can all agree on that. But why? Well, mostly because of Clear Channel. They own most of the stations in quite a few cities, they remove all intelligence and originality and individuality from the stations once they take over, and they are owned by a major booster and old friend of Dubya's, which make their editorial positions permanently pro-war. The only good thing about Clear Channel is that they are so horribly corporate and so hated that even die hard anti-regulation people are coming to see that maybe there's some good to mandating a variety of voices in the media.

More recent additions are on top.

April 1, 2003

This article was on several blogs I read Monday evening, and it's easy to see why. The story is that a group of about 70 people were doing a peace rally in Louisiana.  They had permits and everything, and their plan was for a short march to a local amphitheatre to give a talk about things.  Some local right wing radio talk show host found out about it, and with the full backing of his Clear Channel bosses, got on the air and urged his audience to go down and shout at the peace demonstrators.  Screaming ensued.

You'd like to think that it was an open exchange of views.  Unfortunately the quotes from the radio station fans are astonishingly ignorant and deplorable. Tell me if this first one doesn't make your head hurt.

Along with plenty of American flags, several of the signs they carried demeaned the marchers: "Protesting this war while our troops are being killed is equal to treason," read one. "You should all be shot."

So saying a war should not be fought, and that by extension our troops should be immediately brought home, is treason? Is anti-troops? As opposed to people who support the war and want the troops to stay there and continue dying?  Interesting logic. 

Richard Condon, a morning show host for rock station KOOJ, said he wanted the hecklers to "put these goofballs in their place."

"This has been going on since World War I, and it's the reason they have the right to feel the way they do," Condon said, pointing at the peace protesters marching down Stanford toward LSU.

Despite that right, he concluded, "I think these son-of-a-buggers deserve a bullet in the head."

This followed his proclamation to the crowd at the beach about American military aims that ended with: "And it's about time we nuked Canada's ass!"

Does anything this idiot is saying make any sense?  What's been going on since WWI?  Protesting war?  And he is actually publicly encouraging murder for people who oppose the Iraq Attack?  And how the hell does Canada come into play?  They have troops and ships in Iraq now, supporting the coalition effort, despite most of the population opposing it.

And obviously the DJ is just a jackhole trying to appeal to other jackholes, with his "nuke Canada" remark, but um, don't you think there would be a few environmental problems with nuking Canada?  I.E. fallout? Being as almost all the major cities in the country are very near the US border, and all.  I guess losing Detroit and Seattle would be okay, so long as we didn't have to hear politicians from a nearby country point out how well Dumbya lives up to his name?

March 25, 2003

Clear Channel Communications, the primary reason radio sucks so hard these days, is doing something unusual for a media company, and sponsoring various Pro-War rallies.  They call them "Support Our Troops" rallies, or whatever. Same difference.

In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people. The events have served as a loud rebuttal to the more numerous but generally smaller anti-war rallies.

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. The San Antonio-based broadcaster owns more than 1,200 stations in 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Anyway, these are being run by various radio stations in a variety of cities, and are cross promoted, since Clear Channel (which sucks, BTW) owns 8 or 10 stations in a lot of cities.  Each station promises some prizes and live music and speakers, and each station gets about 1000 listeners to show up (people will show up for almost anything as long as it's free and will fill their empty little lives for a couple of hours) and you've got a pretty good crowd on hand.

Given the jingoism of the movement, I don't imagine these are real intellectual gatherings, and they are dwarfed by the 100k or 200k peace/anti-war marches that have been going on with zero radio station or media publicity.  But it's mostly interesting that a radio group is doing this.  Clear Channel makes no claims to be a news organization or impartial or objective, and they obviously are not, but it's still somewhat ethically fishy to do what they are doing.

The big tie in with Clear Channel is that one of the owners is Tom Hicks, a big time old money Texas millionaire who bought the Texas Rangers baseball team, of which George Bush Jr. was a partial owner (a share of the team was basically given him in what is a long story of rich elite Texan back-scratching).  Bush made millions from the increased price of the team that he'd done nothing more than have his name on for a few years.  It's good to be the son of a governor.

And Clear Channel has made such a mockery of multiple radio station ownership in the US that it's actually causing even the pro-business FCC to question the continuing practice of deregulation of the airwaves, as they are now considering allowing media companies to own multiple radio stations, tv stations, and newspapers in the same market.  The potential for control of all advertising rates and practices in a city, not to mention selective reporting of the "news" should make this seem a pretty dreadful idea to most anyone who gives it any thought, IMHO.

You don't suppose there's any connection between Clear Channel sponsoring these Pro-War rallies and the pending deregulation issues now before the FCC, do you?  Or any back room pressure being put on by Dubya and his cronies for his old pal and campaign donor Tom Hicks, do you?

What made me think to write about this, was what I heard on the radio this weekend. I was listening to the radio briefly on Sunday (For the first time in like 3 months.  Literally.) and since both non-oldies rock stations in San Diego are Clear Channel Stations (unfortunately) I was listening to one of them.  The DJ, female, gave a little speech in between Godsmack tunes, about how she's all for freedom of speech, but the people who are still protesting against the war are going too far.

It was about the dumbest thing I've ever heard a living human give voice to.

I can't quote it, but to paraphrase, she said that the war was on, the protesting had failed, and that they should give up and support the troops.  There was no point in engaging in civil disobedience (not that she said these words, as I'd imagine they are well beyond her vocabulary) or stopping traffic or blocking roads, since that's distracting the police from going after real criminals.

I had to turn it off after she started to restate this for about the third time, just laughing in disbelief.  She's entitled to her opinion, though I'm not listening to a rock station for political commentary, oddly enough.

Anyway, the arguments against her PoV are legion.

So it's okay to protest if no cops are required to be involved?

Um, don't our taxes go to pay for cops for just this sort of thing?  What about the cops that are required to direct traffic after things like baseball games and concerts and political conventions?

Since anti-war protesters hardly get any media coverage unless they fill a city, how is a smaller group to get noticed and try to wake people up if they don't engage in some civil disobedience?

So since things like the anti-Vietnam war protests, or the Civil Rights Movement protests in the 1960's against racist segregation in the South, which succeeded in their goals largely by getting media attention over time, shouldn't have been carried out?  They required police with attack dogs and firemen with crowd control fire hoses, after all.  Imagine all the burning crosses that went un-extinguished while the firemen were busy blasting kids out from the front of drug stores and diners where they were holding sit-ins.  Funny how when you protest against the entrenched power structure the police tend to get involved.

No one protesting against the Iraq Attack in the US before it began had any realistic hope of stopping it.  Everyone knew Dubya has his "Iraq or bust" sign up months ago, and with no real opposition party in the US, there was no hope of congress stopping it.  So protesting before it began or after it's underway is essentially the same thing.

Isn't protesting to stop the war the best way to support our troops?  I mean what could keep them safer than immediately withdrawing them from Iraq?  Hypothetically speaking, of course.  As if battling into Baghdad and then occupying Iraq for several years will be an entirely no-risk job.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I just thought that an especially stupid argument, and I'm sure one that she (the DJ) heard on Rush or in some stupid newspaper column.  I don't get the feeling that the dippy DJ was spending a whole lot of time pondering political issues of the day before she began spouting off.

What I really wonder is if Clear Channel management has been sending out emails and memos to all of their stations with a script of things to say to support the war, and they are requiring all of their DJs to beat the drum a few times a day?  I've not been listening often enough to know if this was an isolated incident, or an indication of a larger stealthy company policy.

I can easily see a memo taped to the console for every DJ to see, with a selection of pro-war scripts to choose from, and instructions to personalize it each time so it doesn't sound rehearsed. There's probably an angry "denounce the traitors" script, a "Saddam is a murderous butcher" script, a "French are weenies" script, and more.

And the DJ I heard chose the mellower "voice of reason" script, which supports the right to dissent, just as long as it knows to shut up and fall into lock step with the president once the shooting starts.

And perhaps if more deregulation passes, this sort of propaganda will be coming soon to several radio stations, three local TV channels, and a newspaper near you.

June 1, 2002

Clear Channel owns both rock stations in San Diego, along with half a dozen other stations, and I can certainly testify that both rock stations here suck.  75% overlapping play lists, all the DJs sound the same, you never hear any new bands unless they sound exactly like some current bands, etc.  It's basically just the top 40 rock singles on "shuffle" in a CD-changer.

It's good to see that the Onion agrees.  And yes, I've bitched about this before.  And may do so again, if provoked, since it's such an important issue.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.