Time For Clear Channel and Other Corporate Radio Conglomarates to Get Serious! (June 22, 2002)

Personally, I am sick and tired of all the reporting at many other websites and news organizations criticizing many big radio conglomerates like Clear Channel without suggesting any improvements for them to utilize like you see here at davesfunstuff.com

I got a few e-mails stating "F" Clear Channel and other curses at the company. There's a reason why Clear Channel has gotten most of the bad criticism and gossip on the boards: they're not taking their own business seriously. Serious.

You see me tease Clear Channel how they're not using their stations to program truly diverse formats to maximize their listeners. Their redundant music station playlists are cannibalizing each other in the ratings to a point where many similar genre stations are collectively getting half of what they could be getting if they were programming completely different kinds of genre programming amongst the stations that they control in the San Diego Outland.

You see me publicize radio websites that play dance and comedy music on the Interent. The fact is that they're workable formats in broadcast radio. In San Diego, there's no fulltime dance and comedy music stations. There is a market for these interesting formats.

14 stations in the San Diego area? Why are the ratings so low? Why are the stocks of Clear Channel half of what it was last year? Bad programming. They're simply not being aggressive enough. Huh? Like they're not already? Yes. I'm talking about being aggressive when it comes to programming to get an audience, instead of using a nationwide million dollar contest to artificially inflate their ratings temporarily during ratings weeks. When the contest ends, so do the listeners as they flock back to their MP3 units to listen to diversified programming.

I don't want to see Clear Channel collapse into another Enron. Seriously. I'm going to get some hate mail from the readers, who think that Clear Channel should die, and I deserve it. I don't care. I'm man enough for it. There is a limit on how many stations a company can effective control, as opposed to how many it can outright own and operate legally, and Clear Channel, with its vertical affilliation with billboards and concert entertainment (the former SFX Entertainment) still cannot keep their stocks from tumbling down. What is the company doing wrong?

For starters, aside of lack of diverse programming for each of the sister stations to air so as to not compete with each other in terms of genre and musical taste, Clear Channel is not using radio contests in an effective manner. Which would you prefer? One million dollar contest run for 28 days with one winner, or giving away a million dollars worth of prizes spread out over 28 days amongst the 1200 stations it runs, most of which are the same price as a new CD? Guess what? The small prizes are the ones that will grab the listeners and keep them listening to the station longer, especially if they're allowed to win as often as they like; the one prize per month or whatever policy is not an incentive for them to keep listening to the staiton after they won; where will they go to? Back to the MP3s? Don't let them do that.

We keep seeing complaints about repeating the same 20-30 songs over and over again in a short playlist. This has got to change as teenagers are increasingly abandoning radio in favor of other ways to listen to new music. Broadcast radio is an excellent promotional machine in terms of new music exposure. Nothing else matches it, and never will, not even Internet radio or file-swap services match the instant exposure of a particular song to so many people at once like radio does.

We keep seeing sites like cheap-channel.com and clearchannelsucks.com, as well as evilradioempire.com, pop up with the sole intention of bad mouthing broadcast radio and offer no solutions to their shortcomings. I put the websites there, not just for the listeners fed up with broadcast radio, but also for the broadcast professionals, if they still exist like they did abundantly in the 80's, to check out and to counter them with more effective kinds of radio broadcasting.

There are also lawsuits I read in the press against Clear Channel monopolizing concert venues in some cities, and shutting out artists in the cities who don't use their services, cutting off airplay on their radio stations. There are also instances where one competeting non-CC station cuts off airplay for an artist who choose to use CC's services for concert venues. This kind of war is not beneficial to the listeners. They will seek out music from their favorite shut-out artists elsewhere. Whatever the true story is, all of the radio stations are equally to blame for this and will have to cease this immature behaviour at once. CC could still air the favorite artists on their station just to keep their listeners from flocking to another station that's airing them on their station. Have they ever thought of that?

Also, another problem Clear Channel is facing: declining stock values, not just for the company, but it's also giving the other companies a bad image in the stock values as well. What Clear Channel needs to realize is that they're not really competeting with Infinity, Radio One, Salem or whatever companies are running the stations. They're really competeting with Internet streaming, MP3 downloads, and CDs. The companies should get serious and realize that competetion between broadcast radio stations are healthier if the stations compete against the other medium by hiring real music fans as programmers and directors, let the deejays be the ears for the radio station as they try out new music for listener response, let the G.M.s loose in their quest for one purpose: make money. How? Better programming for the listener.

Get the listeners to turn off electronica from Internet radio and program an electronica radio station on the broadcast stick! The genre is a cultural phonenenom; it cuts most every major demographic group; why doesn't corporate radio utilize what people want to hear? Its truly diverse, no rap, no hip hop, no old school R&B and disco, so it doesn't compete with Hot 92.3 in Los Angeles and Magic 92.5 in Tijuana-San Diego.

Do I hate radio. No. Do I hate what radio is doing? Yes. Am I going to stop listening to radio? I did for three months as the playlists were stale in the first 2-3 months of 2002, as well as all of December. You see, if you don't have fresh programming, the music fan isn't going to listen to your stations.

Am I jealous that CC owns 1200 stations? Nope. They're the ones who are making more work for themselves than necessary. So CC runs 1200 stations. They got it. Why aren't they maximizing their clusters to show a rise in stock value?

Why are they hiring people who don't have enough professional broadcast credentials, music education, and research experience, to program these under-performing radio stations? Sure, anyone can do research, but few researchers succeed because they happen to also be educated in the music they are researching, as in, actually listening to the music before they program them into the formats. I can do research on the music found on Joel Whitburn's Billboard books series and compile lists of top ranked songs in a 20-year range separated by genre, but the truth is, that since I'm not knowledgable in the genres of pop country, smooth jazz, modern R&B, hip hop, and, believe it or not, even electronica/dance, a genre I'm a fan of though I can't name most of the bands I'm hearing, I will fail when it comes to being graded on personal touching of the ranks by adding in underperforming songs that are better and removing top-ranked songs that have not stood the test of time.

Is Clear Channel getting their money's worth by using lists compiled by other researchers and using them nationally? Many songs don't strike a good chord with listeners in some cities, while other songs get missed altogether from other local cities. One size does not fit all. Customizing the playlist to reflect the changing tastes of its collective audience, and updating it all the time, is the only way a station can maintain an audience and grow it.

How do you grow an audience? Play more favorites, but less often. Make them wait 4-6 hours for them to hear a particular song again, play other current favorites, some notable recurring hits, and introduce new songs. If they hear the same song twice in two hours, then they may have had their fill for the day and will leave. By making the listener wait for the song to repeat again, assuming that they don't listen to the other stations, they could be getting a higher rating than if they were programming the same song every two hours.

Is Clear Channel the Darth Vader of radio broadcasting? They may have that distinction whether they like it or not. Consolidation is itself not bad, its the way they're doing business that's giving radio a bad name, and for that, they are going to have to change to reflect what the majority of its music fans want to hear; and the music fans in turn will have to agree to listen to the radio stations and share input with the radio deejays and music directors on a regular basis. If they're not hearing a new song they like, suggest it to the radio station. If they're playing a bad song, let them know what it is. Even big radio empires have to answer to their real employers: the listeners. They don't need to buy radio stock, but radio stations themselves need to start accepting criticism and start responding to that with better radio programming. Just telling the station that they suck and not elaborating on it does the station and me no good. They need to know exactly why they suck, and spelled out in straight English!

From http://members.cox.net/rwagoner/columns/2002/jun2102.html and also see http://www.senate.gov/~feingold

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) wrote an interesting statement to President Bush regarding the concentration of of ownership in the radio and concert industry earlier this month. In it, he gives some interesting data regarding just how much concentration there is within the industry.

"In 1996, prior to the passage of the Telecommunications Act, there were 5133 owners of radio stations," he said. "Today, for the Contemporary hit Radio/Top 40 formats, four radio station groups -- Chancellor, Clear Channel, Infinity and Capstar -- control access to 63 percent of the format's 41 million listeners nationwide. For the country music format, the same four groups control access to 56 percent of the format's 28 million listeners.

"The concentration is even more startling when we look at radio station ownership in local markets.

"Four radio station companies control nearly 80 percent of the New York market. Three of these same four companies own nearly 60 percent of the market in Chicago. In my home state of Wisconsin, four companies own 86 percent of the market share in the Milwaukee radio market.

"The senator plans to introduce legislation addressing the concerns of consolidation and the resulting anticompetitive behavior in the coming weeks."

Now as to the issue of monopolies in San Diego, Clear Channel runs about 13 of the English-language stations here (600, 690, 1130, 1360, 903, 911, 925, 933, 941, 957, 1015, 1053) (1130 is owned by Chase Radio Partners), not counting the two from Temecula or KFI from Los Angeles, while Infinity runs two (965, 1037), not counting KNX from L.A., Jefferson-Pilot runs four (1240, 949, 973, 981), Disney controls one (AM 800, ESPN Radio, launching July 1), Midwest TV runs two (760, 1007), Salem runs two (1170, 1210), Compass runs one (1021), Astor runs three (1000, 1450, 921), Mount Wilson runs one (540), Galavision Radio (the former HBC, and former Heftel) owns and runs two San Diego-based Spanish language (1029, 1065), Family Radio runs one (910), another religious broadcaster runs one (1001) and another company runs another (1057 Alpine?). Is a monopoly a good thing or a bad thing? If monopoly means being gate-keeper by not allowing certain new music to their sticks, then is it a good thing or a bad thing? If its not letting in truly bad songs on the airwaves, or if its letting good music through, then its a good thing. On the other hand, if its letting truly bad songs such as Ja Rule and Alicia Keys through, and not letting in good music, then its a bad thing. It's this bad thing that needs to be changed and the only way to do that is for the listeners to let the stations know what they're doing wrong.

Changing ownership rules isn't going to solve the problem in itself; back before consolidation begain in San Diego, there were still many radio stations letting bad and boring music in while not airing most of the good music. That is still true to many markets where one company does not control more than 10 percent of the advertising revenue. Poorly-researched music gets on the air; interesting music does not get on the air. It's the same thing with Clear Channel, which owns 1200, and Compass, which owns one. No matter whether its a monopoly or not, they're still missing the notable songs that deserve to get airplay, while concentrating on those that don't need any more publicity.

All but one radio station, KPRI 1021, is run by a San Diego-based company (Compass). The other corporate radio stations have to also answer to the needs of its listeners, just like KPRI does. The goals are the same: make money. To make money, you make your station relevant to the listeners. They listen. Advertisers pay more. Station makes more money.

The revision of consolidation would mean another side effect: stations going dark if there's not enough new owners to run the stations after Clear Channel and other large radio empires are forced to break apart if bills are introduced in Congress. Do you think that it would be better if radio ownership went back to the way it was before? If you think about it, it just cannot happen anymore. Too many companies have gotten out of the radio business to make the dream of diverse ownership a reality once again. It takes just plain too much money to operate a radio station in the black. Even most of the San Diego broadcasters before the Jacor/Clear Channel days had a difficult time making money with big staffs to hire to run the stations. Many of the broadcast sticks are received poorly in many distant valleys dozens of miles from their transmitting sites, limiting their audience size and ad revenue. With consolidation, many local broadcasters sold off their radio interests to CC, Infinity, and others here, while the new owners consolidated thier staffs, removing redundant positions, combining sales and news departments, and reducing their on air staffs. That in itself is not a bad thing to save money for the owner of the station if it runs 14 staions with about 1/4 of the staff they would have needed if they were still run with individual owners. That should translate to higher pay for the on-air staffs? No. Translate to more diverse programming? No. Translate to more money being made? No. Huh? Higher stock values? No. What are they doing wrong? Programming redundantly and irrelevantly. Yes. Time to change that to get more listeners.

Randy Michaels, head of Clear Channel Communications, spent some time at the Radio and Records Convention last week in Beverly Hills defending his company as misunderstood, definitely not evil, and generally just a bunch of great radio guys.

"The evil intentions attributed to Clear Channel are not true at all," he said to a packed ballroom. "Because we are leading change, we are perceived as evil."

The leader of Clear Channel needs to work on that evil label that's been given to Clear Channel. It's time to be a man and face the fact, Mr. Michaels, why there is so much public outcry over why Clear Channel is doing music wrong. It's time to get your hands dirty and research out the millions of music listeners and get their impressions on why radio is no longer relevant to their daily habits. Mr. Michaels cannot deny the fact that criticism aimed at Clear Channel is all over the Internet. The company needs to start taking defensive action and do something about that "evil empire" tag that's been given to them, not by showing how ridiculous the tag is by words, but by actions. How? Better and relevant music programming.

Mr. Michaels cannot just play dumb, ignoring the critics, while his company's stock takes a bath at Wall Street. It's time to get serious and do something about it.

Mr. Michaels cannot say that the actions of his company make it look like those who are against it are just competitors jealous of its success. What success? Why isn't the stock of Clear Channel comfortably above $100 a share? We're not jealous of what the company doesn't have. It's the failure that they should be taking a long serious hard look at. Where's the success, Mr. Michaels? Where's all your listeners?

Clear Channel, for instance, hastened the hemmoraging of the collective broadcast radio audience by selling, for example, two English language radio stations that performed successfully in Los Angeles/Orange, namely, KACD/KBCD 103.1, which played the excellent, but poorly received due to low power, World Class Rock 103.1 run by Nicole Sandler, to a Spanish radio owner, Entravision, who got just the sticks to duplicate its own 97.5 Super Estrella format onto them, getting their own ratings down due to dilution and duplication of the format, while Clear Channel kept the 103.1 studio and turned WCR into an Internet-only station, only to shut it off a year later when it wasn't making enough money. Furthermore, they sold Mix 95.9, which was a better-programmed Mix station than the lame-brained version in San Diego, to Salem who took it into a low-rated Fish religious music format. The loss of two niche-filling formats caused some people to just give up on radio and move to the Internet. Sure, they're not really competeting with Clear Channel, but unfortunately, the programming concepts run by Entravision and Salem are poorly executed and rated by comparison.

By selling the excess radio stations to owners who program non-competeting low-rated formats, Clear Channel has made radio bad themselves with this kind of action. The reverse is true in San Diego. The former Jacor sold off its low-rated stations on 102.9 and 106.5 to Heftel, who took them Spanish, and the ratings for 106.5 are about as high as the old Q106 was back in 1993, while 102.9 continues to struggle, but both stations are hitting the Spanish demographics better than any of the Mexican-owned stations nearby due to more locality of the transmitters. More Spanish radio stations worked in San Diego, while more Spanish stations in Los Angeles didn't due to an already large concentration of them in that area.

Where's the variety? Where's the diversity? Why is Clear Channel playing the same redundant songs over 2-4 of its stations in the same market? What's the point of doing this? Why aren't the stations playing formats with songs that do not overlap the format of a sister station? That's diversity. Work on it.

With the use of voice tracking technology, Clear Channel stations are saving money by syndicating their in-house deejays to radio stations all over the nation. Syndication is itself not bad, its the way its presented that often is when it tries to be local when it really isn't. I listen to the syndicated Dr. Demento and that show is always canned. Is that bad? By nature, it has to be that way, as it is a necessary evil in radio broadcasting in order to have the show aired at times when enough people would listen to it to make it worth it for the affilliate station to air it in the first place. Voice tracking should stop pretending to be local and tell it like it is by actually having a nationwide feel, just like Art Laboe, Casey Kasem, Rick Dees, and other jocks who do syndicated shows.

Stifling competetion leads to an exodus of listeners to MP3s and CDs. Disney's ABC-TV did the same thing when other "Millionaire" clones came on TV by stunting its own opposite them to make them disappear. The effect of that made people not care to not miss watching the show, the ratings tanked, and Disney's ABC-TV is the fourth-rated broadcaster, now just behind Fox, in the 18-49 demos.

Finally, there's the issue of payola and indies. Whatever that's true to most of the corporate-run stations or not, the fact remains that you cannot program a format exclusively composed of music paid by the indies. People just don't like certain songs. People want to hear songs that are not paid for by the indies. Payola-exclusive formats just can't be done.

Payola could also promote better music, but the radio stations would have to be convinced to air the songs, and the listeners have to want to hear the music paid by the indies to the stations. It's a three-way process. If payola is used just to promote music aimed at the 12-14 female set, than they're doing it in the wrong way; they should be going after the lucrative male 35-54 listener instead! Radio stations cannot depend on payola alone for revenue if the labels don't have a clue what the music fans want to buy aside the crap rap and teen bands publicized to death, and stations cluelessly air the songs that drive the listeners away. Listen to the songs yourself, then decline the junk, and play the rest! It's what you don't air that can bring the listeners back: junk!

Bad radio leads to making less money. No wonder radio listening among young people is at its lowest point in the history of the medium. Time to get to work and get some changes in radio made right now!

Copyright c 2002 David Tanny and Worldwide Twisting Triangle Ltd. All rights reserved. Redistribution is granted provided that a fee of $2 is paid in cash to David Tanny, PO Box 19569, San Diego, CA 92159-0569, along with the website URL that it will be posted at. Redistribution on mailing lists are acceptable with a fee of $1 paid to the author for each subscriber its being sent out to. Chris Carmichael and Randy Dotinga may redistribute freely in part or in full on their respective radio websites and newspapers.