Ga Ga for Radio

Back when I used to work in a factory, we were allowed to have radios at our presses to help pass the time. Working in a factory is tedious, mind-numbing, and exhausting at times and being able to listen to music or talk helped a lot. This was before iPods and all of the digital media that we take for granted these days. So it was compact discs and old fashioned radio of the FM or AM variety. Over an eight hour shift that would be a lot of switching CDs so often I would just put on a radio station and occasionally turn on a disc. This was the midnight shift, so there was not a whole lot of interesting things on and our machines interfered with radio signals but I got enough to really come to an appreciation of the idea of broadcasting. I have been cataloging stories for a while on my Facebook page about the troubled evil empire of iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel) and the king of hate radio, Rush Limbaugh. While no one will be cackling with more glee than I when these two pillars of what is wrong with media in America finally collapse, I instead want to explore a future after the downfall of Rush and iHeart because there could be a very bright one.

Clear Channel is the mutant abomination of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the company grew like cancer to take over radio stations all over the country. By 9/11/01, the rotten effects of this consolidation appeared in the form of playlist censorship, it was time to tamp down on the rebellious side of rock and roll. This list of unethical and tyrannical business practices is detailed Here and elsewhere, but the point is that they are a clear case of bad people with too much power. The biggest crime against democracy and music or media is something they can't be put in jail for. Clear Channel hollowed out broadcasting and homogenized music by taking over stations and sacking the staff, then centralizing playlists and computerizing/automating what we hear on the radio. Meaning that what you hear in one part of the country is the same as what you hear everywhere else. Because nearly all local content has been removed and nearly all programming is national. Finally the squares had tamed rock and roll!

This was what I objected to strenuously as well when I first started listening to talk radio. Our local station had only one program that was actually produced at that station, everything else was nationally syndicated. And that station was not even Clear Channel. No wonder so few people participate in local politics, there's so little media attention given to it. TV, newspapers, and all sorts of other media are very similar. And all for the same reason, there's no money in it. While it appears that Clear Channel's downward descent was already secured a decade ago with it's sale to Mitt Romney's vulture capitalist buddies in Bain and elsewhere, Limbaugh is still limping along, four years after his disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke. I found it funny that Rick Ungar at Forbes jumped the gun by writing: "Has Rush Limbaugh Finally Reached The End Of The Road?", two years the three days he spent slavering over the possibility of demanding all women who want birth control be taped while having sex, for el rushbo's blathering about CBS declaring war on the heartland by naming Stephen Colbert as David Letterman's replacement.

No single event has caused the gasbag Limbaugh to finally drop dead, it is a slow and agonizing decline but the end is in sight. As Leslie Salzillo reported on Kos: "Limbaugh’s eight-year $400 million dollar contract with iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel) is up in December." Although Limbaugh finally getting booted off the public's airwaves will be a victory for progressives even if we didn't have much to do with it, the win will be hollow as hate radio's bench is deep with Rush clones. 

No, the real prize will be when the big radio station owners start to crumble. As stations go to the auction block, progressives should be ready. It will finally be time to do what Air America could never do, buy in to broadcasting. It doesn't matter if we can't all coordinate like a progressive network, the point will be to wrest control over radio from the big corporations and propagandists. I will save the reasons for a subsequent post, I just want you to think about the possibilities. Owning a little piece of your local station and having a say in the music they play and the talk shows they produce or syndicate. Rush's audience is literally dying off, there is a whole farm team of well-produced and high quality podcasts out there, the trouble is how new digital and online media is financed. Tying non-corporate radio stations that can actually produce revenue could really broaden the types of voices on the radio. Just breaking the stranglehold of giant corporations owning everything and getting some local voices back on the air, even if they are conservative, could really make a difference in how Americans get informed. 

At least you could hear something other than the "top ten recycled pop songs played over and over until you relent and like them and start singing along because you have no other choice on the free public airwaves." I mean I look at this chart and there is nothing there, I'm not that old, music has just gotten worse. Same thing goes for the "latest right wing screaming asshole old white man from far, far away from where you live!"