Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio - Hardcover

Foege, Alec

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571211062 ISBN 13: 9780571211067

Verlag: Faber & Faber, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

A history of the rise and fall of one of the media's most controversial and powerful companies details the evolution of Clear Channel, from a local radio operation to a mammoth conglomerate controlling radio stations, concert venues and promoters, billboards, TV stations, and the nation's largest sports management business, until its dissolution in 2006.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alec Foege has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, New York, People, Spin, Playboy, Details, and many other national publications. He currently is a contributing writer at Fortune Small Business. His previous books are Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story and The Empire God Built: Inside Pat Robertson’s Media Machine. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

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Right of the Dial

1.

THE CONTROVERSY

Howard Stern shuffled onto the stage of the Late Show with David Letterman on the eve of November 18, 2004, much in the way he had on plenty of other occasions over the previous fifteen years. Clad in jeans, a black T-shirt, black sport coat, and dark sunglasses, the tall, shaggy-haired radio host looked a lot like an aging rock star but with none of the attitude or bitterness. Instead, he flashed a warm smile, waved to the studio audience, amiably rubbed the bald head of Letterman’s bandleader, Paul Shaffer, and greeted Letterman with a hearty handshake. The self-proclaimed King of All Media—and the man for whom the term “shock jock” was practically minted—in a word, ruled.

And why not? With more than twelve million daily listeners and an annual salary of more than $30 million, Stern was one of the biggest stars the radio business had ever known. For more than two decades, he had thrived on the controversial humor that filled his meandering five-hour daily morning broadcast, where guests over the years had included porn stars, dwarfs, strippers, and his personal favorite, lesbians. A magnet for criticism and censure, Stern was responsible for more than half of the $4.5 million in fines for obscenity meted out by the Federal Communications Commission since 1990.1 But for years his employer, Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio), didn’t seem to mind, since he also brought in multimillions per year in revenue. At the time of his 2004 Late Night appearance, Infinity was a division of Viacom, the same corporation that owned CBS Television, Letterman’s employer.

But on this particular night, Stern was neither outrageous nor particularly funny. He had a serious announcement to make. “Always a lot of controversy when I come here,” he told Letterman, as he slouched into the guest chair. “My career is never normal, there’s always a lot of pressure.”

The biggest personality in radio was leaving radio. And he was blaming it on the nation’s biggest radio company, Clear Channel.

Indeed, the occasion for Stern’s appearance was the official announcement of his newest job. Just six weeks earlier, Stern had revealed his plan to abandon free broadcast radio for good and to begin appearing on Sirius Satellite Radio, a relatively new company that sold a subscription-based medium whose business model was akin to cable television: “In recent years because of the government interference and what’s been going on with the FCC [and] Clear Channel Broadcasting, doing my job every day has become increasingly difficult.” Sirius had agreed to pay Stern $100 million per year for the next five years, which included the costs of producing his show. In return, Stern was expected to draw untold millions of new listeners to a kind of radio they had to pay for.

In February of that same year, in the wake of a highly contentious incident during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show in which the singer Janet Jackson bared a single breast while performing a musical dance number choreographed by MTV, the FCC decided to flex its muscles by fining Clear Channel Communications $495,000 for broadcasting a twenty-minute segment of Stern’s show featuring sexually suggestive humor on some of its stations. On April 9, 2003, Stern discussed the discomforts of anal sex and a potion the FCC characterized as “a purported personal hygiene product designed for use prior to sexual activity.” The sophomoric bit was accompanied, according to the FCC report, “by sound effects of flatulence and evacuation.” In response, Clear Channel dropped Howard Stern’s network program from six of its radio stations in mostly conservative markets. It later paid $1.75 million in fines to the FCC for obscenity on Stern’s show and others, including that of an outrageous Florida disc jockey known as “Bubba the Love Sponge,” who had been fired a few months earlier after racking up $755,000 in fines from the FCC for his lewd on-air patter.2

Had the incident involved anyone else, it likely would have faded away. But Stern was different. For one, he was so huge for radio. Second, he seemed genuinely radicalized by the event.

In a presidential election year, Stern, not usually regarded for his political banter, started delivering on-air political tirades against President George W. Bush, blaming Republicans and the religious right for creating a culture of censorship. Then, on Letterman that night, he introduced the nation to another, far more tangible target: Clear Channel Communications, the world’s largest radio company.

As for Letterman, he seemed peculiarly impassioned by Stern’s diatribe that night, his trademark wire-rimmed glasses adding an air of erudition. “Here’s what I know about Clear Channel,” Letterman said, interrupting Stern. “And, you know, I’m not paying attention to anything, I’m just doing my little dog-and-pony show here,” he said, pausing for a breath. “I read an article in Rolling Stone this summer: Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations, many stations in the same markets. They’ve essentially wiped out individuality of the radio stations and played havoc with the record industry and the music industry and live concerts. I was stunned.” Letterman went on to note that three corporations controlled more than 60 percent of the nation’s radio audience.

Then Stern added, “When I was working for Clear Channel, they fired me I think from nine stations on a whim. And one of the reasons they fired me is I didn’t support President Bush. Clear Channel is busy throwing parties in markets for the Iraq war. And I hardly think that’s something you should be throwing a party for. They’re throwing rallies. So I didn’t support that and the next day I was fired. My fellow broadcasters are not standing up for me. I am turning my back on regular terrestrial radio. I believe in five years … satellite radio will be the dominant medium in radio broadcasting.”

Within a mere five minutes of late-night network television programming, Clear Channel Communications had been introduced to an unsuspecting general public, a large portion of which had probably never even heard its name before that night. On the other hand, they were probably familiar with some of the company’s products. At the time of the broadcast, Clear Channel stations reached nearly 60 percent of the nation’s radio audience and represented around 20 percent of the radio industry’s total revenue. Its concert division had a virtual headlock on America’s live-entertainment market. And its outdoor billboard displays lined ribbon after ribbon of highways from New York to California.

 

 

Just as MTV dominated the 1980s, and Microsoft defined the 1990s, Clear Channel became the defining media and technology story of the early years of the twenty-first century.

In 1995, when Congress was reconsidering media ownership rules, Clear Channel ran just forty-three radio stations and sixteen TV stations across the country. The next year, when Congress deregulated radio, allowing radio groups to own as many stations as they wanted (with some regional restrictions), Clear Channel began to gobble up stations at an incomparably breathtaking rate. In that very same year, it acquired forty-nine more radio stations, more than doubling its holdings. And in an industry built on leveraged capital, Clear Channel liked to pay cash. By 2001, the company had acquired several rivals and laid claim to more...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Faber & Faber
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0571211062
• ISBN 13: 9780571211067
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 294
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Uwe Hübener; 26632959738; uhuebener@gmx.de; ; Waldstraße 4; Berzhahn; Rlp; 56459; Deutschland