Broken Records
A new deal will allow Clear Channel and Cumulus Media to dominate the airwaves even more than they already do.
Media conglomerates continue to squeeze the life out of radio, and the Federal Communications Commission continues to facilitate the slow death.
The New York Times recently reported that media giants Clear Channel and Cumulus Media are forming a “daily deal” allianceto compete with sites like Groupon and LivingSocial. Clear Channel will run ads for Sweetjack, Cumulus’ daily-deals program, meaning radio personalities from both companies will endorse the business discounts in corresponding markets. In exchange, Clear Channel gets to add Cumulus’ radio stations to its iHeartRadio online listening service.
This arrangement will allow Clear Channel and Cumulus to give each other a leg up and achieve a new degree of dominance and power in the radio market. Clear Channel owns 850 radio stations across the country; Cumulus, which gobbled up Citadel Broadcasting in April, now owns 570.
In an ideal world our media outlets would compete for our attention with engrossing coverage of local news, arts and culture. Instead, the two leading radio conglomerates give us the same formulaic playlists on every dial with “DJs” who program from afar. With our radio stations on automatic pilot, Clear Channel and Cumulus have recently laid off hundreds of staff as they chase down new revenue streams that pad their bottom lines.
The outlook for radio is grim. Make that double grim, since reports indicate the FCC will further relax cross-ownership rules — which could lead to even more radio consolidation.
Things are going to get even uglier as Clear Channel and Cumulus barrel forward, leaving us with the scant remains of what radio used to be: vibrant, engaging and sensitive to community needs. If you want radio that reflects you, tell the FCC to protect our public airwaves before they’re completely co-opted by corporations.
Photo credit: Ned Richards via Flickr
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Free Press does not support or oppose any candidate for public office. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media and universal access to communications.
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Change the Channels
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Radio Wasteland.
We stoppped listening to the network stations on AM radio in the late 1960s and FM in the late 1970s. By the late 1980s FM in the our broadcast area was a dualing playlist, disposable pop, oldies, goofball, barker, preacher wasteland. We lost the last of two classic music stations in the 1990s. The FM dial is now completely filled, with a very few exceptions, with totally over commercialized and/or repetitive programing. Making for a very avoidable waste of time and a graveyard for useful news and the music arts. The station owners must know the radio listenership is both shrinking and aging, but these repeater, lost listener, zero personnel business plans persist.
Except for local University stations, WRTI, Temple U. and WXPN University of Penn. and NPR, we never, ever listens to commercial radio.