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[OT] The Day the Protest Music Died



>From another list . . .

The Trouble With Corporate Radio: The Day the Protest Music Died

February 20, 2003
By BRENT STAPLES

Pop music played a crucial role in the national debate over
the Vietnam War. By the late 1960's, radio stations across
the country were crackling with blatantly political songs
that became mainstream hits. After the National Guard
killed four antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University
in Ohio in the spring of 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and
Young recorded a song, simply titled "Ohio," about the
horror of the event, criticizing President Richard Nixon by
name. The song was rushed onto the air while sentiment was
still high, and became both an antiwar anthem and a huge
moneymaker.

A comparable song about George W. Bush's rush to war in
Iraq would have no chance at all today. There are plenty of
angry people, many with prime music-buying demographics.
But independent radio stations that once would have played
edgy, political music have been gobbled up by corporations
that control hundreds of stations and have no wish to rock
the boat. Corporate ownership has changed what gets played
- and who plays it. With a few exceptions, the disc jockeys
who once existed to discover provocative new music have
long since been put out to pasture. The new generation
operates from play lists dictated by Corporate Central -
lists that some D.J.'s describe as "wallpaper music."

Recording artists were seen as hysterics when they
complained during the 1990's that radio was killing popular
music by playing too little of it. But musicians have
turned out to be the canaries in the coal mine - the first
group to be affected by a 1996 federal law that allowed
corporations to gobble up hundreds of stations, limiting
expression over airwaves that are merely licensed to
broadcasters but owned by the American public.

When a media giant swallows a station, it typically fires
the staff and pipes in music along with something that
resembles news via satellite. To make the local public
think that things have remained the same, the voice track
system sometimes includes references to local matters
sprinkled into the broadcast.

What my rock 'n' roll colleague William Safire describes as
the "ruination of independent radio" started with
corporatizing in the 1980's but took off dramatically when
the Telecommunications Act of 1996 increased the number of
stations that one entity could own in a single market and
permitted companies to buy up as many stations nationally
as their deep pockets would allow.

The new rules were billed as an effort to increase radio
diversity, but they appear to have had the opposite effect.
Under the old rules, the top two owners had 115 stations
between them. Today, the top two own more than 1,400
stations. In many major markets, a few corporations control
80 percent of the listenership or more.

Liberal Democrats are horrified by the legion of
conservative talk show hosts who dominate the airwaves. But
the problem stretches across party lines. National Journal
reported last month that Representative Mark Foley,
Republican of Florida, was finding it difficult to reach
his constituents over the air since national radio
companies moved into his district, reducing the number of
local stations from five to one. Senator Byron Dorgan,
Democrat of North Dakota, had a potential disaster in his
district when a freight train carrying anhydrous ammonia
derailed, releasing a deadly cloud over the city of Minot.
When the emergency alert system failed, the police called
the town radio stations, six of which are owned by the
corporate giant Clear Channel. According to news accounts,
no one answered the phone at the stations for more than an
hour and a half. Three hundred people were hospitalized,
some partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock
were killed.

The perils of consolidation can be seen clearly in the
music world. Different stations play formats labeled "adult
contemporary," "active rock," "contemporary hit radio" and
so on. But studies show that the formats are often
different in name only - and that as many as 50 percent of
the songs played in one format can be found in other
formats as well. The point of these sterile play lists is
to continually repeat songs that challenge nothing and no
one, blending in large blocks of commercials.

Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin has introduced a bill
that would require close scrutiny of mergers that could
potentially put the majority of the country's radio
stations in a single corporation's hands. Lawmakers who
missed last month's Senate hearings on this issue should
get hold of the testimony offered by the singer and
songwriter Don Henley, best known as a member of the
Eagles, the rock band.

Mr. Henley's Senate testimony recalled the Congressional
payola hearings of 1959-60, which showed the public how
disc jockeys were accepting bribes to spin records on the
air. Now, Mr. Henley said, record companies must pay large
sums to "independent promoters," who intercede with radio
conglomerates to get songs on the air. Those fees, Mr.
Henley said in a recent telephone interview, sometimes
reach $400,000.

Which brings us back to the hypothetical pop song attacking
George Bush. The odds against such a song reaching the air
are steep from the outset, given a conservative corporate
structure that controls thousands of stations. Record
executives who know the lay of land take the path of least
resistance when deciding where to spend their promotional
money. This flight to sameness and superficiality is
narrowing the range of what Americans hear on the radio -
and killing popular music.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/20/opinion/20THU4.html?ex=1046933884&ei=1&en=3f3ab6475a517738

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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