satellite radio Archive

Premiere Radio Networks announced today that Randi Rhodes will join the Clear Channel-owned-syndicator’s lineup of radio talk programing which includes Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck, Bob & Tom, Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, John Boy and Billy, Big Tigger, Dr. Dean Edell, Sean Hannity and others.

Her show, which was previously produced at Clear Channel’s WJNO’s studios in West Palm Beach and syndicated by the now-defunct Nova-M networks, will begin May 11th, 2009. It will originate from Washington D.C. and be carried on most of her long-time affiliaties.

For as long as music has been recorded, the performer has been screwed. In the earliest days of the phonograph, field producers traveled the country finding new performers and (as the law describes it) “fixed” their performances as sound recordings. Most artists, as a condition of being recorded, discovered later that they’d been hit with a one-two punch. They signed away their rights to the performance to the record company, and often the rights to their songs to the field producer.

The Carter Family found this out when they tried to release songbooks of their legendary recordings, only to find out they’d signed over exclusive rights to producer Ralph Peer; over nearly a century the music industry’s exploitation of artists has been a national disgrace. Somehow this sad fact has escaped notice by the trade association of our broadcast industry, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

That is, until now.

The NAB has had a sudden attack of moral conscience, occasioned by the record labels trying to shake them down to start paying the performer of a work as well as the songwriter. They’re now suddenly standing up for the poor downtrodden artist. Until stations began playing records in the 50s, most music on the radio was performed live, by artists who were paid by the stations.

When commercial records took over at the rise of “disk jockey” shows, the musicians unions forced stations to hire “record turners,” but those have now disappeared as well, and they didn’t represent the recording artist, they represented the legacy musicians who were fired because they were no longer needed.

Through the rise of internet and satellite radio, the NAB stood by mute as those new media agreed to pay performance fees, often to the record companies who had usurped the performers’ rights through work for hire contracts. So the NAB’s sudden concern rings a little hollow, but not as hollow as their attempt to misrepresent performance fees as a “tax.” Paying a performer for a song’s performance on the radio is no more a “performance tax” than paying a station to run commercials is a “marketing tax.”

The NAB is too late. The downtrodden performers have already found a way out of the mess through owning their own labels and often distributing their own music. This means that the NAB is only fighting the RIAA for the older product. Performance fees for the new product will likely go right to the performer.

But the worst thing the NAB has done with this ruse, is to prove that it will say anything to make money. That’s the wrong thing for a trade association to do when it represents the companies who claim they should be trusted to hold public licenses to use the public airwaves to bring us news and “official information.”

The folks at ceasespin.org are angry, and they have good reason to be. The media lie and even when you catch them at it, the government seems powerless to stop them.  They’ve got a plan to change things, but like so many plans that arise from anger, they haven’t thought things through. Much of their outrage is tied to the reversal on appeal of a wrongful termination verdict in 2003 stemming from a case in which reporters for WTVT, Tampa, refused to air the statements of Monsanto employees that they personally knew to be false.

This is a sad commentary on the nature of the media, but its also a case where hard cases make good law, and the ceasespin.org site should be a great resource for journalism schools everywhere, because in just a few web pages, the site illustrates the conundrum of how objectivity can be achieved and who decides what is fair.  For instance, they’ve not yet been able to come up with a standard:

Note: this prototype is for informational and educational purposes only. It demonstrates what quality criteria might be used in an actual news quality rating system and how that translates into a quality rating score. The actual news quality standard is still in development and will be published on this and other websites further into the development cycle.

This is not surprise to any third or fourth year journalism undergraduate who has considered the difficulty of who decides. There is a clear danger in any system that places the government in control of media content, and while there are today few first amendment questions for licensed broadcast media (NBC v. United States 1943 pretty much decided that), government regulations must be reasonable and necessary.

So, after a lot of hue and cry, ceasespin winds up posting a self-policing system that is essentially what should be taking place in any good newsroom and has been taught in j-schools at least since the 1930s. Other suggestions like the fairness doctrine and media deconsolidation are much better solutions, but they’re hardly the province of ceasespin. In fact, the fairness doctrine probably is not necessary if there’s diversity of ownership, which was the original concept behind getting rid of it.

In fact, if ceasespin were to apply the standard it wants to see in others to its own coverage of the Fox news decision, it would have to check “no” to at least 6 of its criteria, and probably more. There are reasons that the FCC policies are not laws, but those aren’t cited in the ceasespin story, because it would undercut its own movement. So its own score on its own test: FAIL.

There are two rampant rumors circulating in the talk radio community about Randi Rhodes. One is she’s trying to renegotiate with Air America Radio to take Tom Hartmann’s spot when he is picked up by Dial Global. The other is that she’s negotiating with Dial Global to join him.

Amy Bolton, who runs the talk syndication division at DG, has heard the rumors about both her company and Air America being a landing zone for the Rhodes show. But she says it won’t be Dial Global; her company is not in talks with the Rhodes show to join her stable of talent.

Dial Global now operates the former Jones Radio Network, which syndicates Ed Shultz, LA’s Stephanie Miller, Bill Press and Neal Boortz. It also owns TM/Century, which radio old-timers will remember as the producer of “Tomorrow Radio,” which sagely foretold radio’s future 29 years ago.

Things haven’t been rosy in the talk radio business, no matter what your politics. Shock talk took a hit last Friday in Los Angeles when KLSX–once the SoCal home of Howard Stern–started spinning the hits again. Today, the NYSE delisted Citadel Broadcasting, which is the company of suckers that bought ABC Radio for top dollar only to see its stock tank.  It lost five cents in value today. That’s normally not a big deal, unless, like Citadel, your stock trades for nine cents a share. The New York exchange told them to take their stock to the OTC market.

The other rumor is that Rhodes is talking with Air America Radio. Representatives there did not return calls for comment. Meanwhile, her old Palm Beach station, WJNO, has moved Sean Hannity into her old timeslot, and has moved uber-reactionary Mark Levin into Hannity’s.

Radio Equalizer has just published a document purported to be from Randi Rhodes’ attorney Robert V Gaulin claiming that Nova-M radio has shut its doors.

Eric Reinert, general manager of Nova-M’s flagship station in the greater Phoenix market, acknowledges that he is familiar with the letter from seeing it on the web, but refused to confirm nor deny the rumors. The office phone is no longer answered as Nova-M radio.

Pressed for details Reinert added, “Its not that I can’t confirm or deny, its that I won’t.” It will all become clear over time, Reinert said.

Right wing radio and the conservative blogosphere has been nearly apoplectic since the majority/minority flip in Washington over the possible reapparence of the fairness doctrine. Even an oblique mention by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) set off right wing blogger Ericka Anderson at Town Hall. Anderson is smart enough not to raise the First Amendment in her argument, but that subject shows up pretty quickly in the comments, no doubt because Sean Hannity’s favorite rant is how he’s going to be imminently unconstitutionally muzzled.

Even Mark P. Mays of Clear Channel fame raised a first amendment issue when he defended Rush Limbaugh’s “Phony Soldiers” gaffe:

While I do not agree with everything Mr. Limbaugh says on every topic, I do believe that he, along with every American, has the right to voice his or her opinion in the manner they choose. The First Amendment gives every American the right to voice his or her opinion, no matter how unpopular. That right is one that I am sure you agree must be cherished and protected.

Fairness Doctrine in full battle array!

At least four Supreme Court decisions since Brinkley v. FRC conclude broadcasting is not covered by the first amendment. Limbaugh has no constitutional right of several hundred thousand watts of force behind his words.

Those who would least like the first amendment to apply to broadcasting are Hannity’s bosses at the Citadel/ABC stations like WABC, and the folks at Clear Channel that air so much of him. For if they truly believe that “Congress shall make no law” restricting freedom of speech, and that freedom applies to radio, then they have a very serious problem in South Florida.

We’re famous for our pirate broadcasters. Right now, there’s a Creole station broadcasting without benefit of government license just a few miles away from where I write this. The problem is so critical that the broadcasters got the state of Florida to pass a law so that local gendarmes could arrest pirate broadcasters and confiscate their equipment. So when the FCC  is too busy with more important things like Bono’s intemperate mouth and Janet Jackson’s pouty breast to enforce those “unconstitutional” laws they now have a Plan B.

If its true that Congress can make no law, then I can build a transmitter so big that it blows the local Clear Channel station all the way to Bermuda, but instead of calling to have me arrested and my transmitter taken away, they can join me in pointing to the first amendment. But of course, they’d be the last folks to do that. Because in fact they really love that Congress has made the laws that empower the Federal Communications Commission. Its what puts them in business and keeps the competition so limited that they can buy most of it.

So why is the right trying something so transparent? Does Hannity really believe the crap he’s spewing or does he think his audience is stupid? I think they see it as a win-win. Since the Obama administration has clearly signaled they don’t want the Fairness Doctrine back, but maybe they might want some more stringent ownership caps, the broadcasters can claim victory over that vicious strawman.

But more Machivellian is the possibility that radio’s future is bleak, and that the folks who have been complaining about how the market should decide what is heard on the radio have actually killed the medium with what they decided to broadcast. Citadel Broadcasting (which bought ABC Radio) is trading at 16 cents a share. Sirius started the day at 8 cents. Like the banks, they overvalued their properties driving out the competition and then watched them crash and burn. But when the folks who can’t see through the Hannity arguments wake up one day and their favorite conservative blowhard is gone from the air, they’ll assume it was the Democrats that got ‘em.

More information is emerging about the technicalities of the word “technical” that are being used by Anita Drobny and Nova-M radio as an excuse for Rhodes absence from her nationally syndicated show. “It is not an NSF issue,” said a source familiar with the situation at WJNO, where Rhodes originates her show via ISDN connection to the greater Phoenix Nova-M facilities where it is satellite uplinked to affiliated stations.

The new information confirms that Premiere (the Clear-Channel owned syndicator that distributes Rush Limbaugh) will not be involved in distributing the Rhodes program. It contradicts an earlier report that Rhodes will return as a Clear Channel employee hosting a local program. Radio & Records is reporting that the “technical” dispute is a contractual issue, which is echoed at the LTR blog: “Negotiations are reportedly completely amicable with both sides determined to get Rhodes back on the air as soon as possible.”

Her studio in the West Palm Beach Clear Channel cluster is available and unused, writes a knowledgeable source, “Whenever [Rhodes] and Nova-M decide she can put her ass in the seat, it’s waiting for her.”

UPDATE

Less than a year after Randi Rhodes broke with Air America, returning to Palm Beach County to move her national show to the Nova-M network, she is again off the air, her show being guest hosted, often at the last minute, by Nancy Skinner. Rhodes and WJNO are preparing to relaunch her show as a local program from the West Palm Beach studios of the Clear Channel cluster, according to sources inside Clear Channel knowledgable about the preparations.

Is this the Randi Rhodes channel?

Rhodes and Nova-M have been blaming “technical problems” for the interruption of The Randi Rhodes show, but when pressed, a spokesman at Nova-M’s flagship station in Phoenix responded that “technical problems” could have a lot of different meanings. The many definitions of “technical” was echoed by sources at Clear Channel in West Palm Beach, who said there were no Clear Channel technical issues, and that the assumption that a technical problems had to do with equipment or transmission wouldn’t be correct.

Over the last few days, according to those familiar with the situation in West Palm Beach, WJNO has been making preparations for Rhodes to return to WJNO as a Clear Channel employee hosting a local show from their facilities. Though Clear Channel owns Premiere Radio Networks, the radio syndicator that distrubutes Rush Limbaugh, it is not believed her show will be syndicated when she returns.

Rhodes seems to be doing her best to become the liberal counterpart of Rush Limbaugh: a deeply flawed spokesperson for an ideology. Its still not clear how a mugging with political overtones in New York which Air America reported squares with her ultimate story that she left an Irish Pub after several hours of drinking and isn’t sure what happened next.

The whole transition from Air America to Nova-M leaves more questions unanswered than nailed down. And now comes statements from Rhodes and Anita Drobny that make so little sense her supporters are shaking their heads in disbelief. Rhodes has depended upon the intelligence of her listeners to call bullshit on the Bush administration and have it resonate with those within the sound of her voice. There comes a responsibility when you appeal to the intelligence of your listeners to respect that intelligence when you speak about yourself.

UPDATE