Post about "terrestrial radio"

Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix NewTimes blog is reporting that, at least last night, the offices of flagship station 1190 WNUV, Tolleson, AZ were padlocked.

I’d been tipped off that KNUV 1190 AM, formerly the flagship station of the liberal Nova M radio network, and briefly, the home of Nova M’s successor network, On Second Thought, had been padlocked. So I had to see for myself…  — New Times

We went through a period in the 80s where stations went dark, including some pretty big hitters in the top 20 markets. Get ready, radio, history may be about to repeat itself.

The New Times blog has done some excellent work on the whole mess with Nova-M, the Drobneys, Randi Rhodes and the John Manzo suit. When old-line journalists lament the demise of “real” journalism, they should look to blogs like Phoenix’s New Times for solace.

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.

Dear Rush Limbaugh:

Thank you for writing your open letter to President Obama, published Friday as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. I know things have been tough for your syndicator and owned stations (Premiere/Clear Channel). First, the banks tried to renege on their deal to take your employer private, and you all had to take less. Then the bean-counters came in and you had that mass firing Inauguration day.  Then, the junk bonds keeping your company alive got even junkier.  Standard and Poor downgraded them from B to B-.

With so many things wrong in this country, it made no sense when there was suddenly so much hue and cry from the biggest right wing talk networks and station groups over the fairness doctrine. Mr. Obama’s never liked the fairness doctrine, your party is against it, and you can count those in my party who want it reinstated on your fingers and toes. You may not even need your toes.

Last Friday (the same day Clear Channel’s massive debt got downgraded), you dropped your pants in your WSJ op-ed and it suddenly all made sense. Its not about the fairness doctrine at all, is it?

Its about a handful of companies owning the vast majority of powerful radio stations across this country and putting on nearly every station the same imported schlock with no local staffs, minimal local content, and in some cases not even a living soul stationed at studio or transmitter.

Your precise question to President Obama:

Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as “local content,” “diversity of ownership,” and “public interest” rules — all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

Requiring Clear Channel to provide local content in their communities of license is not censorship. Its like requiring an investment company to actually buy some stocks and bonds for their investors and truthfully advise those investors about their holdings. Requiring radio stations to serve their communities–regardless of the political leanings of the ultimate content–is only a death knell to weak and poorly managed companies: companies like yours; companies that you would ordinarily, as a free market conservative, demand be thrown under the bus.

Fact is, Mr. Limbaugh, what has happened in the radio business is the same thing that has happened in the banking, the mortgage, and even the automobile industries. We “let the market decide,” by deregulating everything in sight, and the charlatans took over: people who don’t give a rat’s ass about ethics or values or anything but this month’s profit. Your masters bought up every radio station and station group they could find using expensive debt. The interest payments siphoned off the money for local programming and public service.

The decimation of the radio business by firing legions of talented people at the local stations, replacing them with automatons voiced in sweatshops in “cluster facilities” hundreds of miles away is broadcasting’s version of a Ponzi scheme. Its like selling off the locomotive of a train claiming inertia would keep it moving. Now that its ground to a stop, you’re trying to blame President Obama because you’re afraid he’s going to force you to replace the engine.

Your answer is to do what Rove, Cheney, and Bush did to sell the Iraq war. First you teach that the fairness doctrine is a bad thing. You call it censorship. Then you use those terms in a sentence with all the things you want to sully. Fairness doctrine, public interest, diversity of ownership, local content. There’s no connection, but you hope your listeners aren’t sharp enough to catch it. Saddam Hussein, terrorist, 9/11, weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, axis of evil, mushroom cloud.

But this time, they might catch on. All those words strung together to get us into war were either bad or unfamiliar and foreign sounding. Local content, local ownership, local people behind local mikes discussing local issues—what we once called full-service radio—are things people understand and many of us even remember. It will not be easy to redefine them as a negative when a lot of people will see them as an old friend, and it would truly be karma to see the “populist sentiment” that you’ve played like a violin for 20 years be the thing that puts your stations back in the hands of people who care about serving their communities, and takes you off the air for good.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if your denouement came the very first time you got caught red-handed at the Shock Doctrine? Rush Limbaugh, Saddam Hussein, Sean Hannity, Clear Channel, Terrorist, 9/11, mushroom cloud.

Nova-M Radio, the radio syndicator for Randi Rhodes, crashed and burned to the great delight of a gaggle of right wing talker fans everywhere. Moe Lane at Redstate took mock credit for its demise, claiming an appearance by “our own Mark Impomeni…shut it down cold.”

The #tcots on Twitter were all a-twitter too. Free Market At Work, they crowed. And they’re right, but its not because there’s a lack of appetite in the country for liberal ideas or thoughts, it just there’s a lack of demand for it over old delivery methods.

The correct paring of medium and message was one of the main reasons for Rush Limbaugh and neocon-talk radio’s rise in the first place. When Limbaugh began doing his brand of political talk, old pickup trucks still had AM-only radios.

Let’s digress a moment, and quote Wikipedia’s entry on buggy whips:

Though similar whips are still manufactured for limited purposes, the buggy whip industry as a major economic entity ceased to exist with the introduction of the automobile, and is cited in economics and marketing as an example of an industry ceasing to exist because its market niche, and the need for its product, disappears. — Wikipedia on Buggy Whip & Coach Whip

The buggy whip didn’t disappear overnight. There was this period where whip manufacturers were failing, and those most successful in staying in business hewed to markets where their product was still in demand, and they did what they needed to be premier in that market.

It would be as if a smart buggy whip manufacturer would identify the Amish market and do what ever it took to best serve their needs. Even naming themselves—in a not so subtle nod to their remaining market—Ordnung, the German word for order.

Ordnung, if you’ve been keeping up with your Mennonite apologetics, is the Amish name for their set of rules for living. What a great name for a whip, if you’re Amish!

So take no joy in watching libtalk radio go over the cliff, righties. It was just the weakest buggy whip company in the business: it deserved to die. But the lesser Rushbos aren’t far behind.

I Don’t Read The Newspaper

There I’ve said it!  I am officially a heretic.  I teach journalism, but I don’t read a newspaper.

And I doubt that most people reading this blog or others do either. — Blog post from @Teach_J

The 1920s saw an amazing change. The automobile was overtaking the horse, the telephone was becoming an appliance for more than the rich and early adopters, and the radio was replacing word of mouth and the evening newspaper as the method the public first learned of a new important event. Instantaneous communication changed everything, and the radio has lived on its laurels ever since.

Voltmeter on 1922 Ware Neutrodyne Radio

That is, until the Internet crept in on little cat feet and slowly inserted itself first as an alternative for text communication, growing to a distribution medium so robust that it is easier to distribute high definition images–even moving ones–on the net than through adapted legacy media.

That has brought us to a crisis. We will, over the next few years, see the total decimation of the very technology that changed us in the first place. The change is going to appear far swifter than it really is, because its been going on for a long time, and instead of legacy media using its power to move forward, its used that power to be recalcitrant and reactionary. The best example is the RIAA, which was successful for many years in keeping the status quo through lawsuits and threats of suits, and through rent seeking–ie gaming the system instead of adapting to it.

The NAB has tried the same thing, and for years has been successful because no congresscritter wants to go against their local TV or radio station. But the Internet is a game changer, not only because YouTube can bring you a Macaca Moment, it lets you walk around those local gatekeepers and speak directly to your constituents: even about how your local broadcaster is gaming the system to make you think you’re being served by media that is really self-serving.

Take the Local Radio Freedom Act, which was named by the NAB to try and disguise what it really is: congressional affirmation that radio and television stations don’t have to pay performers when they play their songs. There’s always been an inequity in broadcasting. It had to pay the rights holders for the words and music, but not the performer who actually performed it in recorded form. When paying the talent was at issue for net-only radio stations and audio sources, the NAB was not interested in standing up against performance “fees and taxes.” Thousands, probably tens of thousands, of internet radio stations shut down.

But paying performers is a whole different animal when its legacy media. Its a tax. A bailout, screams the NAB, and they’re blaming the RIAA for it. In fact the only “freedom” in the local radio freedom act is to reaffirm in law the freedom of broadcasters to rip off musicians and artists, which they’ve been doing for years.

While these scorpions challenge each other in the bottle that is a shrinking space occupied by legacy media, we will see more and more of those of us who think about and write about a business we grew up in, no longer be consumers of it, because the new alternatives are just too enticing especially to those of us who follow them closely.

And I’m guilty just like the journalism teacher who eschews the pulpy rag. When I was writing about Randi Rhodes the other day, at a time her show was on, I wanted to make sure she wasn’t on the air but not on the net. I had to go out to my car to do it. I don’t have a radio in the house hooked up to receive an over the air signal.

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

On this day 128 years ago,  was born Earle C. Anthony, a pioneer in some of the arts and sciences that began during his lifetime that are now dead or dying. The Packard distributor for all of California; one in seven Packards was sold by his companies.

ECA was a renaissance man born with a mechanical aptitude in the age of the great engineers who leveraged his abilities and his moment in time to not only profit from the rise of the automobile, but through building one of the first radio stations in the west. From money earned in his dealership he improved his station until it became the most powerful on the west coast.

A QSL card from ECAs KFI

Through the thirties, forties and fifties, KFI 640 was the powerhouse that brought the NBC Radio Network to most of the Southwest. With his other station, KECA (now KABC), he was a constant source of frustration to NBC. He’d no more sell his station than sell his wife, he told them.

While KFI is still a powerhouse (now a Clear Channel moneymaker in a sad radio environment), Packard preceded him in death (he died in 1961),  and each year AM radio becomes less important in a changing media world.

In 1930, Anthony was one of the elite in Los Angeles. He rode horses with the Warner Brothers and the other moguls in the early mornings in Griffith Park, from his lavish estate (now a Catholic Church retreat) to the Breakfast Club he helped found. He put one of the first television stations on the air (now KCBS).

He traveled the country in his private rail car, listening to his station and sending telegrams back. He helped build Los Angeles from a cowtown to a metropolis with arts and culture. Surely his name would be known forever.

Today, the Packard is about to be joined in death by other once-great American carmakers, the private rail car is a museum piece, AM radio is practicing its death rattle, and Earle C. Anthony’s place in history is a disappearing footnote.

Recently, I’ve found Pandora and it has me in its spell. Its like Napster all over again. I’m exploring new artists and new genres, and like the Napster days, I’m buying music because I like niche artists and narrow genres that I’d have little or no exposure to. Once again, the music industry has been presented with another goose laying golden eggs and is trying to find a way to kill it.

But then again, I’m trying to find a way to frustrate it. I’m pretty eclectic in my audio taste, and in 50-something years I’ve picked up a lot of strange knowledge, and I can’t resist trying to tweek Pandora with it. Its a little like entering Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park or Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at “What do the lyrics mean” websites.

So far, Pandora’s responded admirably. At Pandora, one can create stations based on an artist, or a song, or both. This information drives a big inference engine that suggests a whole range of songs. My first attempt was Spike Jones. Voila! Spike Jones radio, which proceeded to play Spike Jones selections I’ve not yet heard, and offer up other off-center performances. Ray Stevens, Sheb Wooley, Ben Colder (who looks remarkably like Mr. Wooley), and a host of great novelty one-hit wonders.

Tom Leherer? Absolutely. Which gravitated to Dr. Demento and all his craziness. Pico & Sepulveda still streams in my head. OK. how about dead genres. Let’s try Milton Brown. “And his Musical Brownies?” queries the Pandorabot. Curses. Foiled again.

Nickodell Matchbook

Along the way, I learned and appreciated, and about that time my musical juggernaut was interrupted by a bulletin from Don Barrett at LAradio.com that Bill Drake had gone to that great music library in the sky, and my mind went to the Nickodell, now a parking lot on the Paramount Lot, where the Boss Jocks of KHJ drank away many happy hours. Background music?

So I started creating a station using the tools I’d discovered playing with the box (should that be a jar) that is Pandora, and soon, I had Last Round at Ciro’s. What might have been heard at the Nickodell in its heyday. Elegant music of the 50s and 60s with a twist of nostalgia. I was doing in minutes what used to take days even months; tweaking a radio format without even the need of a record library. Did Drake ever know this existed?

Before the Internet, there were specialized and scarce jobs that required multidisciplinary understanding, like the music director or program director of radio stations that were unapproachable by the masses. Today anybody with a little knowledge and a lot of passion can do them thanks to specialized websites like Pandora and last.fm.

And by the way, I finally beat Pandora at its own game. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra

“We’re always looking for great music to include, so we’ll check it out” said the Pandora-bot, its eyes downward. “Is there something else you’d like to listen to?”

[And thanks to Pete Handleman for the light. Bartender, another one for Mr. Morgan, Mr. Steele and Mr. Drake, on me.]

I was ready to pitch Disney on a sequel. “Honey, I shrunk the phone book.” If I had any doubt that the old media was dying a slow agonizing death, it was put to rest when I picked up a plastic bag in my driveway today. I thought whatever was in that little bag couldn’t possibly be good, and AT&T probably is thinking the same thing.

Any smaller, and it disappears!

Eons ago, the Yellow Pages was the place to find every restaurant, every auto body shop, and every ambulance chasing attorney with 80 square inches of colored ink touting their praises. In Vegas “escort services” was a whole chapter. Selling ads was almost easy; identify a potential client’s competitors, drop a few hints about how big the competitor’s ad would be, and produce the contract.

Newspapers are scurrying for cover and firing their oldest employees first to get the greatest cost savings. Magazines are shuttering daily,  radio is past tense, outdoor feels the pinch of increased air travel and, at least until recently, gas prices that make road trips impossible.

And letting our fingers do the walking? Could that be yet another reason we’re a nation of the obese?