(San Antonio, TX) A coalition of consumer advocates, a gun-rights group, and Texas musicians joined together outside the headquarters of Clear Channel Communications today to oppose proposed new rules by the Federal Communications Commission that would allow media conglomerates to buy up more radio stations, newspapers and television stations. The groups pointed to San Antonio-based Clear Channel as an example of the dangers in permitting widespread consolidation of media ownership.
"Clear Channel is the poster child for media deregulation gone bad," said Luke Metzger, Advocate with the Texas Public Interest Research Group. "Their stranglehold on the media is decreasing the quality of radio programming, threatening our democracy and could be putting the public at risk."
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning to vote on June 2nd over whether to weaken its media ownership rules. At issue are rules that seek to protect localism, competition, and diversity in the media. These rules, among other things, currently limit a single corporation from dominating local TV markets; from merging a community's TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers; from merging two major TV networks; and from controlling more than 35% of all TV households in the nation.
"The proposed measure has the capability to throttle free speech, which will impede the ability to defend
any one of our constitutional freedoms," stated Jim Dark, Executive Director of the Texas State Rifle Association. "We see disturbing parallels between this proposed measure and the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, which was recently declared unconstitutional."
"FCC Chairman Michael Powell is the lapdog of the big conglomerates that want to turn our airwaves into their private, for-profit plaything," said Jim Hightower, activist and author of the forthcoming book, "Thieves in High Places". He's now trying to ram through a rigging of FCC ownership rules that would let this handful of global media giants gain almost total control over mass-market news in your city... and throughout the country. This isn't the marketplace at work, as the Bushites claim, it's forced monopolization, and it will destroy any democracy on our airwaves and in our news sources."
"People have a First Amendment right to hear a diversity of voices-especially on publicly owned airwaves," stated Metzger. "Americans depend on mass media to learn about current affairs, keep abreast of local issues, make informed political choices, and to be exposed to diverse artists. But it is also healthy to have newspapers and television stations competing with each other for news and viewers, criticizing each other and acting as a check on each other's power.
In 1996, Clear Channel owned 40 radio stations around the country. After Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the number of Clear Channel stations leapt to over 1220. Clear Channel owns 970 more stations than its closest competitor. Clear Channel owns the vast majority of radio stations, and therefore listeners, in the U.S., and they also have bought up almost all of the outside concert venues through one of their subsidiaries, SFX Entertainment. They own and operate over 200 concert venues across the country.
The groups pointed out that Clear Channel radio ownership recently made a public safety crisis worse. According to a March New York Times article, under an existing quirk in the ownership rules, Clear Channel owns 23 of the 80 commercial radio stations across the state, and all six commercial stations in Minot, ND. After a train derailed in January 2002, releasing a cloud of toxic gas through the town and killing one resident, police and safety officials were unable to quickly alert townspeople. The local radio station that is supposed to play the "emergency broadcast system" for those types of emergencies in the community had no one in the studio at the time of the spill. Local Clear Channel radio stations will often only have a programmer to manage the radio board, and not a local DJ or other local on staff. The police could not get a hold of anyone at the station because the broadcast was being piped in from afar, and the emergency broadcast was significantly delayed in going out over the radio waves.
Large numbers of performing artists, including Don Henley, R.E.M., and Pearl Jam, have also joined the fight against the pending FCC's weakening of media ownership rules. They are especially concerned that an even more corporate-owned radio will not allow local bands and musicians to get on the airwaves, stifling the wide variety of music available for listening and threatening the livelihoods of many local musicians as well. In addition, as Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt and many others pointed out in a recent letter to FCC Chairman Powell, the whole process has been unfair. The FCC has been negligent in listening to important stakeholder groups, like musicians, recording artists, and radio professionals, to ensure their testimony is on the record.
The groups called on the FCC to delay the vote until they've adequately considered concerns from Congress and the public and to ultimately vote against weakening the rules even further.
