Bemoaning Clear Channel and deregulation and what mass media mergers have done to interesting and once vital and LOCAL communication products, bemoaning the layoffs of talented people, well, all those things are bad, sure, and Internet Radio could surely turn it around, but all the stuff the author whines about WAS HAPPENING BY 1985.

9. "Radio Killed The Radio Star" (13.1 points). THE DECLINE OF RADIO? ... Salon ... Radio Killed the Radio Star ... radio [( blogdex : recent )]

Radio killed the radio star Consolidation has resulted in 10,000 layoffs, the demise of a beloved trade magazine, and a decline in programming quality. But industry execs are fat and happy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - By Todd Spencer

[...]

In the larger scheme of things, however, Gavin was just a blip. With so much else so obviously wrong with commercial radio today, I was obsessed with discovering at the NAB convention whether radio execs even knew what was happening. So I attended NAB sessions and spoke with an occasional corporate officer here and there who seemed approachable, and gauged the attitude of this insular, cloistered culture of capitalists.

I was shocked at the conviction among the executives that big radio offered listeners more diversity than small radio did. This was something NAB president and CEO Edward Fritts alluded to in his opening remarks when he said, referring to the protesters: "Let me say a word to our very vocal critics with us here in Seattle, who claim radio has become homogenized and lacks diversity. The facts show otherwise. Broadcasters know that in all respects diversity is good for radio and is on the rise."

I wondered what those facts are because he didn't mention them.

But a couple of other executives said that they believed that Fritts had it right, that consolidation had brought more choices to radio listeners, that consolidated radio was serving everyone better! They did not seem to be bullshitting me. They were, I believe, sincere.

On the dial in your town do you have a Mix? Kiss? Or Alice?

Those are prefab formats: efficient, cost-effective, thought-free options for the overworked cluster program director, and it's causing a phenomenon described as "the McDonaldization of radio." Along with voice tracking (when the DJ you're listening to is on tape and doesn't live in your town), such tactics are eroding what radio insiders would call "localness."

I mean, should we really get all worked up about this trend now? Maybe it was just where I lived, more in the small to mid-sized markets in the hinterlands, where no big independent stations had the power to resist the chains. And granted, newspapers took the biggest hits with the Reagan-era media mergers and deregulation, something that certainly affected me greatly through the lay-offs and paper closings of the second half of the 80s.

People in radio didn't stick up for us then, when syndication, chain mentality, carpetbaggers and Thomson, and closing down 100 year old papers to keep stock returns above 20% was the rule of the day.

I haven't listened to commercial radio since the late 80s either. I knew I wouldn't get local news or even a tornado warning that would do me any good driving cross country. Radio has been shit for so long, the dinosaurs who stayed in until this more recent bout of deregulation and monopoly media Pravda shit were just as clueless about their own lack of diversity as the Clear Channel idiots now.

For myself, I gotta wonder how ANYONE can even stand to have a radio on through the loud, insulting, obnoxious commercials, and worse, the DJ live remote from the used car lot with hot dogs and balloons for the kiddies.

Just listening to that shit makes my elbows ache. There is a damn good reason most of us keep our radios turned off, even on 22-hour cross country drives. If the mega-media monopolies can't figure it out, they ought to hang on their own stupidity.

Miasma
8:54:41 PM    

WASHINGTON - The battle being waged in Washington over copyright in the digital age ratchets up a notch this week as new legislation is introduced aimed at clarifying consumer rights.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, plans today to introduce the ``Digital Choice and Freedom Act,'' Silicon Valley's response to a host of Hollywood-backed bills tilted in favor of copyright holders.

Lofgren's bill would ensure consumers can copy CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, just as they now do with TV shows and audio tapes.

``This would not authorize someone taking their digital content and sharing it with a million of their best friends,'' Lofgren said in an interview Tuesday. Instead of creating new rights for consumers, she said, her bill would ensure that ``the rights they have in the analog world, they have in digital.''

[ ... ]

The bills also would amend a 1998 law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that makes it a crime to circumvent technological protections built in to copyrighted works. Instead, consumers would be allowed to bypass the technology if the intent is to make a copy for personal use.

The legislation will vie with Hollywood-backed proposals, filed by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Los Angeles, that would embed copy protection into PCs and an array of consumer devices, and allow the music and film industry to use aggressive anti-piracy technologies to thwart unauthorized downloading over the Internet.

8:20:24 PM    

Could singing fish novelties be hooked by a proposed law requiring anti-copying technology in digital devices?

Princeton professor Ed Felten thinks so.

The computer scientist has launched a site, called Fritz's Hit List, that points out devices that could be forced to carry anti-copying technology if Sen. Fritz Hollings', D-S.C., Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) passes. The bill, which is designed to thwart piracy, would restrict digital products that don't carry government-approved security technology.

So far, Fritz's Hit List features a catalog of unlikely devices Felten said would be regulated under the law. They include common objects such as baby monitors and automobile navigation systems as well as seemingly innocuous toys such as the Shop With Me Barbie toy cash register, the Sony Aibo robot dog and Big Mouth Billy Bass.

"That's right, your favorite wall-hanging, singing, dancing, animatronic fish qualifies for regulation as a 'digital media device' under the Hollings CBDTPA," Felten wrote on the site. "If the CBDTPA passes, any new Billy Bass will have to incorporate government-approved copy-protection technology."

8:18:40 PM    

"It appears someone has grabbed the webcasters and RIAA representatives by the scruff of the neck, thrown them into a conference room and told them to "negotiate a fair settlement or else."  Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and sponsored Bill HR5469, has pulled the bill from the voting schedule.

Rumors have it the two groups are finally talking about a deal based on a percentage of webcasters' revenues vs. the per-play model. If an agreement is reached it will over ride the Library of Congress' original webcast royality arrangement, which would virtually run out all internet radio stations out of business and straight into bankruptcy. [More as this is developing.]" [Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour]

Doc also provides a pointer to a RAIN press release on the topic. Has the RIAA been willing to sit down and offer actual compromises and actions on their part (not demands) in order to reach an agreement within four days on ANY OTHER ISSUE in recent memory?

7:13:07 PM