Here's a note I sent to the KHYI-Fans [yahoo.com] email list, a group of fans of independent alt-country station KHYI [khyi.com] (and others) in Dallas:
As Winston Churchill said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Clear Channel, the company that took advantage of greed and laziness in the radio biz and used it to buy over a thousand formerly independent radio stations, is in the process of being bought out itself.
Don't expect to hear good music on the radio again right away
You know, the LAST time I heard good music on commercial radio was probably 1984. I wouldn't necessarily blame all of the crappy music on Clear Channel. Blame it on the desire to "please most of the people most of the time".
Clear Channel + Major Labels were a kind of unholy feedback loop of genericizing music. The labels knew that they could hit one target and have their music played in every single market, so they had no reason to try to create music for minor tastes. In fact Clear Channel would rather try to play the same music in every market, and knew that the labels would test for what made the most generically popular music. That made the music even more generic, which made aggregating the radio stations even more pro
In fact Clear Channel would rather try to play the same music in every market,...
Maybe the corrected statement should reach In fact Clear Channel would rather try to play the same recording in every market
ClearChannel is not about music or "entertainment". It's about delivering advertising to your ears. You should be able to figure that out from its actions: just enough filler between the ads.
Back when the company was still prefering to keep a low profile, I stumbled across a rare interview with
Absolutely. The same thing happens in TV. You're not the network's customer. The advertiser is the customer. You're the product. The music/news/whatever they're broadcasting is a capital expense to ensure a supply of product, and like any company they want to maximize return on capital by minimizing expenses. I'm nearly 40 but I'm not old enough to remember a day when that wasn't true. They've gotten better at it, or perhaps just realized that they could farm up their product with less work (the 44 minutes
I recall that on the US network channel that won the bid for a monopoly on broadcasting the 1996 Olympics an hour of prime time TV contained about 7 minutes of actual sports. The few shows I see nowadays, I see without ads. On US commercial network tv these shows take an hour. Without the ads, they're about 35 minutes, less if you skip the intro music and closing credits.
The web does have the potential to take those guys out, but they key is to promote DRM-free technology and open standards. If we get into a situation on the web where access is controlled by other than the audience, then we have the same mess as with television and radio...
The End of the Beginning? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, the LAST time I heard good music on commercial radio was probably 1984. I wouldn't necessarily blame all of the crappy music on Clear Channel. Blame it on the desire to "please most of the people most of the time".
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
ClearChannel is not about music (Score:1)
Maybe the corrected statement should reach In fact Clear Channel would rather try to play the same recording in every market
ClearChannel is not about music or "entertainment". It's about delivering advertising to your ears. You should be able to figure that out from its actions: just enough filler between the ads.
Back when the company was still prefering to keep a low profile, I stumbled across a rare interview with
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm nearly 40 but I'm not old enough to remember a day when that wasn't true. They've gotten better at it, or perhaps just realized that they could farm up their product with less work (the 44 minutes
The way forward is without DRM (Score:1)
I recall that on the US network channel that won the bid for a monopoly on broadcasting the 1996 Olympics an hour of prime time TV contained about 7 minutes of actual sports. The few shows I see nowadays, I see without ads. On US commercial network tv these shows take an hour. Without the ads, they're about 35 minutes, less if you skip the intro music and closing credits.
The web does have the potential to take those guys out, but they key is to promote DRM-free technology and open standards. If we get into a situation on the web where access is controlled by other than the audience, then we have the same mess as with television and radio...