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
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)
Re:The End of the Beginning? (Score:1)
By some miricle, they're not into the "payola" thing and they don't have advertistng. (I know my spelling sucks)
so sometimes they pay really crazy farout music, but most of the time, it's really, really good.
Cheers
Ben