Why radio stations suck

Note: This is day four of "guest column week" at Daily Ramblings. Paul is busy knitting sweaters that say "GONORRHEA" on the front, so he can send the sweaters to his elderly relatives and horrify them. Today's column is by Hibbing Daily Tribune editor Aaron Brown.

When I listen to the radio here in my Minnesota Iron Range home, I like to think the sounds I hear come from a little trailer or shack somewhere with a transmitter poking above the trees. I like to think some D.J. is lining up his play list between weather breaks and PSAs, just like I did in my first media job at a small Eveleth radio station not that long ago.

I like to think that, but I know it?s not the case. If you turn on your radio in almost any market in the country, especially the rural ones like mine, the sounds you hear are coming from an automated radio system operated by a network of corporate-owned stations.

With the exception of pre-recorded weather and news headlines stolen from local papers or wire services, the voices you hear are from somewhere else. The music comes from somewhere else. The station you?re listening to might not even have a music library of its own anymore.

Behold the glorious effects of deregulation. If you bought stock in a media conglomerate 25 years ago, you?re one happy, rich person. If you didn?t, you'd best switch to public radio or drill a hole in your head to drown out the sound of a rotting medium.

Despite what conservatives would have you believe, it was the elimination of regulations that caused the current corporate glut, not their creation. Original FCC regulations strictly prohibited radio monopolies. Owners could not hold more than one or, later, two stations in one market. In addition (and this is just awesome), the station owner had to be a legal resident of their listening area. As a result, radio stations had more local control, were more competitive with other stations and as a result had much better programming. Each station had its own staff (more jobs and more creative individuals working in the industry) and its own advertising.

Because of the residency and anti-monopoly requirements, only people genuinely interested in the operation of a local radio station would bother to get involved. This meant that the value of a radio station was more like that of a small business. Because of the comparatively low cost to run early stations (essentially just the FCC license, staffing, electricity and the building), they were highly profitable. A dollar invested in a local station became $1.50 or more. As a result, many stations were paid off in just a few years and became extremely viable family businesses.

Well, the corporate weasels saw the profit margin, but weren?t satisfied with what they got from one little podunk station in Duluth or LaCrosse. They wanted more stations and more profits. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, in a wide sweeping effort to bolster Big Business, deregulated radio ownership requirements and brought about the audio shitball we call modern radio.

When the residency requirement was shelved, we got massive amounts of absentee radio station ownership. Distant media lords looked at numbers and nothing else, so they demanded cuts in spending.

Goodbye local news departments.

Goodbye locally-produced programs.

The weasels didn?t have to listen to the stations, so they didn?t care. When the anti-monopoly rules were lifted, they bought up all the stations they could. Because the stations were profitable, their sale value rocketed. With a higher debt load on the stations, it took more profits for an owner to pay off his investors. Guess what that meant? More cuts, more bottom line bullshit.

Corporate weasels learned that with automation, one D.J. can cover the shifts on two stations, or even three. So they automated everything. In my hometown of Hibbing, Minn., almost every station on the dial is located at one building on the north side of town. The only difference is the predictable music piped in by satellite from Arizona, California or the Deep South, where a gang of dumb bastards tell our Iron Range classic rock audience what to think about the war in Iraq every damn morning. The station owner lives in Chicago.

Newspapers are the same way, so I can?t preach superiority. As the editor of a small corporate owned community newspaper I recognize my role as a cog in the system. But what?s happening to media, especially radio, is not right and I defy anyone to prove how radio deregulation has helped anyone, except to make about 15 white men richer than God and the Queen of England combined. I?ll take LPs and cheap radio spots any day of the week.

The entire reason for having radio regulations at all is the fundamental principle that the airwaves belong to the people of the United States. If we don?t want corporate America bastardizing our local stations, we should say so. I long for the day when we can use five cent media stock as toilet paper and listen to something decent on the radio.

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