Ron Jacobs

"Every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the
rights of others as the most effectual security for his own."

Thomas Paine, 1795

I wasn't aware of how foul, filthy and frugal it had become until I read THE STORY at salon.com ("Radio's big bully -- Dirty tricks and crappy programming: Welcome to the world of Clear Channel, the biggest station owner in America," by Eric Boehlert, April 30, 2001.) http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/04/30/clear_channel/index.html

Until I read that piece I thought Randy Michaels -- whom I've never met and now certainly don't care to -- possessed some redeeming values. Hey, another morning man, I thought. For decades we cheered for the guys who came up through programming and made it big. We in radio believed - and acted on that belief - that it was a working part of our job to serve the community interest as well as to entertain and make a buck.

It appears that ideal has been almost singularly destroyed by Michaels.

Example from Salon: Clear Channel, owners of WNUA-Chicago, closed down the station's "Cares for Kids Foundation," which according to Salon, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity

Another example: Salon advises that WHAS-Lousiville, newly acquired by CC, informed officials of the "Great Balloon Race," a Kentucky Derby tradition for two decades, that the station now wanted to be paid to air the event.

What finally got me totally pissed off in the Salon piece was the bit about Michaels taping and then firing the AMFM guys. This took place in what the victims thought was a social scene before Michaels got his hands on the stations where they worked. (Update: A L.A. Radio web site of dubious credibility, quoting a third hand "source," printed Michael's denial of the Salon covert taping accusations. The convoluted statement was yanked within hours.)

Michaels is not even about radio listeners. He is only about money and power - including the abuse of power.

In the radio Mission Statement at Clear Channel's corporate website (http://www.clearchannel.com/radio/index.html) CEO Michaels uses the word "listener" exactly once: "Clear Channel stations broadcast to over 110 million listeners every week." But he tosses around money words like a like a boiler room stock hustler: "Total industry revenue...distinct formats...total company revenue...fiscal year 2000...advertising demand...targeted demographics...strategic acquisitions ...mergers... unduplicated collection of assets..." How soulful.

Michaels' stations -- all 1,170 of them (depending how many were bought overnight) -- clog the airwaves in every state, in 47 of the top 50 markets. Don't count on leaving the country to escape this media mediocrity -- Clear Channel owns "approximately" 240 radio stations outside the U.S. Then there's Premiere Radio Networks, headlined by Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger aired on hundreds of affiliates claiming over 180 million listeners weekly. The Katz Media Group represents 2,000-plus radio stations. Then there's the concert promotion division and their 700,000 billboards.

Clear Channel's tentacles are strangling the nearly extinct local operator. According to Salon the voracious corporation has more snuff tactics in the works. Michaels concludes his mission with a combination of corporate babble and a sports metaphor, albeit one that ignores the legendary Fat Lady: "The opportunities for synergies among all these Clear Channel divisions are explosive…and are in the very early innings."

What can we do? Plenty.

If you are reading this you are into communications one way or another. Probably professionally and pretty good at it. We have something new, (it pains me to say it), that can act swifter and with more precision than radio. So, let's get truckin' on the Info Highway, guys and gals!

This job can be accomplished without imposing on anyone trapped in Czar Michaels' Gulag. They need their jobs.

First, email this to everyone you know. Like I used to say when a station had a 20 share and the jocks got cocky, "All that means is that 80% ain't with us. Let's go for 100%."

If anyone else agrees with me that it's time to blow the whistle on Randy Michaels, CEO of Clear Channel Communications radio division, I'll volunteer as an ad hoc organizer -- if I can recruit some helpers. (Re-read my first sentence. You wanna bitch? -- or do you want to do something?)

Needed, in no particular priority but all of equal import, are:

* A committee of well-intentioned souls to handle various housekeeping.

* Communications attorney, civil rights attorney.

* Some issue-oriented spokes persons armed with Michaels/Clear Channel facts and anecdotes. Should be some of those reading this.

* Suggestions for a name for Our Protest Group.

* Honorary Board types to hopefully recruit: Ralph Nader, activist; Shawn Fanning, Napster, founder; Gov. Mario Cuomo, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, New York, Walter Cronkite, CBS News, emeritus; Studs Terkel, author and oral historian; Hon. Patricia S. Schroeder, President & CEO, Association of American Publishers; Warren Beatty, film producer-director-actor; Norman Mailer, author, retired boxer; Kweisi Mfume, President & Chief Executive Officer, NAACP; Christie Hefner, Chairman & CEO, Playboy Enterprises, Inc.; Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, ACLU; Dr. Cornell West, author, social commentator; Harvard University; Norman Corwin, distinguished radio director and writer; Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian, author; Rev. Al Sharpton, civil rights activist; Steven Stills, musician, composer; Dr.Tom Goldstein, Dean, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; Steve Dasbach, National Director, Libertarian Party; Erin Brokavich, environmental activist; Jann Wenner, founder, Rolling Stone magazine; Bill Press, political analyst, CNN; Pete Hamill, journalist, author; Patricia Ireland, President, NOW; Paul Krassner, founder of The Realist, free spirit and black belt in Social Protest; (feel free to add on and on.)

* Politically hip people with experience in sending bulk email to legislators.

* Web site designer(s) and/or host(s) to stay on top of this until it is launched and update when needed.

* A graphic artist to come up with the perfect Anti-Michaels/Clear Channel logo.

* Graphic representation of how Michaels' "Evil Empire" is smothering American radio.

* Develop a mailing list of people to bury with email, like:

L. Lowry Mays, Chairman and CEO, Clear Channel Communications, (Randy Michaels' boss), Mark Mays, President and COO, Clear Channel Communications; Randall Mays; Executive VP and CFO, Clear Channel Communications; major Clear Channel stockholders such as mutual funds, institutions; FCC Chairman Michael J. Powell: FCC bureaucrats who check license, renewals, readings, logs, SOP's -- you know the type: Local, regional and national Clear Channel advertisers (the animal killing "promotions" would make an interesting lead); Local, regional and national ad agencies; Mainstream media like 20/20, New York Times, NEWSWEEK; Alternate media like Matt Drudge, Los Angeles Free Press and whoever you can add to the list.

And most of all -- the legislators whose cities, counties and states suffer from Clear Channel's alleged misuse of the public airwaves, with regard to monopolistic, anti-trust and unfair competition practices; circumvention of payola laws; imbalance of fiscal and public service priorities; discriminatory practices -- anything that would make for a publicity generating investigation would be very cool.

This is just a start, an opening Call to Arms. Everything and anything is subject to suggestion and change. My observation is that the way to deal with a tyrant is to operate in anti-autocratic ways. We -- who ever that is, the definition starts today -- have no Board of Directors or Federal Commission to whom we must account.

A peaceful and creative Anti-Michaels/Clear Channel protest of just few hundred people at, say, a Clear Channel stockholders meeting or a broadcast convention will make some of the following: Rather-Brokaw-Jennings, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, newspapers (pass on this Randy Michaels' quote: "Newspapers will soon be useful only to those training puppies;" the print people should know that Clear Channel is the "Gannett of American radio"), magazines, trade publications, union bulletins, Internet, CSPAN and the hundreds of other new media who weren't around when Randy Michaels was playing with radios and alligator clips.

Just keep on shuttling this on and on. It is bound to reach some friendly comrades in arms working at assignment desks and city rooms.

All you news types send out flame throwing releases about what we are about. Since we are making it up as we go along, have a ball!

And for goodness sake, paste on the below address of the original Salon.com story:

We're Americans. We all know that HEROES -- not BULLIES -- fought for our right to say whatever the hell we want, whenever when want. And now -- using technology made in the US of A -- we can communicate as fast as any bloated corporation.

I'm jonesing for feedback. Aloha.

In "The Ether"
Guglielmo Marconi * Nikola Tesla * Lee de Forest
Prof. Charles Herrold * David Sarnoff * William Paley
Fred Allen * Orson Welles * Gordon McLendon * Todd Storz
Jean Shepherd * Alan Freed