Sound Salvation

Writing in The Nation, Brooke Shelby Biggs describes some of the "independent and small-network stations" that are "regularly whipping the Clear Channel rivals in their markets." I've got a few quibbles with the piece, but it's a nice introduction to some innovative radio outfits -- and it wraps up with a telling quote. "When the mainstream grows, the underground grows with it," one broadcaster says. "People are getting tired of mainstream radio, and they find us."

Comments

[Jason Ligon]

I've never understood the argument that choices get removed in marketplaces. If people want something new, with local flavor, they will have it provided to them.

Provided, of course that there are no barriers to entry. Ahem.

[Jeff]

Clear Channel - for all it's "evils" is only a product of the system. It's a system which through every lament of radio staleness, "Bigness" and
unfairness mustered - writers like Biggs always manage to leave wholly intact.

The problem is NOT Clear Channel specifically- it's the foundational belief system that radio
frequency spectrum BELONGS to the government.

From this single extremely absurd premise flows a mountain of problems. Most important of these problems is the creation of pressure group
warfare which necessitates countless rules and regulations that serve only to prop up "favored" groups at the expense and exclusion of
others.

Thus - there can be no true competition in broadcasting. The government/business statist hybrid people call "commercial" broadcasting
has NO relation to free market ideals or competition at all. It is an industry created, propped up, and protected by government.

Clear Channel is simply an anomoly of statist intervention and tinkering - creating a "franken-industry" known as broadcasting whose rules of government intervention are left to the whim of the electorate.

To the left - the problem is fixed with statist tinkering until the correct formula of statism and capitalism is acheived. In other words - more central planning without the omniscience required for it to actually work.

[Warren]

Allow me to plug my local independant radio station. WYCE 88.1FM Grand Rapids - folk, blues, jazz, rock and worldbeat (don't ask me, I think it's code for impoted recordings that don't really quallify as "music") I listen to the quite a bit and hear pleanty of way cool stuff I'd never known about otherwise.

Anyway, it's their annual fund drive this week. So check em out at http://WWW.WYCE.ORG and send em a buck or two for the cause.

[FastNBulbous]

Isn't the "problem" really the fact that enough people voluntarily listen to Clear Channel radio stations to keep them in business?

[Douglas Fletcher]

Here's a sort of typically oddball twist on this here in Arizona:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2003-09-18/feature.html/1/index.html

[Kevin Carson]

FastNBulbous,

It's a problem for real when, as Jason Ligon pointed out, the government creates entry barriers and artificially reduces your range of choices.

[Jesse Walker]

Great article, Douglas!