Radio Self-Censorship

In 2001 it was widely reported that Clear Channel banned 150 songs in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th. (I claimed that here too.)  Snopes currently lists this as false. That's a bit cut and dry considering the actual turbid tale. Snopes goes on to admit that

"...several of Clear Channel Radio's stations, compiled an advisory list of songs which stations might wish to avoid playing in the short term..."  

Perhaps in their free-wheeling dot com world they don't realize that in the corporate world... that's the same things as a ban. When you get an email from corporate making a gentle suggestion, you obey, or you seek employment elsewhere. To their credit, perhaps that wasn't the right day to play Van Halen's "Jump." Whatever. Snopes did what snopes does. Even if their verdict was dubious, they gave an honest back story. What I want to get to is  a historical precedence for this type of action. It's called self-censorship, and unless you're really dogmatic about free-speech (like me)  it makes some sense.

So let me tell you about the deaths at The Who concert on December 3, 1979. It was in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Riverfront Coliseum.  It had the highest body-count of any  rock concert incident in the United States. Eleven rock fans were crushed to death and 26 were seriously injured. the youngest was only 15. It was not a riot, or a stampede. In the mad rush to get good seats in the "festival seating" about 18,000 people tried to push to the front of the line.  Two objects things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. It's called the continuity principle of fluid dynamics. When 18,000 people try to occupy the same space at the some time some of them get compressive asphyxia (the mechanical limitation of  lung expansion.) More here.


The video above is from an actual 102.7 WEBN-FM newscast following the event. WEBN first went on air in 1967, owned by Frank Wood. (The calls previously were in Buffalo) It started as a classical and Jazz station but slowly became an AOR station, though still owned by Mr. Wood. This is important as Wood was still the owner  well into the 1980s. his son Frank Wood Jr. had moved on to WLS-FM by 1971. In the aftermath of the tragedy WEBN The book Are The Kids Alright? (1981) by John G. Fuller explained

"Frank Wood worked with WEBN staff to assure that programming remained at low key. Album selections for the next day were carefully screened. One song was quickly removed from the list. It was Led Zeppelin's Trampled Under Foot."

WEBN had been promoting the show, and maybe they felt some guilt, or remorse. Or maybe they just thought they were being considerate. Regardless, The Who continued on tour, WEBN continued broadcasting and strangely both exist today much as they did then. Today WEBN is a clear channel owned station and have have been since the Jaycor acquisition in 1999. To my knowledge, they had no air staff remaining from 1979 in 2001 to tell them about the last time they felt the need to self-censor.

Classic Rock is born

Classic Rock is a radio format, not a genre. It contains many genres including actual oldies from the 1960s, proto-metal, psychedelic-blues, psychedelic rock, prog-rock, and others. It is an odd radio format in that it has become totally entrenched in our language as if it were a music genre. If you get deterministic about etymology; because we all use it as if it were, it has become so.

Interestingly enough, most Classic Rock stations originally played a little something we used to think of as AOR. Album-Oriented Rock. That too was a radio format but despite the persistence of the term, it no longer exists. The AOR format is completely extinct! The idea was to play album cuts, in addition to (or instead of) singles. It was very FM-focused as you'd imagine.

I have seen the argument that this was also the birth of alternative rock radio. I think this is mostly crap since the term alternative rock did not even exist in 1967. I see it as something that sprung organically, decades later from another generation of pop music. But it was very related to so called "Free Form" FM. 

Previously 106.9 KMPX had been many things, a jazz station, MOR (middle of the road) and others. But in 1967 KMPX was owned by the Crosby-Pacific Broadcasting Company and was brokered ethnic and running a mighty 80,000 watts. In 1967, rock promoter Tom Donahue scraped together some favors, some cash and some chutzpa and sweet talked Station manager Ron Hunt into phasing out some foreign language programs in favor his "hippie-station" concept: album-oriented rock music with an emphasis on San Francisco-based bands, and announcers who took a more laid-back approach to the mic. By August of that year they were hippie-rock 24/7. Donahue was the First AOR PD in the nation. Months later they picked up a sister station in Pasadena KPPC. Clips of Donahue talking here:

Early on, things were promising but not profitable. Staff worked for little or nothing. But a year later cash was flowing, listenership was up and so were their ad rates. But salaries were still ranged from terrible to non-existent. Management fired Donahue on March 11th and brought in Bob Prescott as PD. This is sometimes described as Donahue walking out, but with some nuance. [SOURCE] This led directly to a strike by the KMPX staff on March 18th, 1968.

Ever the capitalist, Leon Crosby opted not to meet the demands of the workers. Instead he brought in a replacement staff. It was much like the way Regan handled the air traffic controllers strike in 1981 except a mixing console wont kill anyone. The strike at KMPX lasted eight weeks. KMPX lost almost it's entire staff and most of it's advertisers and even lost some of it's playlist's core artists. Several rock bands including the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead requested the the station no longer play their music.

Then Donahue took the whole staff across the street to KSAN and reassembled his radio commune. KMPX had a limited revival but never recovered. By 1972 after a series of ownership changes the station flipped to a Nostalgia format. Today KIFR operates on the 106.9 channel in San Francisco, as a Infinity Broadcasting licensee running News/talk. KSAN is still a big classic rocker. More here including a documentary film.

NOTE: the book the Art of Rock has several of the now famous psychedelic KMPX promotional station posters. You can see it here.