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.

The Antichrist of Radio

It's very timely today with Clear Channel having just been bought out. But it's not the first time that the radio giant changed hands or changed direction.

Randy Michaels was born as Benjamin Homel and calling him an entrepreneur is an understatment on the level of saying Idi Amin had a bad temper. He began his career as an on-air personality where he took the on-air name Randy Michaels. One thing is inarguable: He changed the face of radio FOREVER. Of course, many people will argue that it was for the worse. In fact he has been called "the Antichrist of Radio" For the record... it wasn't me who said it.

He is principally known for building the Jacor radio station group. While at Jacor he ruthlessly dominated four medium radio markets in the U.S. and bought up radio stations at a rapid pace. It was the begginning of the consolidation fad followed by the voice-tracking fad, and the conglomeration of live entertainment with radio. ...And for better or worse, it's his fault.

Before 1996 20 AMs and 20FMs, with 2 AMs and 2 FMs per market a radio chain could only be in ten markets. The limitation was severe, possibly too conservative. But when they loosened it, they didn't take it back a notch. They just cut it loose almost entirely. Jacor and Clear Channel (then still seperate entities) raced to consolidate. But Randy was .. randy about it. And then when the much smaller Jacor was bought by Clear Channel in June of 2000, Michaels and his Jacor cronies actually took over operation of Clear Channel.

As The Professor at WFMU said " He’s a high rolling wheeler-dealer motherfucker, and takes no prisoners." Interview here:

He also revolutionized independant promotions. He woke up one morning and decided that having the promotions money filtered [laundered] through independant promoters was a waste. he came up with a legal way for the checks to go straight to the CC offices in San Antonio. The cash never even stopped at the individual radio staitons. It went straight to corporate. Without going into the details, I'll just quote him "As long as they pay the money I’m going to take it. If they don’t want to pay the money, that’s fine. They all believe that money is really important to us. Every dollar is nice to have, but I will tell you that given the cash flow that Clear Channel Radio is going to generate this year, the record label money won’t change our percentage profit at all."

Randy Michaels was forcibly ousted from his position as CEO at Clear Channel in 2002. Since he was the biggest insatiable power junkie in media, he went right back to radio. He acquired syndication rights to a number of talk radio programs including The Ed Schultz Show.