Shrinking Radio Market Effectively Censoring Free Speech

As the number of companies that own America's newspapers, TV stations and radio stations continues to shrink, it isn't just news coverage that's in danger of being homogenized and censored.

What happens when you're the little guy - in this case a NABET-CWA local - and you want to buy advertising time in your radio market to tell the community about your struggle for a fair contract?

You've tried everything at the bargaining table and the corporate owners won't budge. You decide you have no choice but to go public, to exercise your right to free speech. But no one will take your ad.

That's the struggle members of NABET-CWA Local 54042 are facing in Cleveland, where Gannett-owned WKYC-TV3 has used its power to make sure that local radio stations won't give the workers a voice.

In past years, the local might have found a bold independent station or two willing to say "no" to the TV station. But today, Federal Communications Commission rules that once protected media diversity by limiting the number of radio and TV stations a company could own in a single market have been rolled back.
Now the behemoth Clear Channel owns six of Cleveland's top radio stations. When the region's general manager refused to run the ad, his decision didn't just affect one station, but all six.

"What all of us hear - or don't hear - on our radios today has been fundamentally changed by deregulation," says NABET-CWA President John Clark. "Listeners need to understand that there's no real diversity on the air anymore. You can cross the country and hear the same music and the same talk shows over and over. Corporate interests control the airwaves - our airwaves - and they are using their power to silence the voice of working people."

Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it possible for a single company to own up to eight radio stations per community, Clear Channel has bought more than 1,200 nationwide and controls half the pop radio market.

Not only can the radio giant freely reject advertising it doesn't like, it effectively decides how much, if any news, listeners will get and what songs will become popular. Media consolidation critics say the days when small-town deejays could decide what music they'd play and which new artists the audience would hear are long gone.

"Our report clearly demonstrates that the radical deregulation of the radio industry has not benefited the public or musicians," said Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition. "Instead, it has led to less competition, fewer viewpoints, and less diversity in programming."

Toomey was joined at a press conference by leaders of the Musicians and Radio Artists unions in November for the release of the coalition's study titled "Radio Deregulation: Has It Served Citizens and Musicians?" The answer was a resounding "no."

"Radio is so broadly accessible, so inexpensive to produce and transmit, and so limitless in its potential for diversity that it ought to be America's great democratic medium for culture and commentary," said journalist John Nichols, who recently co-authored "Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media."

But because of media consolidation, made possible by politicians eager to please their corporate lobbies, "radio is being robbed of its potential to be a positive force in our daily lives - let alone the illuminating force that it could be," Nichols said.

He applauded the coalition's report, calling it a "breakthrough study that will be referenced for years to come as the document that quantified a growing sense of unease with what radio has become. It will also serve as a vital tool for those in Congress and communities across the United States who want to change the rules so that citizens, rather than corporations, benefit from the governmental and business structures that shape our media."

If the concentration in the radio market isn't threatening enough, media watchdogs say it's merely a sign of things to come in cyberspace.

"This report is a wake-up call, for the same FCC policies responsible for radio's decline into homogenous oligopoly are now being imposed upon the high-speed Internet," said Mark Wahl, project director, Center for Digital Democracy. "If allowed to proceed, this radical deregulatory agenda will result in the Clear Channelization of broadband, threatening online openness and competition, reducing diversity of expression and inhibiting democracy."

Consolidation isn't the only reason media unions have trouble with advertising. Media owner and managers in a given community tend to stick together when workers start making noise. Revealing problems at City Hall or the biggest factory in town is good journalism, but critics say newspapers, TV and radio stations generally don't believe that transparency extends to their businesses or even their competitors' businesses.

"Media companies will do what's in their business interest as opposed to what's in the public interest every time," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. "The danger is that when you have media concentration, one owner owning six stations in one market, their refusal to run an ad affects not just one listening audience, but six."

Bill Wachenschwanz, president of NABET 54042 in Cleveland, said media consolidation has made it much easier for WKYC-TV to wield its power and keep its workers off the airwaves.

WKYC doesn't want the Cleveland community to know how badly it's treated workers, he said, noting the company's determination to use unlimited part-time employees who have no benefits and its demand for a provision allowing management to cut wages during the contract term - without any input from the union. The company has even gone so far as to install what Wachenschanz called a "spy camera" in the newsroom to intimidate employees.

The company is facing a mounting number of unfair labor practice charges over its behavior that are expected to go to trial in February or March, he said.

Originally, two stations in Cleveland agreed to run the union's ad, which explained the workers' struggle and ended with: "We want to do a great job for our viewers and our advertisers in broadcasting their news, their programs and their commercials. And we want a fair contract that protects our jobs and preserves our standard of living."

But both stations pulled the ad after getting phone calls from the TV station management or its advertising company. Representatives of the stations didn't return CWA's phone calls asking for an explanation.

The regional Clear Channel manager, Jim Meltzer, told the CWA News that he decided on his own not to run the ad and hadn't been contacted by anyone from the TV station or its associates.

"I just didn't like it," Meltzer said. "As a manager of a business, I really think the contract should be negotiated within the confines of the business."

Asked if he felt it was fair that one person was in charge of making a decision affecting six stations and audiences, Melzer said only that he understood the union's frustration. "But it's a business decision that I choose to make," he said.

Wachenschwanz said people need to understand how much their information today is being controlled.

"The control belongs to the companies that own the stations, and the number of owners is getting smaller all the time," he said. "They have the power and our government is helping their power grow. It's harder and harder for those of us who don't have power to get our message out."

Read the Future of Music Coalition's full report on radio deregulation and responses to it at www.futureofmusic.org.