Category: media ownership & consolidation

When you live in a smaller media market like Champaign-Urbana, IL there doesn’t tend to be much press coverage on media ownership. We’ve only got one daily newspaper that doesn’t have radio or TV column, and is itself the owner of two local radio stations. Even the university students’ independent newspaper itself owns a radio…

With all this talk about broadcast indecency, such as the news that Clear Channel dropped Howard Stern from six stations today while instituting on-air decency standards, it gets me thinking about what’s really indecent, and what actually would be decent. You know what would represent real decency on the part of the big radio giants,…

My pal Aj points me to this St. Petersburg Times article that reports Clear Channel’s recently fined shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge has been fired. Clear Channel was slapped with a $755,000 fine a month ago for a series of moronic segments aired on Bubba’s morning program that the FCC found to be indecent.…

In a Reason magazine article, Jesse Walker identifies the reason why I’m always uncomfortable with the FCC’s anti-indecency efforts: “You needn’t like Clear Channel to recognize that an FCC which revokes licenses and imposes draconian fines isn’t going to refrain from penalizing college stations and low-power broadcasters. ” Indeed, as I’ve noted before, this is…

Editor and Publisher has a quick note that a new edition of The Media Monopoly will be out in May, containing seven new chapters. Bagdikian has updated the book regularly since first publishing it in 1983. The saddest part of this process has been that in every update the list of media conglomerates shrinks ever…

TheFCC’s Localism Task Force held a public hearing in San Antonio, TX, home to everyone’s favorite radio goliath, Clear Channel, which also happens to be the arch nemesis of localism. As one would expect, media activists used the hearing as an opportunity to point out and bash industry consolidation and it’s decimation of local accountability…

That’s the essential proclamation of a short story at theDeal.com in the wake of Bush signing into law the ominbus budget bill containing the “compromise” 39% TV ownership cap (that neatly lets CBS and FOX slip by with their previously-illegal number of stations). Well, sort of…. without the ‘sneaky part.’ But the story does reveal…

One way to shove somewhat unpopular legislation through Congress is to buy it in a bil ol’ omnibus spending bill, since failure to pass such a beast really mucks up the Washington works. So that’s how a compromise TV ownership limit rule got passed by the Senate yesterday. The compromise limit places a 39% cap…

Things are in place for the webcasting of several of the Conference’s sessions, including tonight’s big events, a speech by Ralph Nader and the kick off of the Tell The Truth Tour, featuring: Musical Performances by Billy Bragg, The Nightwatchman and Lester Chambers. More information at www.tellusthetruth.org. Plus remarks by MC John Nichols, The Nation/Free…

In just about a week, Madison, WI will become a hotspot for media reformers and media independents. First, Madtown will host the National Conference on Media Reform, put on by Robert McChesney’s Free Press organization. That conference is loaded with luminaries of the left and other folks who’ve recently made a name for themselves battling…