Wednesday, June 4, 2003

What in the world has happened to radio?

By CAL BEVERLY
Publisher

News item: The Federal Communications Commission Monday voted to lift the cap on ownership of broadcast stations.

I agree with Ted Turner and with Molly Ivins (gasp!). I disagree with the Heritage Foundation, The Wall Street Journal editorial board and a hoard of my fellow conservatives.

Before you think I've finally come out of the Leftie closet, let me specify what our disagreement is about. (I wonder if I've been eating too often at Ted's Montana Grill; maybe there's too much hidden liberal seasoning?)

It's about radio, and secondarily, TV. And about who owns the limited number of stations that broadcast on the public airwaves.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission lifted many ownership limits on stations, rules that had been in place for decades. The result, particularly in radio, was the formation of huge media companies owning hundreds and in some cases more than a thousand broadcast stations. In my opinion, conglomerates gained, while the public lost, big time. The latest rules changes allow even more concentration of ownership of TV stations. And except in the smallest markets, newspapers, TV and radio stations can now join together. Radio rules didn't change much in the Monday vote, but they already were a disaster.

In this matter, I think I am in fact the true conservative, because I want things the old way, back before deregulation of the airwaves. I want things the way they were in the 1950s, when I started broadcasting two hours every weekday evening on a 250-watt local station, the only station in town. And in the 1960s, when nearly every radio station had a local newscast, multiple times a day.

In those halcyon days, one entity could own a maximum of seven AM stations, seven FM stations and some similar number of TV stations, and never more than one of each in a single market. Most broadcasters were small business owners, living in the very markets they served.

Today, Clear Channel Communications, a company based in San Antonio, Texas, owns more than 1,200 radio stations. One thousand two hundred. And there are but about 13,000 radio stations in existence in the U.S. of A.

Nine of those Clear Channel stations are in the Atlanta market, including an FM station licensed to Peachtree City and an AM licensed to Newnan, according to the company's web site.

Now, the only ownership limits are linked to markets: No more than eight per market. (I don't know why that isn't true for Clear Channel's Atlanta properties; maybe the 250-watt Newnan AM or the Hogansville station don't count.)

Those rules "were written in a different era, and don't reflect the diversity and competitiveness in today's media marketplace," asserts the Heritage Foundation's James Gattuso.

"Even joint ownership of the same media in the same market (i.e., owning multiple TV or radio stations in the same market) can provide consumer benefits" Gattuso says. "For instance, though counter-intuitive, common ownership can actually increase content diversity. The reason is simple: while owners with only one station each may all compete for a lowest-common-denominator market, owners with several stations each are able to target niche markets with different programming on each station."

But here's where Ted Turner and I agree. The relaxation of even the puny ownership caps "will stifle debate, inhibit new ideas and shut out smaller businesses trying to compete," Turner writes in the Washington Post. "If these rules had been in place in 1970, it would have been virtually impossible for me to start Turner Broadcasting or, 10 years later, to launch CNN."

Turner argues, "When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys; they have to innovate. So they are less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They're willing to take risks. When, on my initiative, Turner Communications (now Turner Broadcasting) bought its first TV station, which at the time was losing $50,000 a month, my board strongly objected. When TBS bought its second station, which was in even worse shape than the first, our accountant quit in protest."

Ted and Molly and I don't agree on much, but we agree on this: For broadcast stations licensed to use the scarce resource of the limited public airwaves, bigger is most definitely bad.

Not bad for business (although it can be for businesses depending on near-monopolistic pricing of advertising), but bad for the public. And stations are licensed to use those scarce frequencies "in the public interest, convenience and necessity," according to the federal law setting up the F.C.C. Broadcast frequencies cannot be owned; they can only be rented.

My gut-level objection is to something that has caused me to abandon listening to radio these days: the absence of truly local programming, with all of its eccentricities and local flavor.

"Large media corporations are far more profit-focused and risk-averse," Turner says. "They sometimes confuse short-term profits and long-term value. They kill local programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming because it's cheap, even if it runs counter to local interests and community values."

Imagine that: Ted Turner and I agreeing on anything to do with community values. But, on this, he and I are brothers under the skin: We both got our start in small broadcasting operations that operated from payroll to payroll.

I'm a newspaperman now, but I got into news via local radio: A one-man news operation that jumped into action when the police radio flared up.

There was a time in America when, in small towns across this land, when a fire engine passed on a street, people tuned their AM radios to find out which neighbor's house was on fire. Local council races featured in-depth interviews with candidates, and at election time precinct reporters called in ballot tallies before the figures reached the courthouse. Parents and fans followed local high school basketball games at home and on the road, via that local radio station. When bad weather threatened, you knew you could depend on your local station to warn you and keep you informed.

Why did those small stations spend so much time and money in producing local news and local coverage? For most of them, because the F.C.C. of those days made them do it. The rules mandated that a certain percentage of each broadcast day had to be given over to news and public service programming.

Nowadays, an F-5 tornado can be flattening Peachtree City or Buckhead, and you'll still be hearing rap and rock music uninterrupted except for commercials. Where's the public service in that?

I say without hesitation, the down-home radio aspects of those bygone times were better by far than what we have today: Generic and often smutty wisecrackers who excel in put-downs and stupidity sandwiched between rapid-fire traffic reports and unending commercials.

In a few places, mostly too small to attract the big buyers, small radio owners still operate shoestring local, sometimes-live, operations, still putting on local voices of local people. And in a few places, local news still comes on the radio at dependable, set times, every day. Just like it's supposed to. Not because they have to. Just because it's the right thing to do, to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.

The F.C.C. did no favors for the public this week. The only "interest, convenience and necessity" served by the 3-2 vote Monday was that of the media giants, a class of business that just got bigger.

By the way, Congress can overturn that F.C.C. decision by legislation. Let your Congressman or -woman know how you feel about increased media concentration.

This is one area where the free market, unregulated, works to produce either chaos (as in the pre-F.C.C. days) or near-monopolies and where the government has a real responsibility to protect the public. This week, the F.C.C. part of our government failed in that function.