Mitt Who?

Mitt Romney's favorite Radio Station Owner is in Trouble

This is probably beating a dead horse, (as who remembers Mitt Romney now?), but I just learned that Romney's corporate buyout firm Bain Capital owns the US's largest radio station chain, Clear Channel, which has been the subject of my ire for years.

Clear Channel owns and distributes on its stations shows by right-wing hotheads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and distributes Fox News in radio form. They're by far the largest of owner of radio stations in the USA and also are tops in Billboards. I've written a lot about their past antics here:
http://greedwatch.blogspot.com/search/label/Clear%20Channel
They have in recent years added liberal talk radio shows on some of their lower-rated outlets, so their reputation for being all right wingers has changed in recent years as they've realized that liberal talk sells ads, too.

As this column from my local paper says: "Bain Capitol, the majority owner following a 2008 buyout, must be mighty nervous right now. According to industry estimates and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Clear Channel has more than $16 billion of debt, declining revenues, declining cash flow, and a huge debt payment due relatively soon - with virtually no way to pay it.
This could be the beginning of the end for a company that, in my opinion, never deserved to exist."
from:  http://www.dailynews.com/entertainment/ci_22187319/radio-clear-channel-layoffs-hit-kost-kbig-kysr

Clear Channel is a prime beneficiary (and now a victim) of the US Congress's 1996 Telecommunications deregulation act, which allowed corporate monopolies to gobble up 8 or more radio stations in a market area, instead of the previous limit of 2. The law similarly allows ownership of 2 or more TV stations in a market when the previous limit was 1.

The problem for Clear Channel is they over-borrowed to bulk up on stations, computerized the formats and fired DJs and then faced the wrath of consumers who switched to ad-free ipods and other portable music players. That's when Romney's Bain Capital firm swooped in and bought the place at likely a bargain price. The firm has not recovered, though, and it lost over $400 million in 2012.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/20/1188686/-Clear-Channel-Loses-424-Million-in-2012-StopRush-Rolls-On#

Not that Mitt is hurting due to this.

"What it comes down to is that two companies own nine of the top 11 stations in town..."

Clear Channel, CBS stations are dominant in the ratings in L.A.

By Richard Wagoner, Posted: 04/21/2011, http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_17902877

KIIS-FM (102.7) was Los Angeles radio's dominant force once again, based on the monthly Arbitron ratings released this week. While down a half point to 5.1, the station was still a half point better than KOST (103.5 FM) at 4.6.  With KFI's (640 AM) third-place 4.3 - its highest rating since at least November 2010 - owner Clear Channel had a 1-2-3 sweep. Add in 10th place KBIG (flat at 3.3), and the company had four of the top 10 stations in town - an amazing feat.

But wait: Though CBS didn't have quite the dominance as Clear Channel, it also controlled much of the top 10, with fourth-place KRTH's (101.1 FM) 4.2, a sixth-place tie between KNX (1070 AM) and KROQ (106.7 FM) at 3.5, and a 10th-place tie between Amp Radio (97.1 FM) and sister The Wave (94.7 FM) - matching Clear Channel's KBIG at 3.3.

What it comes down to is that two companies own nine of the top 11 stations in town.

In my opinion, that is market dominance that needs to be broken up. Last time something like that happened, the Federal Communications Commission broke up NBC and forced the launch of ABC, which later became one of America's premier networks...

What Companies Dominate the Right-Wing Radio Talk Show Business?

--analysis by Rex Frankel


A report by a progressive media watch group released in June of 2007 stated:

"Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive. Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk—10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/pdf/talk_radio.pdf

Several interesting things were not mentioned in the summary of this report: for CBS radio, of their total of 30 news or talk stations that air or could air 720 hours of programming a day (24 hours times 30), they only aired 68.5 hours of conservative talk. That's only 9.5% of their total airtime. Only 3.3% of their total airtime was devoted to progressive talk, but also a whopping 88% was non-political by the standards in this study. While the progressive percentage should be equal to the conservative time, this huge amount of non-political fare is what a good news broadcaster should be doing.

On the other hand, the other big 5 radio owners had super-high percentages of conservative talk compared to their total airtime. Clear Channel was 40% conservative vs. 6.5% progressive; Citadel was 49% conservative vs. .0018% progressive; Cumulus was 38% conservative vs. 0% progressive and Salem was 83% conservative vs. 0% progressive.

Another big broadcaster that is not in the top 5, Disney/ABC, has similar high percentages of conservative shows. In fact, nationwide, they are the network that airs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in most of the U.S.'s big cities. Disney now no longer owns ABC radio, as they sold it to Citadel Broadcasting in June of 2007. What this shows is that CBS, owned by the same guy who owns the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, is not necessarily the right wing cesspool that they have been lumped into. The other broadcasters, however, are clearly abusing the public airwaves with which they have been entrusted.

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Here's the press release for the report:

REPORT: The Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It

The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.

The new report entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio raises serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public radio airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans. While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves.

Some key findings:
-In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.
-Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk; 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.
-76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

Two common myths are frequently offered to explain the imbalance of talk radio: 1) the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to devote airtime to contrasting views), and 2) simple consumer demand.

Read some of them in response to our report here. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWE3MThlMjgyMGRiZmQ4ZThjODhlNzFlNDIxYzYwZWY=

Each of these fails to adequately explain the root cause of the problem. The report explains: Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest. Along with other ideas, the report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market.

Read the full report here. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/pdf/talk_radio.pdf

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Other Groups Keeping track of right-wing media bias

http://mediamatters.org/

http://mediachannel.org/

http://democraticmedia.org/