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BOYCOTT!!!


scott

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Okay everyone, Clear Channel has infiltrated every single radio station in my town, the DJs are no longer able to play the songs the choose at all! Among other things that I hate about Clear Channel.............Anyway, I am now, from this day forward, refusing to listen to any radio stations affilliated with Clear Channel (you see there are a couple stations owned by a small company, that happens to be owned by......you guessed it Clear f****ing Channel, just so it looks good on the books)

I will end my boycott if

1)Clear Channel ceases to exist

-or-

2)DJ's are allowed to play whatever songs they want to play, otherwise what's the point in having live DJs?

Anyone with me?

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Try living in Austin, where everything is owned by Clear Channel(their headquarters are in San Antonio). They own all but two of the radio stations and most of the music venues. Ticket prices to shows are expensive as hell and all I hear on the radio are commercials.

They try to act like they care about music, but you can tell all they want is money. Money, which is used to buy up more independent radio stations (if there are any left).

The two things that piss me off the most about clear channel is that most of their stations don't play music in the morning, they have NATIONAL talk shows, that occasionlly play a song. Why, because it's cheaper. The second reason, is that when it is time for a commercial, all the C.C. stations have commercials at the same time. I've heard the same commercial, within five minutes on four different stations. It didn't use to be like that when stations were independent. IT'S THE F***ING RADIO, PLAY MUSIC.

All I got to say is thank god for my CD player.

Death to Clear Channel

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Cyberdemon26

About the only thing you can do is go to the clear channel website and do a radio station search, http://www.clearchannel.com/Radio/home.aspx (f***ing clear channel).

And while you're there, check out "Know the Facts" sections. Very amusing. I took a liking to the second one. I sure as hell have never heard "The Last DJ" by Tom Petty on the classic rock station in Austin. And I listen to the radio all day at work (the cd players are broken). I guess I'll give clear channel the benefit of a doubt, that maybe the play the song once a month at three in the morning, so they can claim the've played it.

Cause it's a damn good song.

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Thanks char. It seems the few local radio stations I listen to, have yet to be infected with the clear plague. I don't doubt they will mosey on down here eventually.

MYTH: Clear Channel endangered the

public in Minot, N.D. because it didn?t have

anyone at its stations in the overnight hours.

REALITY: The public-notification failures

connected with the Minot train derailment were a direct result of the local authorities? failure to install their Emergency Alert System equipment.Clear Channel absolutely had staff working that night and Clear Channel employees went above and beyond their professional responsibilities in responding to this serious situation, during and after the incident occurred.

Anything to comment on that scott?

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That's what we like to call a "pantload" or "load of crap" the Clear Channel stations 'round here has quite possibly the worst emergency response record ever, because since they don't have live DJs to say what's going on (we'll have a real local DJ maybe for a couple hours a day and it's even worse down in Minot) big f****ing tornadoes and/or storms can be ravenging the area and if you turn on a radio you hear the same thing "This is Kasey Casum(sp?) sending a very special message......" And then there's always the same excuse like mentioned in the above message.

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Oh yeah, don't think that just because it sais that your station isn't "owned" by CC chances are that if the radio station is part of a small local affiliate (local affiliates I have no problem with BTW) that local affiliate is owned by CC, I've got the same case with two stations in my town, it sais their owned by the Bismarck something or other, but then I looked it up and so that the Bismarck something or other is owned by CC :thumbsdown:

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A couple of Satelite Radio Stations I listen to are owned by CC. They had this one rock station that was like a god send for me. It was nothing but like Zeppelin,Motorhead then every two hours they would switch to "non-corporate" bands such as SOAD then RATM and all the mondern stuff I listen too. Now it's nothing like crap bands like Yellowcard, Lostprophets, GC, Linkin Park.

So I say fight the system before it arrives.

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Clear Channel along with Viacom (MTV), or corporate radio of any kind is a huge problem. Being a free market capitalist, I respect their right to try and ?corner? the radio market in the country, as the current govt. regulations allow them to do so. However, the ?monopolistic? nature of the music industry dictates that some regulation is needed. Ticketmaster?s monopoly has caused concert ticket prices to increase 800% since ?81 when I first started going to see shows. This figure is based on what I paid for my first Rush concert and what I paid for my tickets to their show last week. Before there was competition in telecommunications a long distance call could cost a dollar a minute. With competition that same long distance call is free, not factoring in the small monthly charge for the unlimited long distance service. The once mighty AT&T announced last week that it was getting out of the residential market altogether because it can?t compete with the lower priced carriers in that market. Their stock price has long reflected the fact that their residential service has no value at all. If their wireless business were factored out of their stock price, it would be a penny stock and probably de-listed from the NYSE. Competition works, but it cannot work where monopolies are allowed to exist. Get hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place and its only a matter of time before you win the game.

So ?vote with your remote?, or ?remote voting?, whatever sounds best. Growing up in Dallas there were six stations that I would listen to. Two were hard rock, two were alternative predecessors (the alternative designation wasn?t being used yet), and the other two were classic rock. I was in Dallas last week and bought a car. I was trying to program in some stations and found only two listenable stations. One was alternative and the other classic rock. I couldn?t find one single hard rock station in the whole town. After seeing Scott?s post, I decided to find out why. This was what I found out:

As promised, here's some more info on Clear Channel's format switch handed down to Dallas' only true rock station, 97.1 KEGL "The Eagle".

The format of "The New Sunny 97.1" does seem to be "lite rock" with zero focus on the local music scene. During the last hour, the station has played:

The Beach Boys, Carole King, Wham!, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Rita Coolidge, Tina Turner and Fleetwood Mac.

I found this info using the ?Clear Channel Sucks? link provided by ?Ummagumma?. Thanks for the link and the screen-name tribute to Pink Floyd. The scarier thing is that the only two listenable stations in Dallas both belong to Clear Channel. The situation in Chicago is somewhat better with Clear Channel and Viacom only accounting for 12% of the radio market, but it?s still a problem. Stop trying to get crossover listeners by playing Eminem on an alternative station.

Microsoft got in some trouble for using its monopolistic position to promote its web browser and media player. I don?t want to wait 20 years for the government to have to step in and break up the Clear Channel and Viacom monopolies. Instead of trying to appeal to listeners as they are now doing these companies in the future will be dictating to listeners what they have to listen to. This is already being done by MTV with their ceaseless promotion of Brittney and the boy-bands. What these two companies are doing is not the free-market at work, but corporate giants using their vast resources to takeover an industry that lends itself to monopolistic practices. I?m not looking forward to the time when we hear adds like, ?Clear Channel radio, your only source for the Eagles.? Or some other band that can only be heard on stations owned by a particular company. I use the Eagles as an example because of how they insult their long-time fans with the ticket prices of their reunion concerts. My first post to Songfacts dealt with how Atlantic Records almost dropped Peter Gabriel from its label before his fourth solo album. After the release of ?So? that went to #1, I?m sure they are glad they didn?t. What?s frightening is that record companies and the media giants who promote their products have this type of control over what we listen to.

If it sounds like I?m agreeing with Scott, it?s because I am. Any industry that can be monopolized must be regulated by the government for the safety of the consumer, or in this case the listener. The current radio environment is not really a monopoly for any one company, but an oligopoly, meaning its dominated by a few large companies. Think of how well oligopolies have worked in the past to see where this situation is going; the US car industry in the 70s before the Japanese competition, airlines before deregulation and competition from Southwest who still shows a profit every quarter, or AT&T, a true monopoly before it was broken up by the government. There is a time for government to get involved in business and now is that time for the music business unless people want to return to the days of dollar-a-minute phone calls or be forced to listen to ?all Brittney, all the time? radio.

Great post, Scott

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Very valid point. I also respect a companies rights to have a huge monopoly. I mean hell look at Starbucks. People boycott them "because they're to big, and get enough money". What people fail to realize is, there wouldn't be a Starbucks on every corner if their coffee wasn't good.

My respect towards a company goes ends when they start inconviniencing me. That's when I have to put my foot down and start talking.

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Yeah, nothing wrong with being big. It's when the consumer loses their ability to choose because a company has taken over the market that things go bad. In the mornings the lines at Dunkin Donuts, Cosi, and The Grind House are all as long as the ones at Starbucks by where I work. As long as people will pay $2.50+ for a cup of coffee, none of these places is going to get hurt too much. I prefer Coca-cola and either donuts or Little Debbies for breakfast. The sugar rush really starts the day off right.

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Last thing I?m going to say about all this. I did some more reading, since it is still too cold in Chicago to lay out by the pool or go to the beach on the fourth of July. The record companies it seems blame everyone else but themselves for the current state of music. Its peer to peer networking, it?s media giants like Clear Channel making us pay for airtime. It?s our parent corporations profit concerns.

And the worse reason possible. They are blaming the fans for no longer being loyal to musicians. Time Warner needs to bite me. The reasons fans are no longer loyal, is because ?huge acts? like the Spice Girls only appeal to ten-year-old kids. Once those kids turn twelve or thirteen they realize that the Spice Girls suck. Brittney would have been gone long ago if not for the sexual component of her appeal. Middle age men will even watch her videos. Logic would say that a new group of ten year olds would come along and love the spice girls. But these kids have older siblings who would make fun of them and thus new boy and girl bands are needed every few years to avoid the stigma attached to the older acts by their older brothers and sisters.

Blaming the fans. What nerve. These are the same record companies who brought us Madonna in the early 80s, armpit hair and all. And the c—t still won?t go away. They even tried to blame CDs, for causing a complacent attitude in the industry during the late 80s as much money was made when music fans were simply replacing their worn out vinyl LPs. The monopoly of the airways is one problem but to blame the fans. Haven?t the hugely grossing reunion tours shown these record companies anything? Fans are more loyal to good music today than ever before. I bought a CD last week that was put out by a thirty-year-old band.

At least United Airlines isn?t blaming passengers for why the former worlds largest airline can?t compete with the cute little company out of Love Field and needs a federal loan guarantee to get out of bankruptcy. For years the major carriers have observed Southwest?s business model and steady profits and have done nothing to change the way they do business. I mentioned a girl band in another post called Veruca Salt. For whatever reason (marketing) they never caught on like the Spice Girls. Maybe they needed some clever feminine slogan. Well girl power to the record companies. Look at you now. And for the truly stupid Time Warner who sold off their rap division before hip hop really took off and bought AOL at the height of the internet stock bubble, bravo, you hit the idiocy exacta, and paid your former leader, Gerald Levin over 500 mil a year to make these shrewd business decisions. Making it a trifecta. And now you blame the fans. F—k off.

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I have yet to meet anyone, including radio professionals, who likes Clear Channel. So now that we all agree that it is a vile company that we would be much better off without, what can we do about it? We have some very smart people on these boards, so I'd like to hear your ideas.

I can tell you that going after advertisers is an effective way to punish radio stations. If a few people in a market write a letter to a Clear Channel sponsor explaining why they will not buy their product, it might be enough to make them pull their advertising. Maybe we could draft a letter for this purpose, along with some letterhead and the name of an organization. :)

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It's simple Carl. Start a national protest. Turn off you radios. If thousands of people stop listening to CC channels, they WILL take notice.

Cindy, I mean no offense by this but; but maybe sometime you should watch you some Vh1. They have very interesting documentaries on bands like the Spice Girls. You'll find out that most of these bands were created by the record label for the sole purpose of generating them millions of dollars. Theres nothing really bands with real talent (like your Veruca Salt and my Dream Theater) can do against bands that are signed into "the corporation" as I like to call it.

As I've mentioned before I work at a record store. You wouldn't believe the stuff people come in and buy. It's all the stuff you can hear just by turning on MTV. I get really annoyed when girls 13-18 come and start flirting with me, and asking what I listen too. They don't even know half the bands I mention. I always thought it was funny how people in their 30s-40s think it's great how I listen to the stuff they grew up listening too. Sorry for rambaling.

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I realized last night that I had called Veruca Salt a girl band when all I meant was it was girls fronting a band. Not a 'girl band' like the Spice Girls. When I had read a couple of the interviews with record execs who blamed the fans, us, for why they arn't making enough money, I lost it. I could barely type fast enough to get out all my dissatisfaction with where they put the blame. For years they have fed us mass-produced crap and now they blame us for not being loyal. At least if they are going to mass-produce something let it be something good like when Flea and Dave Navarro backed up Alainis Morissette on "you oughta know". Blaming us, the fans, is what really messed me up. What's really amazing is that Veruca Salt wasn't promoted well. Both the girls were better looking than any of the spice girls, plus the music was really good. Guess their music didn't target the 10-13 year old demographic.

The Clear Channel situation is easier to fix than the whining record company problem. The FCC should have never allowed one company to own more than one station in a single market. The CC, Viacom point is that by owning more than one station they are able offer specialized programming that they otherwise couldn't. With profits being the motivation, who would play classic rock, when urban contemporary is the highest rated format. Chicago is a huge radio market with a lot of independant stations and college type radio, but in smaller markets the stations without the most popular format simply can't compete. It costs the same to broadcast Usher as it does to broadcast Led Zeppelin. The Montreal Expos defense. Their whole argument reminds me of plastic surgeons who do 1000 tit jobs so that they can perform one reconstructive surgery on the elephant man's grandson. They really do the one reconstructive surgery so they can justify their own greed being supported by their breast job clients vanity.

TV is a pretty good example of how competition can help a monopolistic type market. Except for new episodes of Law and Order and the West Wing, I don't even make it down to the single and double digit areas of the television. The best thing Time Warner had going for them was Ted Turner and his networks but they chose to get rid of him favoring instead to stay with the M&A happy Levin for CEO. I don't watch CNN, but I love TNT. But unlike TV, most people still don't have satellite type radio. There's only so many spots on the dial to put a channel, and until there are other options one or two companies shouldn't be allowed to dominate the market.

In my opinion boycotting Clear Channel advertizers won't really work. If Jerry Falwell and his followers haven't been able to effect a change than how much good could a few disenfranchized fans do? Especially when the record companies blame the fans for what is wrong with the music industry. Lawmakers on the other hand do easily cave in to civic pressure. Look at what happened because of the Super Bowl halftime show. They also like words such as 'collusion' and 'unfair trade practices'. Something the airlines and oil companies have been accused of doing. I'm not active in Chicago politics other than voting for the mayor. Too many democrats not getting anything done, Illinois can't even get a state budget approved because of too much infighting between memebers of the Dem. run state government. I do know the guy who took over the job my congressman from Texas used to have. It's an election year, they arn't looking to piss off the votors too much.

The record companies just need to provide us with some good music and they will find many loyal fans. I've never heard of Dream Theater, but that could be the best endorsement a band could get. That they are totally unknown. I'll check them out. Got any song, or CD suggestions? Did anyone else show up for work today and find out that they didn't need to be there? :doh:

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I'll check them out. Got any song, or CD suggestions?

Yes. Anything you find by them. My favorite song by them is "Home" their best album, IMO, is "As I Am".

I think it's funny how were sitting here bashing CC, yet our political view are stereotyped as being for big companies like CC.

I'm totally with you on the cable though. Except to watch the Simpsons and Adult Swim I hardly ever watch any channel with single or double digits. There can only be so many god forsaken teen shows.

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I will watch sports on the networks, but hardly anything at night. The last new sitcom I liked was "Sports Night" which was cancelled so that ABC could show "Who wants to be a millionaire" five nights a week. Isn't the title of that horrible show a rhetorical question? Wouldn't everyone like to have a little spare cash lying around?

The stereotype is how liberal 'hand out' types view big business. They?d rather give away money then watch people work for it in a healthy business environment. Always keeping in mind the ?quid pro quo? idea about ?here?s your money now where?s my vote?. Is Dunkin Donuts better off because they can now charge $2.50 for a cup of coffee that used to cost less than a dollar before Starbucks? They aren?t putting anyone out of business, only growing the market for coffee drinkers. More coffee drinkers means more coffee growers and fewer coca plant growers in Colombia. So Starbucks is helping with the war on drugs. How can anyone be against less crack?

Controlling the media and controlling the airways is what Clear Channel and Viacom are trying to do. Starbucks is only trying to overcharge for a cup of coffee. Controlling industries is what happens in socialist and communist countries by the govt. Microsoft lucked into its market dominating position when Apple wouldn't license the Mac. Now they fall under anti-trust regulations, and are no longer considered a growth company. If other operating systems become more popular it will diminish Microsoft's market share, but it will possibly allow them to gain back the innovative spirit that started the company, and it will get the regulators off their back. Everyone wins.

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