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Unclear Channels
Is local radio collapsing around our ears?
by Joe Tarr
She’s worked in Knoxville radio for 18 years for just about every company that’s done business here. But her experience with one of the country’s biggest radio chains, Citadel, was by far her worst. On the air she was known as “Taylor,” a pseudonym she prefers to go by in print, and her most recent gig was at 100.3 The River. She was one of the few people at the Americana station to survive when Citadel took over operations from Dick Broadcast on Aug. 1, 2003.
At the beginning of June she was interviewing with her new bosses for a promotion. But then, suddenly, she was canned.
The station’s program director now programs her old spot, the 7 p.m. to midnight shift, during the day, and she says a 20 year old was hired for much less pay to fill the mid-day slot she was aiming for.
Taylor isn’t alone. A number of long-time radio DJs and announcers—sports talk host Tony Basilio, music director Sarah McClune and nighttime jock Brian Benson, both on West 105.3, WNOX newscasters Ed Hooper, among others—have all been given pink slips.
They’re local casualties of media consolidation, but as sad as their stories might be there’s a bigger issue at stake, one that radio perhaps demonstrates better than any other medium. As the corporations gobble up more of Knoxville’s media, the information we receive tends more toward blandness and the diversity of opinion gets narrowed, critics say.
“Deregulation killed radio,” Taylor says. “All of those guys are coming into town and owning five, six, seven, eight radio stations in a single market. Everyone sounds exactly alike, and you’ll find there’s no one even sitting there when you’re making a request. You can flip through your radio dial now and find every radio station goes to a commercial at the same time. You don’t see any personality.”
Taylor’s complaint might sound like one of aesthetics, but there’s a larger issue at stake, critics of media consolidation say—mainly, who is controlling the information and culture we receive, and for what purpose do we receive it?
It’s gotten more and more difficult for citizens to have their concerns aired as media ownership becomes more consolidated, says Mike Knapp, former managing editor of the local environmental newspaper Hellbender Press who recently became executive director of the Tennessee Economic Renewal Network.
“Local people’s ability to have a presence in the media market—radio, newspaper, television—continues to diminish,” Knapp says. “That’s a dangerous thing for democracy.”
Because there are so many new places and formats to get information from—mainly through the Internet and cable and satellite television—it might seem as though there are more choices.
Glenn Reynolds, who teaches law at the University of Tennessee and operates the blog Instapundit, says the argument from Michael Powell, head of the FCC, that competition will eventually sort out what people need, doesn’t hold water. “The Michael Powell argument that the Internet will take care of everything is something I’d like to think is true. I’d believe it a lot more if the FCC were standing up for free speech on the Internet. I’m skeptical that technology will solve that problem,” he says.
“I love the Internet, and I think it does great stuff, but it’s not a cure-all,” he adds. “The fact is it’s still an awfully small piece of the media picture. You don’t have the penetration of households that TV has. It’s nice that anybody can set up a website and have everybody in the world read it. That’s not an answer to the fact that five or six media companies own all the broadcast media in the country.”
Reynolds says he doesn’t know how corporate ownership has affected local media. “I thought we were better off when we were a two-newspaper town, but that had more to do with media collapse, rather than consolidation,” he says.
Consolidation has happened at every level of the media ownership. Few cities have more than one daily newspaper. And most TV stations, radio stations and newspapers are owned by large corporations that run them with a close eye on the bottom-line. Even many alternative weeklies are owned by larger companies.
The effects of consolidation have probably been most noticeable in radio. In Knoxville, three major companies—Citadel, South Central, and Journal—own the majority of Knoxville’s radio stations.
The effects of corporate ownership are evident when you take a look at what happened when Citadel took over operation of WOKI, The River, from Dick Broadcasting last August. The rock station (which played some Americana, blues, and reggae) was programmed locally and was involved in the community, sponsoring a number of events and including several local artists in its playlists.
Although the station had originally promised to keep the format and staff in place, most of the staff was fired when Citadel took over. After a period of uncertainty, the new River announced it was sticking to the format. However most of the staff was gone and the playlist was changed significantly. Citadel isn’t the only radio chain laying off employees, but they’re interesting to consider as an example of what happens when a corporate chain takes charge.
The Citadel takeover at The River left bitter feelings with a lot of employees, most of whom were fired. Benny Smith—who now works as director of promotions at Metro Pulse and has a radio show on West 105.3—says the changes were drastic.
“Hard work and loyalty means nothing to these corporations, which goes against everything I was ever taught as far as keeping a job,” Smith says. “I saw this ugly situation firsthand when The River was bought out by Citadel. They had no remorse, nor gave any reasons why they fired nearly the entire staff, including two women co-workers who were pregnant at the time. Citadel offered no insurance or compensation package to anyone, nor did they offer to help anyone find other employment. And they told listeners that ‘nothing is going to change at The River,’ but how can that be when 85 percent of the staff, including most of the on-air staff, was fired?”
Citadel spokesman Mike Hammond says the changes were made at The River with an eye for making the station more involved with the community.
“We started things like singer-songwriter night, being more aggressive with The River Lounge, sponsoring Sundown,” Hammond says. “We felt like we made the right moves, particularly since we’ve seen increases in revenue. Our ratings aren’t quite what we want them to be, but they’re getting there. We’re comfortable with the changes we’ve made.”
He says that Taylor was recently let go strictly for budget reasons. She was offered a part-time job but declined it.
Critics say corporate radio is programmed not to provide unique entertainment or news, but to cast as wide a net as possible so ratings, and therefore advertising dollars, will be high. Most of the advertising is bought through media buyers in other cities who sell time for several different companies, says Aaron Snukals, general manager at the old WOKI.
“I don’t want to say anything bad about corporate radio because I’ll probably go work for them again one day,” Snukals says. “But it’s about the bottom line.
“They will put on whatever they need to get the most people. Then it becomes marketing,” Snukals says. “That’s all they care about. That’s how they make their revenue.”
As a result, no one wants to take any chances for fear of losing market share.
“The fact that decisions of every kind are now made by people in the home office miles away instead of in each station's respective market, especially programming decisions, takes most, if not all of the local personality, flavor, and color away from corporate commercial radio today,” Smith says. “It's cookie-cutter radio. The FCC used to issue a license to a station because it was going to ‘fill a need in the market not being filled at the current time.’ Today, the only need the corps try to fill is to insulate their big money station with other stations in the same market so that their big moneymaker station loses no listeners.”
Taylor agrees. “When I first started, it was all about the music and the personality of the deejay. You could listen to any rock station and hear Led Zeppelin. It was the deejay that made you want to listen to a station. Now everybody’s been told to have no personality. You are at a point where anything questionable is forbidden. They want you to be middle-of-the-road and not offend anyone. There is no personality in radio in Knoxville anymore.”
The programming and on-air personalities are often working out of other cities, she adds.
Snukals believes that diversifying ownership would do a lot to invigorate what people hear on the airwaves.
“Right now you think about it in radio, there’s only three voices. They’re not going to do anything unless it comes from the top. You have really three players making the decisions for 12 to 15 radio stations,” he says. “If you could get five or six players, you’d have more voices.”
Hammond disagrees that corporate ownership has made The River, or any other Citadel stations, bland. “It has not happened with us,” he says. “I have very little interaction with our corporate people in New York. I have yet to have anyone from New York call and tell me or order me to do something. They’re holding us accountable, but they’ve basically taken a hands-off approach.”
Citadel now operates six radio stations in Knoxville and about 260 nationwide. He says listeners benefit from Citadel stations because the corporation has more resources. “We have a lot of smart people that work in other markets. We can pick up ideas, music tastes, new and fresh ideas we wouldn’t be able to do locally. It’s always good to interact with other markets,” he says.
He says most of the programming is done in Knoxville, although the stations here have relationship with other Citadel stations, particularly in Tennessee. Hallerin Hill does a show in Nashville (broadcast from here), and Knoxville’s news and sports teams work with Memphis, Nashville and other cities.
Hammond says he isn’t concerned with consolidation in the radio business. “My concern is allowing companies to branch out and own multiple things in a market,” Hammond says. “If you have one company that owns a TV station, multiple radio stations, maybe a newspaper and a billboard company—that lends itself to a lot of questions. I’m not sure how those questions can be answered because it hasn’t happened yet.”
Others, however, continue to worry about media consolidation of any sort. One local group has tried to offer an alternative on the airwaves by starting Knoxville’s First Amendment Radio, or KFAR, at 90.9 FM. Without a license from the FCC, the station broadcasts a wide variety of music and news programs, mostly with a liberal bent. They’ve been warned twice by the FCC but continue to broadcast.
One woman involved with the group—her on-air name is “Black-eyed Susan”—says she’s been traveling a lot up and down the East Coast lately and was surprised by how similar the radio stations sound.
“No matter where I am I can tune into The River. It’s like The River 100 point whatever, but it’ll be the Pennsylvania version of it. You go somewhere else, and you hear what you thought was the Knoxville radio station. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, I thought that was my radio station?’” she says.
“It homogenizes culture. There are fewer chances for diversity to be expressed in the media so people don’t tend to know about or think about diversity anymore. Everything seems to be the same,” Black-eyed Susan adds.
The homogenization extends well beyond music and culture, but to ideas as well, she says. “We hear a right opinion and a left opinion. The argument tends to be diluted to those ideas without a whole lot of in-between,” she says.
She’s not sure if KFAR is having an effect. It’s hard to measure since they’re outside the radio establishment and operate underground. “I hope we are challenging enough to other media outlets in our area. I would love for WUOT to consider carrying Democracy Now. I think that’d be really exciting,” she says. “I hope KFAR has that effect, but it’s really hard to say because it’s hard to know who is hearing it.”
Taylor doesn’t want to ever work in radio again, but it’s all she’s ever known. She’s thinking about trying her hand at public relations or marketing.
“The way it was handled, the way I was treated, it was just bad. I know I never want to work for those people again. Do I want to work for any of them again?” she says. “There are 16 or 17 radio stations in this town all owned by three different clusters. I’ve worked for every one of those clusters. Unless you’re Gunner or Phil Williams, you’re starving to death. A few years ago there were some outstanding radio stations in this town. Now you flip through the dial and they all sound alike, with the exception of the music.”
“There’s no originality in this town at all.”
July 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 28
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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