After spending freshman-year mornings with B96’s Eddie and JoBo,my roommate decided to wake up with someone new in the fall of2001. He was slick, professional and coming to us from her new hitmusic station of choice, “WKSC Chicago, the new 103.5, KISS FM.” Hewas “Valentine in the Morning,” and after weeks of listening to himblare out of the clock radio Monday through Friday, I realizedsomething curious. Valentine never said the words “Chicago” or”KISS 103.5.” In fact, he never mentioned anything local — rainydays, traffic troubles on “the Ike” or “the Edens,” Bears games,events in Naperville or Palatine or at Old Orchard. Nothing. Iconsulted the oracle of all wisdom, Google, which informed me thatnot only was Valentine not in Chicago, he was not really in themorning, either.
Surely there was no need to import a breakfast show to thethird-largest market in the country. But the Internet did not lie.Valentine was based in Los Angeles, and every night he taped hisshow there in order to have it ready for stations across thecountry by the next morning. This was made possible by a processknown as “voice-tracking.” What kind of radio station would dothis? If I had been more media-savvy, I would have known: one runby Clear Channel Communications, the nation’s largest radio companyand owner of KISS 103.5.
Valentine was no aberration. He was just another sign of howthings work at a company whose reach is becoming increasinglydifficult to escape. When its billboards and corporate Web sitesask “How many ways has Clear Channel reached you today?” it’s not ahypothetical question. It’s an ominous warning.
Clear Channel owns 39 TV stations, more than three-quarters of amillion billboards and outdoor ads and scads of major performingarts venues. It is the dominant player in the concert promotionindustry. But the primary reason people admire and fear the SanAntonio-based company is because it owns more radio stations thananyone else in the United States. At last count that was more than1,200 stations, about 1,000 more than its nearest competitor. Everyday Clear Channel radio reaches more than half of the Americanpopulation between the ages of 18 and 49, and the federalgovernment made it possible.
In 1995, Clear Channel owned 43 radio stations. The next yearCongress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which relaxedlongstanding radio ownership restrictions, ostensibly in theinterest of furthering diversity and competition. Companies oncelimited to owning two stations in a market could own as many aseight, and the law removed the cap on the number of stations onecompany could own nationwide. A wave of radio consolidationfollowed, and companies like Infinity, Cumulus and Citadel wentfrom owning tens of stations to owning hundreds. It was just thekind of thing the old laws were meant to prevent, and it happenedfaster than anyone imagined.
Clear Channel added another 49 stations to its universe by theend of 1996; by the end of 2000 it had swallowed up two other majorradio companies. Today it owns about 11 percent of the stations inthe country, which doesn’t seem like a huge amount until yourealize all stations are not created equal. Subtract public,college and small foreign-language and religious stations from thetotal, and what’s left are the biggest commercial stations in thelargest cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago andWashington.
“It’s really about the stifling of debate, what happens when youhave very few gatekeepers and those gatekeepers are hugeconglomerates trying to make a profit,” says Michael Bracy,co-founder of the Future of Music Coalition, a media advocacy andmusicians’ rights group. It’s also about the dumbing-down ofcontent. Instead of providing crucial information necessary forcitizens in a democracy, programming has become increasinglynon-controversial and entertainment-oriented.
The radio airwaves belong to the public, and the FederalCommunications Commission is supposed to keep watch over them. Butthat is a little-known fact, and giant media conglomerates wouldprefer to keep it that way. “I’m a free-market person; I believethat for the most part, there should be as few restrictions oncommerce as possible,” says Northwestern Prof. Rick Morris, a TVand radio-industry veteran who now is an associate dean in theSchool of Communication. “But media is one area that is not justcommerce, but also communicative. And since it involves amarketplace of ideas, why shouldn’t the marketplace have a bunch ofideas?”
Thanks to companies like Clear Channel, the marketplace isbecoming increasingly bare. “(Consolidation) has pretty much killedthe mom-and-pop radio owners,” notes Steve Jajkowski, a veritableencyclopedia of Chicago broadcast history who runs the archives atthe Museum of Broadcast Communications downtown. He works amidstrelics of Chicago’s TV and radio past, and shelves full of oldtapes. A thick yellow book called “How Sweet It Was” sits on thebookshelf behind him. “They just can’t compete. They don’t have thebucks. So how does that affect what radio is? You have a lot ofclones. A lot of radio stations playing exactly the same thing.”Call it homogenization, call it blandness, call it the “KISSeffect.” Whatever it is, it is sucking the variety out of theairwaves.
There are about 50 nearly-identical KISS stations across thecountry, dotting the map like a burst bag of Hershey’s candy,scattered from New England to Los Angeles, and everywhere inbetween, in places like Jonesboro, Ark., and Lincoln, Neb. — allwith the same logo, same slogans, same music, same contests and, insome cases, the same DJs, piped in from stations in larger, moreprivileged cities. It is the most glaring evidence of the growth of”chain radio” — something that was simply not possible in thepre-1996 world. Clear Channel employees have compared the KISSstations to McDonald’s: You can always find one, and you alwaysknow what you’re going to get when you do.
KISS 103.5 came into existence in early 2001, taking over for”The Beat,” a dancin’ oldies station. Initially the majority of itsDJs were voice-tracked — that is, digitally recorded elsewhere forlater use — but in late 2002, after exhausting the possibilitiesvoice-tracking afforded, Valentine and his cohorts were ditched infavor of a new air staff, including a full lineup of in-studio DJsand a local morning show. Today they work out of Clear Channel’simmaculate new Chicago headquarters, located on the 27th and 28thfloors of a brown, steel-and-glass office building on MichiganAvenue in the Loop. Quite literally, it is the height of corporateradio, a feat made possible by economies of scale, full of blondwood, shades of blue and gray and windows offering expansive viewsof the city below. Posters of station logos, singers and tokens ofindustry appreciation line the walls. Behind them areglass-enclosed clusters of hi-tech studios, many of which house thefive other Chicago-area Clear Channel stations: WGCI, WGCI-AM,WVIZ, WLIT and WNUA. The corridors buzz with hard-working,personable employees and fiercely competitive DJs and programdirectors. One of them is music director Jeff “Smash” Murray.
The glass door to his office is covered with KISS FM’s blueglobe logo. Inside, the office resembles a shrine to recent popmusic, covered with photos of Avril Lavigne, No Doubt, 50 Cent,Outkast, Pink and reminders of the cities he worked in beforereturning to Chicago, his hometown, last October. He constantlyshifts back and forth in his leather office chair, takes calls on aheadset, calls out to people passing by his office and glances atthe stacks of CD singles on his desk. Behind and below him are thehoneycombed cylinders of Marina City, the green-and-gilt Carbideand Carbon building and bridges spanning the Chicago River.
With his wire-rimmed glasses, neatly trimmed brown goatee, androyal blue Cubs jersey, he is Top 40. His enthusiasm for music andradio is contagious; he jokes about “total world domination” as agoal for his station, and he mentions ADD (Attention DeficitDisorder) a lot. When he was seven years
old he decided that hewanted to be in radio, and as a boy growing up in Oak Park, hetried to imitate the on-air personalities at all of his favoritelocal stations.
Contemporary pop radio is by nature formulaic, but Murray saysthere’s a reason for all those contest promotions and repeatedairings of Eminem, Christina, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow, and 3 DoorsDown: “Some people who don’t get our radio station wonder why we’replaying the same songs over and over again. It’s because we’replaying the most popular music that there is. And we play alot.”
He demurs when asked if he plays the music he likes. “I don’tprogram the station based on what I like,” he says. “That’s thekiss of death at a contemporary radio station. I program what wethink people want to hear. Our personal taste has really nothing todo with it.”
No one disputes that Clear Channel stations play what peoplewant to hear. In some ways, they do it better than anyone else.But, says Bracy, that’s not what radio is about. “Radio is bestwhen it’s ahead of the curve,” he says. “Radio programming is anart form. Where radio can be really great is when the stationbecomes a sort of evangelist for music, for culture, for politicaldebate, for local issues.”
When he was in Cincinnati, Murray worked at one of the firststations to ever use voice-tracking. With it, he says, his station”smoked the competition. We killed ’em. We took ’em out in aboutseven months. The product was so good, and our competition was sobad.” Though all KISS 103.5 DJs are now in-studio, Murray is stilla fervent believer in the practice. “We always get made fun of,Clear Channel does, because we perfected the art and, on the otherhand, kind of messed it up,” he says. “But if you can bringsomebody in who has a lot of talent, who can kick it, who is betterthan the competition, so be it. I don’t think the majority of thepeople who just listen to the radio give a rat’s ass about whereyou’re from. I really don’t.” According to Clear Channel,voice-tracking helps bring top-flight talent to communities thatwould otherwise miss out on it. It also helps Clear Channel save alot of money.
The Chicago KISS station now has a talented array of on-airpersonalities, but Chicago’s gain is another penny-pinchingstation’s filler. All of the station’s main DJs also voice-trackfor other Clear Channel outlets. Scott Tyler, who does afternoondrive in Chicago, is on middays at KZHT, a Salt Lake City Top 40station, and by looking at his bio page on the ZHT Web site, you’dnever know he was 1,400 miles away. Tyler uses his KISS 103.5picture, encourages listeners to write and call, talks about Utah,mentions local restaurants he enjoys and lists “driving around thestate aimlessly” as one of his hobbies.
One of the keys to Clear Channel-style voice tracking issounding as local as possible, but sometimes DJs try a little toohard. When KISS listeners in Idaho noticed a similarlyoverenthusiastic voice-tracked DJ going on about hanging out atBoise nightspots and going to a “wild and crazy party,” the stationmanager’s response was, “I think that was just a passionateindividual trying to make his product better.”
There’s a difference between sounding local and being local.Truly local DJs do not just talk about random happenings in town,they know people involved in them and, at least in theory, couldwitness them or show up at any time. Living in a community givesDJs and programmers a sense of what their listeners want. Theymight notice an up-and-coming band and give them a shot. It couldlead to big things, it could lead to nothing, but at least it wassomething. Today, with the advent of standardized playlists, andthe tremendous influence of Clear Channel Top 40 powerhouses KIISin Los Angeles and Z100 in New York, musicians may never have thechance to get their songs on the air. The idea of a local hit isdying, and a dream that has inspired generations of young singersand bands is fading away.
“I played some songs that never became a hit except inYoungstown or Buffalo. But they loved them there,” says legendaryrock ‘n’ roll DJ Dick Biondi, who currently works nights at Chicagooldies station WJMK “Magic 104.3.” “Today you’ve got to getconstant play on MTV or VH1; you need that big push, with lots ofmoney. Things have gotten a little too organized,” he notes in asharp voice weathered by half a century on the air.
When Biondi got his first job in radio, rock ‘n’ roll did notexist. But when rock exploded, he was there, and he rode theteenaged wave to the heights of broadcasting success. From 1960 to1963, he presided over the 9 p.m.-12 p.m. shift at ABC’sChicago-based WLS 890 AM, one of America’s most fabled Top 40stations. At night, when atmospheric conditions were right, its50,000-watt signal covered the entire United States, much of Canadaand beyond.
Radio was a business then, too, but it was also about more thanthe bottom line. Biondi talked about high school football games onthe air and dyed his beard school colors. Every Friday night, hehosted record hops, where sharply dressed teens “tried to out-danceeach other” while he introduced them to new and up-and-comingartists. In February 1963, he became the first American DJ to playthe Beatles. “Everything I did was stupid, but it was right,” helikes to say. “If I tried to do (today) what I did in three yearsat WLS, I’d be fired in two days.” He made fun of his bosses,called the president of ABC radio a “stinkin’ miser” and poked funat the commercials. One April Fools’ day, he played a song insteadof a commercial. Imagine that in a Clear Channel world.
Though the Top 40 playlists of the 1960s comprised 40 songsplayed in tight rotation, DJs still were allowed a degree offreedom, personality and fun that no longer exist. WLS let itsjocks air five-minute dramas and choose a “pick of the week,” andKISS 103.5 DJs hardly have time to say anything besides “the new103.5 KISS FM,” let alone exercise much creativity. “Radio is showbusiness,” says Biondi. “And owners forget that show business istwo words — ‘show’ and ‘business.’ They forgot the first at theexpense of the second.”
Radio has been eulogized, criticized, romanticized in song andon screen, and, though it hasn’t been the focal point of anyone’sliving room for 50 years, it still is a daily presence in a greatnumber of Americans’ lives. People like to listen in the car or atwork, if they still listen at all.
Weinberg senior Chuck Kindred used to listen to the radio allthe time. But once he arrived at NU, he found other ways todiscover more music he liked. “God, it would suck if we didn’t havethe Internet,” he says. On radio, he feels there is little varietywithin or among genres. A classic rock station in Memphis, Tenn.,has the same boring playlist as a classic rock station in Chicago.Kindred’s girlfriend, Communication freshman Candice Tse, foundmore to like about radio back home in Canada, where she couldlisten to one station for a long time. Here, she says, “I hear thestation, I hear some ads, it comes back, and I hear ‘Ignition(Remix)’ for the sixth time.”
Like most people, Kindred and Tse do not care who owns thestations they listen to. They hardly listen to the radio at all,because the variety of music disappoints them. Yet the mediumremains an important source of musical information. Weinberg juniorAdele Mischel always hears music on the radio for the first time.”You can’t really get that kind of variety anywhere else, unlessyou have a giant music collection,” she notes. But things tend toget overplayed even on her favorite stations, and in smallercities, things are often worse. Clear Channel owns six stations inMilwaukee, Mischel’s home market. In Rochester, N.Y., Clear Channelowns seven stations, and during the week, the Rochester KISSstation has one live DJ. The rest are voice-tracked fromCincinnati, Los Angeles and, yes, Chicago. Though KISS is one ofRochester Institute of Technology junior Kelsey Burch’s favoritestations, she admits it sounds canned, and she half-jokinglymentions her concern about radio behemouths using the airwaves fortheir own agenda. “To an extent they
do it today, throwing crapmusic in our faces,” she says. “It’s hard to dodge it sometimes.It’s weird to know that as you go up the chain of command only afew people control what we hear. Of course, it’s like that atalmost every business.” But radio is not just every business,though Clear Channel executives think it is.
“We believe the ultimate measure of our success is to provide asuperior value to our stockholders,” says the last line of theClear Channel mission statement. Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays doesnot even consider himself to be in the radio business. “We’resimply in the business of selling our customers products,” he toldFortune magazine earlier this year.
An exhibit called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio” takes up one wall of aroom in the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Radio still is onemedium that connects performers and listeners with a sense ofintimacy and immediacy, it says. That is what I was drawn to, whatSteve Jajkowski heard when he listened to Chicago radio in the1960s, and what Dick Biondi still strives to provide. “Being on theair, that’s what I live for,” Biondi says. “You don’t ever know whoyou’re touching.”
Radio has only been around as long as your grandparents, rock’n’ roll as long as your parents and MTV as long as you. Trendschange. Music progresses. Technology speeds past. As a rule, thingsdo not get less commercialized with the passage of time. Cynicismcomes easy. “It’s not surprising that everything is a product now.It’s just like everything else,” says Tim Peterson, owner of Hi-FiRecords in Chicago. “There aren’t a lot of people who want theirhorizons broadened. B96, Lite FM, Q101 — they’re all casualbackground music. It’s an afterthought.”
Yes, radio is a business, but not a business like any other.”It’s a communications medium, not a capitalism medium,” saysBracy. “Radio conglomerates are so disconnected from the reality ofwhat radio should be.” But if Clear Channel’s world is the reality,not the delusion, and this is indeed a world where everything is abusiness, and everyone is a potential customer, and radio is justone more way to sell things, is it na�ve to expect more, towant everyone else to hear what you did, feel as you did, aboutsomething that in many cases no longer exists?
Even in the era of the Internet and endless channels ofsatellite television, there is still something magical abouthitting a button and hearing a song, or someone’s voice talking toyou from parts unknown. But with each prepackaged format, eachcanned DJ and each formulaic computer-aided song that hits theairwaves, a little piece of that magic dies, taking part of theAmerican imagination with it.
