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Monday, March 31, 2003
Should we call it "Fox Radio"?
Clear Channel, of course.
Clear Channel Communications has long been the company that the music industry loves to loathe, so aggressively dominant as the nation's biggest radio broadcaster that some critics refer to it as the Microsoft of music. Now, though, Clear Channel finds itself fending off a new set of accusations: that the company is using its considerable market power to drum up support for the war in Iraq, while muzzling musicians who oppose it.
The company's executives insist they have no political agenda, and even some of its most outspoken business antagonists say many of the latest accusations do not stand up to scrutiny. But the criticism has grown sufficiently loud that Clear Channel hired a crisis communications firm last week to help it handle the uproar.
One former Clear Channel executive said that the company's rapid rise — from 43 radio stations only eight years ago to more than 1,200 now — had not prepared it for the bruising life at the top of the industry. "They don't recognize the playing field they are playing on now," this person said.
The critics, whose views have been expressed in newspaper articles and columns, and on Salon.com and other Web sites, cite an unusual series of pro-military rallies drummed up by Glenn Beck, whose talk show is syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks, a Clear Channel subsidiary. He has convened the rallies in part to counter antiwar comments by celebrities.
The company's critics also point out that some Clear Channel country music stations stopped playing the Dixie Chicks earlier this month after the group's lead singer, Natalie Maines, told fans during a London concert, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
Clear Channel's opponents either imply or say outright that Clear Channel has taken these steps to build support within the Bush administration at a time the Federal Communications Commission is considering regulations over how many radio stations a single company can own.
John Hogan, the president and chief executive of Clear Channel's radio division, dismissed the idea of a corporate political push as "laughable," saying, "I won't kid you and tell you that Clear Channel is above criticism, but the brush that is painting us as evil and mean-spirited, and with some sort of onerous political agenda is one that I have a hard time getting my arms around." Clear Channel, he said, is purely a company that builds audiences through entertainment so that advertisers can sell goods and services to them. "We're in the business of having the largest possible audience," Mr. Hogan said, not "the most politically unified audience."
[snip}
More difficult is explaining away the 18 "Rally for America!" events that had been held through last Friday at the urging of Mr. Beck and co-sponsored by one of his advertisers, Bills Khakis. Thirteen of those rallies were co-sponsored and promoted by local Clear Channel stations, including one held March 15 in Atlanta that was sponsored by Clear Channel's WGST and attended by an estimated 25,000 people. Further plans for rallies include events in Tampa; Lubbock, Tex.; and Dothan, Ala.
Such rallies are highly unusual, said a longtime radio executive at another company, who, citing Clear Channel's power, spoke on condition of anonymity. "It flies right in the face of the fact that the government has always said that radio stations should have a balanced view of what is going on, serve the public interest and not take sides," the executive said.
Clear Channel, which hired Brainerd Communicators, a financial communications and crisis-management firm, last week to help deal with the controversy, did not make Mr. Beck available for an interview. But in a draft op-ed article he circulated, Mr. Beck described the rallies as a grassroots response to his personal broadcast call to "Mr. and Mrs. America" to urge their local radio stations to hold rallies. "There is no corporate conspiracy, hidden agenda or grand design," he wrote. He derided criticism of his campaign as "a concerted media effort to marginalize the voices of patriotic Americans."
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