More Clear Channel Darkness...

John Macy · From: Rockport TX/Denver CO

'SF Weekly' cuts deal with Clear Channel

Two anticompetitive chains seek to dominate concert ads By Tim Redmond and Kimberly Chun

New Times, which owns SF Weekly and East Bay Express, has cut a deal with Clear Channel, the giant entertainment conglomerate, that could shut other print media, including the Bay Guardian, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in concert advertising, representatives of Bill Graham Presents, a Clear Channel subsidiary, told Bay Guardian ad sales staffers June 23. Under the terms of the deal, New Times will pay Clear Channel a sum in the high six figures for naming rights to the Warfield Theatre, which for the next three years will become the SF Weekly Warfield, BGP representatives said. In exchange, Clear Channel will spend so much money on advertising in the Weekly and Express that there will be little or no money left for competing print media. In effect, one of the nation's largest media oligopolies has joined forces with the nation's largest alternative weekly chain to squeeze out an independently owned competitor. "It's bad," Jeff Perlstein, executive director of Media Alliance, told us. "As all these dark tentacles become entwined, it gets more and more serious as a threat to independent media." Nobody at New Times, SF Weekly, or Clear Channel would return our calls seeking comment. But a press release sent out June 27 from SF Weekly and BGP described the naming-rights deal and stated that SF Weekly and BGP "will collaborate across business fronts." The press release never mentions New Times or Clear Channel and presents the deal as if it were just a friendly agreement between local companies. The BGP staffers who informed the Bay Guardian's entertainment account manager, Adam Shandobil, and marketing manager, Warren Spicer, of the deal said it was effective immediately. And in fact, BGP has pulled all of its ads from the Bay Guardian this week. BGP presents concerts and events at the Fillmore, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Chronicle Pavilion, Punch Line, and Mountain Winery in the Bay Area, and at Sleep Train Amphitheatre in Marysville, among other venues, and ads from all of these are affected by the deal. Media observers we contacted said they'd never heard of a similar deal – but the arrangement comes as little surprise. Clear Channel, which owns 7 local radio stations and more than 1,200 nationwide, is known around the country for its savage, anticompetitive policies and its attempts to establish hegemony in entertainment markets (see "Clear and Present Danger," 4/24/2002). New Times, which owns 11 alt-weeklies, has become an icon of cutthroat, anticompetitive behavior in the alternative press (see "The Predatory Chain," 6/27/2002). In the 1990s Clear Channel developed an aggressive strategy of buying up not only local radio stations but billboard companies and concert and sports promoters. The idea, as the Wall Street Journal reported June 24, was that "Clear Channel figured its radio stations and billboards could shill upcoming concerts, and performers would gravitate to its venues for the extra marketing. The radio stations would push concert offerings in each market." But it hasn't worked out that well. "Instead," the Journal noted, "the combination irked music fans, record labels, and artists, who complained that Clear Channel used its might to punish artists who didn't play by its rules and contributed to the sharp rise in ticket prices at venues it controls." That's why Clear Channel recently announced plans to spin off its concert business as a new subsidiary. The media company has also been accused of censorship. The day after the Sept. 11 attacks, Clear Channel issued a list of songs that its stations were advised not to play, including John Lennon's "Imagine" and anything by Rage Against the Machine. Shortly after Clear Channel bought Bay Area radio station KMEL, the station fired producer David "Davey D" Cook, who had dared to air a show about Rep. Barbara Lee's objections to the invasion of Afghanistan. The corporation has close links to the Bush administration, and in 2003 Clear Channel stations sponsored rallies supporting the administration's war in Iraq. These are the people SF Weekly is getting into bed with. New Times and Clear Channel have at least one thing in common: They hate competition. In October 2002 New Times cut a deal with Village Voice Media in which the two chains agreed to end competition in Los Angeles and Cleveland by shutting down a pair of alternative papers. New Times closed its LA paper and secured the Cleveland market for itself; VVM reciprocated by shutting down its Cleveland operation. The US Justice Department declared the deal illegal (see "New Times Nailed," 1/21/03). Sherry Wasserman, a senior official at Another Planet, a BGP competitor, said the deal sounded highly unusual. "Look at the Chronicle Pavilion, which still advertises in the Contra Costa Times and every other place," she said. Guy Carson, owner of Café du Nord, said the arrangement might have a negative affect on the local music scene. "Obviously this has big implications," he told us. "To the extent that it hurts the Bay Guardian and [the] Chronicle, it's going to hurt the local scene. "Maybe," he added, "SF is not immune to general homogenization." PS: The Bay Guardian is suing New Times for predatory pricing, charging that SF Weekly and the East Bay Express are selling ads below coast in an effort to drive the Bay Guardian out of business.

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Yup Donny..

I think this one needs to be filed in the Boo Friggin' Hoo Bin™..

Oligopoly bites Megalopoly.

No news here..

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 30 June 2005 at 05:41 PM.]

Drew Howard · From: 48854

From what I have read here Clear Channel isn't the bad guy on this one, it's New Times' bid to starve the other alternative rags out of business. Newspapers fight these no-compete wars all the time.

The issue I have, and a lot of other people have, with Clear Channel is its monoplization of media outlets, not to mention the centralization of its radio playlists (the same five songs over and over).

But the fault really lies with the FCC and the Repugnicans, with a few sell-out Demoncrats on board. Media chains are allowed to gobble up smaller ones unfettered, and what you get is news from bigger but fewer sources. Sounds like communism to me.

Like Eric's favorite, Faux News. Over to you, EW. It'll be just like old times.

Drew

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Drew Howard - website - Fessenden D-10 8/8, Fessenden SD-12 5/5 (Ext E9), Magnatone S-8, N400's, BOSS RV-3

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

You could call it communism, but it seems to be the new capitalism.

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

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[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 05 April 2006 at 04:21 AM.]

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Yeah, I wonder if some of these responses would be different if it was National Public Radio that was buying up/ shutting out all of the competition...
It certainly seems more and more clear that what's "good for big business" is never good for the rest of us.
I fondly recall the early days of FM radio where local Program Directors made their own choices for their market, and you might hear Firesign Theater sandwiched between Motown and Jeff Beck, with a little Beatles smeared on to taste.
Sigh...

[This message was edited by Mark van Allen on 01 July 2005 at 09:26 AM.]

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

I think I blew it with SFGate when I got on their opinion board and proposed the USMC Excersizes in Monterey Bay be done as "Live Fire" a couple years ago.

Far as I'm concerned, seditious jounalism should be dealt with the same way as it was in the first Civil War.

With locks and keys.

(About the time General Meade's Gettysburg veterans quelled the NYC Draft Riots by throwing protesters off the tops of buildings, there were 13,000 some people in jail for sedition. Most of them Democrats... Where's Abe when we need him?)

Nobody in their right mind looks at SFGate's and NPR's immodest anti-american editorial bent as anything but comical relics of a soon to be extinct mental disorder anyhow. Do they think they can demand that businesses pay for ads in such sick humilitaion?

Sorry. Jimmy Carter isn't president anymore.

Off to the Boo Hoo Ward I say.

I better quit before I get "political".

Wouldn't want that to happen..

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 02 July 2005 at 04:41 AM.]

Graham Lathrop · From: Dallas TX

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[This message was edited by Graham Lathrop on 11 June 2006 at 09:58 AM.]

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

I'm with Graham on this one...

Henry Nagle · From: Santa Rosa, California

Very bitter, Eric. I like NPR. It's not retarded and insulting like nearly all commercial radio. Have you been putting us on with this conservative "act" this whole time? You seem far too intelligent to actually believe this mean spirited banter that I see from time to time.
No ill will intended by the way.

Edited to say that I think Jimmy Carter is a good guy. BooHootoyou!

[This message was edited by Henry Nagle on 01 July 2005 at 10:16 PM.]

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Yup.

Just remember who owns the voting machines..

BBBWWWAAAAAahaahaha

Bless your hearts.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 02 July 2005 at 02:43 AM.]

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

"Yeah, I wonder if some of these responses would be different if it was National Public Radio that was buying up/ shutting out all of the competition..."

Well, we don't have to worry about NPR anymore; clearly they don't have the lobby/ campaign contribution budget that Clear Channel has.

"I fondly recall the early days of FM radio where local Program Directors made their own choices for their market, and you might hear Firesign Theater sandwiched between Motown and Jeff Beck, with a little Beatles smeared on to taste.
Sigh..."

Sigh is right...

Steinar Gregertsen · From: Arendal, Norway, R.I.P.

quote:
I fondly recall the early days of FM radio where local Program Directors made their own choices for their market, and you might hear Firesign Theater sandwiched between Motown and Jeff Beck, with a little Beatles smeared on to taste.
Sigh...

Ah, finally something for me to brag about!

Fortunately it's still like this over here, at least on the non-commercial channels. I can leave my radio on one station, and during the day I will be exposed to rock, country, 'world', classical, jazz, blues, bubblegum pop, etc.... Plus several "in debth" programs, often with real debates about social and political issues.

I admit it, I'm a happy radio junkie....

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

[This message was edited by Steinar Gregertsen on 02 July 2005 at 05:24 AM.]

Marty Pollard · Posted 2 Jul 2005 4:42 am

It's true, modern leftists suffer from demonstrable mental illness; most notably subtle schizophrenia in their acceptance of diametrically opposed views on many 'same subject' issues. Not to mention subsequent denial of same. All of you 'baby-killing/death-row-convict-freeing' muddy thinkers need to stick to music since thinking ain't yer bag.

You poor backwoods hicks need to get out more or buy one of those new-fangled digital radios. I've got one of the newer models that 'dials in' NPR and Air America (for you schiziod schmucks) and Pacifica and all kinds of local and national alternative radio programming.

I'm especially surprised to see you John Macy, wringing your hands over this. Right here in the Denver market we've got TONS of alternative radio, both music and talk. Would you like me to email you a list of AM/FM frequencies to check out?

[This message was edited by Marty Pollard on 02 July 2005 at 05:47 AM.]

Henry Nagle · From: Santa Rosa, California

"Baby killing, death row convict freeing"?

Marty? Did you have an abusive leftist nanny as a child?

That kind of jargon is totally ridiculous and does nothing to further or explain anyone's cause.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Well here's the scoop without getting "political".

Private media companies don't practice "Censorship". They excersize their rights.

Nobody including myself minds a couple jokes about the current administration drolly snorted into a microphone by Garrison Kiellor. I listen to him every week.

In the private sector, drooling, sputtering idiots like Don Imus can lose their position when the lucid "reverse tourettes' syndrome" quips they intermittently spit out become fewer and farther between.

Public funded media conglomerates are always in danger of losing their funding when they attack the public. Even relatively small segments of it.

Remember,it's not fair for your neighbor to have to pay for things that denigrate him/her or his/her political beliefs. Regardless of their freedom not to listen to them.

We bought the voting machines because we liked what they said.

Don't like it?

Buy your own.

It's a free country.

EJL

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

Two cannibals were cooking a clown.
One said, 'Does this taste funny to you?'

Graham Lathrop · From: Dallas TX

a

[This message was edited by Graham Lathrop on 11 June 2006 at 09:59 AM.]

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Graham. You can turn it down, you can turn it off.

I think a good study of Abraham Lincoln since you mention the word "ape", wouldn't hurt a lot of people. That was the word most of his detractors used for him. It was a majority of the country during his tenure in office.

Many people sing his praises not realizing that he was perhaps the most hated president, and that they would have been right in there too after the first time he sent our own army down on our own citizens, killing ten thousand or so. Not to mention illegally using the national treasury surreptitiously to bribe Illinois into "staying with The Union". He suspended Habeas Corpus, considered locking up Supreme Court Justices, and had people in his cabinet that simply took billions by today's standards outright. Talk about "Halliburton"...

I might suggest that you not use this horrible gasoline since you object so much to the machinations that are used to acquire it, or the people we elect to do it.

I have not been offended by any election that I know of. I merely support what I can support for my own reasons, and try to turn the rest into music.

If you think NPR represents "Real Dialogue" you certainly don't "get out" much. Maybe they balance Al Jazzira's anti-americanism with the BBC's, and throw Mara Liasson in for the "conservative view".

I think a lot of people like Garrison for his homespun midwestern humor and I don't see how people that are "religious" have a lot to object to about it. His humorous jibes at the administration are never offensive to me, and I believe in god.

I don't see how you can read "politics" into people being forced to pay for listening to entertainment they don't find entertaining.

Good "items" like GK, Vivaldi, Local Historical blurbs, and other great NPR programming have simply been outweighed by their naivety when it comes to slipping in a bunch of lame political slant. Like the titanical CBS, they have simply gotten "caught".

Funny too that it was the "young people" that caught them. It's always that way.

I guess that just because more and more of them, especially young people guffaw at the "public broadcasting system" maintaining that they provide "real dialogue" on top of it all, and when offered a choice, find the facts on their own and find the Bill Moyers' to be bitter incoherent hate mongers.

I think the demise of the "Imus in the Morning" on MSNBC shows what happens when a dribbling drivelling idiot loses his edge, and his witty spasm-like quips slow to the point where they no longer cover the former, shows what happens in the "info-tainment marketplace".

In a feeble attempt to keep this thread from dissolving into political acrimony, I might suggest that people don't care to pay for goods that aren't what they are advertised to be.

News being entertainmant and all.

EJL

Marty Pollard · Posted 2 Jul 2005 11:34 am

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Just who decides what parameters the "majority" supports with tax dollars, and which "minority" will be forced to listen to/ pay for stuff they don't like?

I pay $1002 a year in school tax, and I don't have any kids.
Millions of people who didn't ever drive helped to pay for the interstate Highway system.
There are a lot of other examples of public programs that only a proportion of the taxpaying citizenry ever uses... including vast amounts of "pork" being written into current bills. It's the way our system works. So it's funny to me, and a little out of balance, when what's objected to is arts, music, or thought that goes against the far-right agenda. And not, for instance, the enriching of already engorged book-cooking, deceptive, corporate giants from the tax trough.
I don't think the "demonstrable leftist mental illness" that we're talking about here is as simple as bemoaning the possible demise of NPR, funding for School arts, etc., so much as it's a simple question- "What's next?"
If we support the elimination of art and thought that doesn't "fit the agenda", pretty soon there'll be a very narrow agenda to fit. History has shown that to be the case time and again.
I don't know about the other whiny liberals out there, but I'm concerned about the future.

[This message was edited by Mark van Allen on 02 July 2005 at 12:59 PM.]

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

One thing to think of when it comes to the radio is that the airways are publicly owned. Clear Channel gets those airways for basicly free. In essense we are paying for Clear channel's ability to control what music is available on the radio stations in this country. So besides having the most pathetic pop crap music being the only thing that can be found on the dial we are losing money in the billions in lost revenue by giving the airways away to "free market" corporate forces.

If the airways were truly privatized I would have much less of a problem with the corporate circle jerk that is strip mining the music industry in the states. You guys can get all smug about liberals or whatever turd you like to chew on to feel important but when you get down to it radio in the states is for the most part garbage. NPR is one of the last places to hear some music that somebody is playing because they actually like it.

Bob

[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 02 July 2005 at 02:35 PM.]

Marty Pollard · Posted 2 Jul 2005 3:05 pm

I LIKE NPR.
I HATE CLEAR CHANNEL POP RADIO (of ANY flavor).

BUT, there's still plenty of spectrum for anybody that wants to operate a station. Try it. If I like it, I'll support it.

I'm darn sure NOT for restricting Clear Channels right to operate their stations and broadcast crap. Who am I to say what others should listen to?

It's THAT SIMPLE!

Graham Lathrop · From: Dallas TX

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[This message was edited by Graham Lathrop on 11 June 2006 at 09:59 AM.]

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