Indecency on the Airwaves

Two weeks ago, John Hogan received a horrible shock.

Hogan, the CEO of Clear Channel Communications, discovered that Howard Stern can be crude. Clear Channel, the nation’s largest radio company, has been making millions off of Stern’s antics for years. Unfortunately for Stern, after Janet Jackson’s bare breast shocked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into enforcing a new code of decency on the airwaves—clearly a priority for the country right now—Hogan discovered Stern’s curious style and decided the show wasn’t appropriate for radio. Citing its desire to protect Americans from indecency, Clear Channel has removed Stern from six radio markets.

But Clear Channel’s treatment of Stern is interesting not because it is a new phenomenon for the media giant, but because it isn’t.

Long before Jackson’s breast initiated a new era of FCC involvement in broadcasting, Clear Channel was using its tremendous power to control what Americans hear. When the Dixie Chicks criticized the war in Iraq, for example, Clear Channel refused to play their music. The company’s executives also chose to silence Charles Goyette, a decorated veteran and former Reaganite who got his start in politics by running Barry Goldwater’s student operation during “Mr. Conservative’s” 1964 presidential bid. Until recently, Goyette was a drive-time radio host at a Philadelphia Clear Channel station. But when President Bush began moving the country towards war, he questioned Bush’s rationale—and found his show moved from one of the best slots in radio to one of the worst. Thanks to his recently signed five-year contract, he was free to go on criticizing Bush, but Clear Channel made certain that nobody would be listening.

Clear Channel’s desire to control what the public hears also often leads the company to engage in tactics even more blatantly inimical to the democratic process. When the Democratic National Committee attempted to run an advertisement criticizing Rep. Charles “Chip” Pickering Jr, R-Miss., two Mississippi Clear Channel stations refused to run the ad. Incidentally, Pickering sits on the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, which is responsible for overseeing the telecommunications industry—including Clear Channel’s operations.

But Clear Channel is just one company, and even though we feel that its decisions are often frustratingly irresponsible—or just asinine, as in Stern’s case—it has the right to air what it wants. The real problem is that Clear Channel dominates the American radio market—so the intolerant conservatives running the San Antonio, Texas-based company get to inflict their views on the rest of the country. Since 1996, when Congress relaxed the rules that govern media ownership, Clear Channel has gone from 30 radio stations to more than 1200. This amounts to roughly one out of every ten American stations. But more importantly, Clear Channel controls as much as half the radio market in certain big cites, and new mergers, combined with lax regulation, promise to raise that number significantly in some markets.

That means when Clear Channel refuses to run a Democratic Party ad, they can prevent as much as half of a major city from ever hearing it. To make matters worse, the FCC under Chairman Michael Powell, who used to help corporations evade anti-trust laws for a living, has repeatedly attempted to relax the already weak regulations that govern media conglomerates. This would be disturbing even if Clear Channel weren’t so politically assertive.

The FCC should focus more of its attention on the real indecency on America’s airwaves. Howard Stern may be crude, but Clear Channel’s reckless behavior, and the steady deregulation that let it become the loudest voice in American radio, is obscene.