If you want to see how the Telecommunications act of 1996 (Clinton) has screwed up the Radio Business check this article out! Vulture Capitalism it appears consistently forces job loses and layoffs, and now my favorite Progressive Radio Station! Here's the sick part about talk radio and what it has become, many places around the country have zero left wing stations. Oh I know the righty idiots here will say it's not profitable and the market will decide. That doesn't fly in the Democratic stronghold of Portland Oregon, KPOJ was consistently higher (ratings) than many right wing stations in the Portland market. This is just another perfect example of Right Wing Fascists screwing Americans out of yet another FREEDOM to listen to who they want to hear when it comes to politics.
story.
By Carl Wolfson of Portland, Oregon. For six years, Carl was the local host of KPOJ's "Carl in the Morning" show.
Today’s Willamette Week contains an excellent cover story by Aaron Mesh, headlined, “Who Killed KPOJ?”
It is fairly written. But here’s the rest of the story.
Aaron points out the consequence of Bain Capital loading KPOJ’s owner, Clear Channel, with $16.4 billion in debt. I hope the loss of our signal – deeply felt by tens of thousands of Oregonians and many thousands more who streamed KPOJ nationwide – will renew a deeper discussion of media consolidation and corporate control of the public airwaves.
If you came to Portland in the 1970s, and there were 15 AMs and 15 FMs, you could talk to 15 different owners. But since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, in markets of 45+ stations, one entity can own eight radio stations.
Check out the WW chart. Three companies, Clear Channel (Texas), Entercom (Pennsylvania) and Alpha (Oregon) dominate our licensed airwaves.
That means less diversity and fewer points of view; it is a market model that increasingly fails to deliver radio in the public interest.
I applaud BlueOregon’s SAVE KPOJ petition, which now has more than 15,000 signatures, and its newest petition calling on Congressman Walden to hold official hearings in Portland on media consolidation.
Your voice is critical. This is how change begins. If you were a loyal listener, you heard me quote Frederick Douglass a hundred times: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
I have immense respect for Clear Channel Portland president, Robert Dove; during my six years at KPOJ, he was the perfect boss – helpful and kind to me, especially after I lost my dad in 2010 and my mom this past May.
Robert is fond of pointing out that he’s from Oregon and that the Clear Channel Portland cluster is locally run. But that is not entirely true. Many of Robert’s toughest decisions (like having to lay off dozens and of hardworking employees since 2007) were forced on him by the heavy debt squeezing Clear Channel’s bottom line.
There is a difference between capitalism and vulture capitalism.
The LBO boom of the 1980s, the fever that hatched Bain, has become an incalculable curse on American workers. Fed chair Paul Volcker rightly protested at the time that the greed would eventually destroy jobs and assets.
Similarly, when the firewall between commercial banks and risky security firms (part of FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act) was finally obliterated in the 1990s, the Wall Street collapse of 2008 became inevitable. That takedown of the county’s and world’s economy also took with it the homes, savings, jobs and self-respect of millions of human beings.
Any “Carl in the Morning” listener knows that.
On the other hand, if you tune in to Houston talker Michael Berry (Hey—he’s on Portland station KEX!), you’ll hear that Bill Clinton is Hitler, government-cheese eaters are destroying America, and that Barack Obama is “a big-eared ass clown.”
When Congressman DeFazio called to wish me well, his first words were a critique of that “entertainment,” and the fare that now runs in my old time slot: “Soma.”
Peter’s analysis, as always, was spot on. It’s all Huxley’s delicious soma.
The Bain squeeze affected KPOJ in smaller, yet consequential ways. We were never allowed one penny for promotion.
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kennymotown
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