"Pureplay" Webcasters Settlement Still Stinks

SoundExchange, negotiating for the record labels, and webcasters struck a compromise announced yesterday that defines more reasonable royalty payments for a longer period of time -- 2006 (retroactively) to 2015.

There's no doubt that the compromise is better than the Copyright Royalty Board's initial verdict that would have seen webcasters paying the labels virtually 100% of their revenue or more.

Hey, that kind of makes 25% -- one quarter -- look good, right?

Not so fast.

If webcasters were dead with the last iteration of SoundExchange's taxation, they are only half dead now.

Dead nonetheless. Life in prison instead of death by lethal injection.

If you haven't seen the nuts and bolts of this compromise forced by Congress and signed by the President, Kurt Hanson is my go-to man on these kinds of issues.

The compromise doesn't cover terrestrial radio streams and broadcasters should be on their knees thanking God for that. Not that terrestrial streaming has much of a future in webcasting. It's just that radio has enough problems already.

Kurt outlines the three main benefits for those who choose to swallow this bitter medicine:

1. It cuts the CRB per-performance rates for 2007-10 by approximately a third to a half.

2. It establishes per-performance rates for 2011-15 — with annual increases, to be sure, but nowhere near as huge as the kind of annual increases the CRB was coming up with, and without the risk and expense of participating in another CRB proceeding for that period.

3. And it gives smaller webcasters a chance to grow into these rates — with a “percentage of revenues” royalty rate for a webcaster’s early years (about 14% until they hit $1.25 million in annual revenues, and 25% for about a year thereafter). (Note, however, that this provision expires at the end of 2014.)

Expect to keep more records -- and I don't mean vinyl.

Webcasters would have to provide SoundExchange with census reports -- actual tunes played and total listenership -- and retain server logs for a minimum of four years. And smaller webcasters can pay a "proxy" fee, skip the paperwork and be poorer yet.

This compromise stinks.

It's barely a compromise if the net effect of it is to hamstring a potential growth industry that is beneficial to the labels.

I say that because the record industry is holding music discovery hostage by taxing businesses that actually promote their songs and artists.

And if you think paying up to 25% of your revenue is a good deal, I wonder if the labels would like to pay up to 25% of all their revenue to webcasters or radio stations in return for the privilege of exposing their artists.

Congress and your local music label -- local to Washington -- have ganged up on entrepreneurs who want to fully utilize the Internet for one of the things it does best -- music discovery.

So, Pandora may opt for these new rates but it's a bad deal for them -- remember, 25% is the starting maximum and rates will go up.

This fish stinks the longer it's on paper.

The labels have effectively killed off their own business by not buying Napster when it could -- opting to sue it instead and encouraging clones.

Trying to tax radio stations even though every young person knows radio stations are the last place to go to discover new music. Let's be honest.

If the labels could have gotten this deal in 1950 for radio airplay, they would have killed off their golden age of manufacturing vinyl and keeping all the profits. And after all, the record labels were the ones who screwed the starving artists they now romanticize as they lobby away.

Now the labels -- through SoundExchange -- have the momentum. They are getting their way. Instead of flat out killing off the webcasters of the future, they've hog-tied them.

Celebrate if you must, but there's very little to be happy about.

Any agreement that starts -- starts -- by taxing the webcasters on one-fourth of their revenue over $1.25 million is a no-win for all parties.

Webcasters can't sell enough Google AdSense to be viable and if they could, their viability just decreased when they accepted this offer of Hemlock from the labels.

Webcasters might argue that they were under a deadline to come up with an agreement or else have the terms decided for them. That is true.

But my answer is -- if the agreement doesn't work for webcasters, come up with another business.

Feature only music that is rights free.

Music is free anyway to the next generation -- look around and see how many young people actually pay for music.

Freeze out the labels from the webcasting world -- let them have up to 25% of nothing.

A much smaller, more reasonable charge is prudent but in today's economy accepting the "pureplay" compromise is tantamount to dooming an entire emerging industry.

If you want a business model, don't look at the record labels to come up with it. Look at their record.

So, webcasters can survive but not thrive.

Pandora can continue.

This year Pandora will do about $30 million and right off the top, 25% of that goes to the record labels under this deal.

Some economic stimulus plan, eh?

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Lieb on Elvin

I took advantage of being at the recent International Association of Schools of Jazz annual meeting in Lucerne with Dave Liebman to interview him about his time with Elvin Jones in the early 70s. Dave was of course in the Jones quartet that recorded the seminal ‘Live at the Lighthouse’ album, a recording that’s still considered to be probably the greatest album under Elvin’s own name and one that captures the live experience of post-Coltrane jazz to perfection.

I was conscious that Dave had been interviewed on his time with Elvin dozens if not hundreds of times, but I wanted to try and get a bit more inside the story from a musician’s point of view and really try to find out what it was like for a young musician to work with someone of the stature of Elvin Jones and how things were organized in relation to the usual things we experience as musicians – touring, recording, playing, rehearsing etc.

Dave of course is not only a great musician but the perfect interviewee - honest, enthusiastic, well-spoken and funny. And I think the interview is fascinating not only because of the info about Elvin, but in how it gives a glimpse into a musical world and way of working that’s all but disappeared.

RG: Can you remember the very first time you played with Elvin?

DL: I was living on 19th street, I got a call from Gene (Perla) who’d been playing with Elvin, (with Joe Farrell), for about 6 months and who had said, when he joined Elvin, ‘I will get you and Steve (Grossman) on the gig’. He was the first in our generation to get this kind of gig and was very heavy in the little community we had. And sure enough, at 11.30 one night he called me and said ‘Slugs, now!’

RG: So at 11.30 one night you got a call saying come down and play!?

DL: ‘Come down and play now, he wants to hear you now’, or whatever he said, and it was from the West Side to the Lower East Side – Slugs, in a terrible neighbourhood, you know all the stories about Slugs. I went, I walked in, there might have been 8 people in the place, Elvin was standing at the bar with Joe Farrell, I didn’t see Gene. I walk in, Elvin is standing there smoking a cigarette, he says, ‘Are you ready?’ – it was a real set-up! I said, ‘Yeah, I guess’, and he said, ‘Get your horn out’, We go up to the stage and Joe stays at the bar, so it’s just me, Elvin and Gene! He says ‘what do you want to play’ and I played what I played the first time I played when I auditioned for Pete LaRoca, with Steve Swallow and Chick Corea two years earlier (A whole other story!).

RG: Which was?

DL: ‘Softly as in a Morning Sunrise’, and I played that, and finished that, and he said ‘Got another one?’ and I played ‘Yesterdays’, he said ‘Another one’, and I played ‘Tunisia’. So, three tunes, Joe stayed at the bar, I think there were three people in the place, it’s 1.30 in the morning, Elvin says ‘I’m recording next week, be at Rudy’s on February 12th, next Thursday, 10 O’ Clock, bring a tune’ – and that was ‘Slumber’ on ‘Genesis’

RG: Wow!

DL: So that’s it, I did the record date and six months later, in September of that year – ’71 – Keiko called me at 4 in the morning, I was living in a big loft, I didn’t want to answer the phone, my girlfriend said ‘you gotta answer the damn phone!’, but I said ‘no, I’m not answering’ so she answered the phone – it was on the other side of the loft – so it’s four in the morning and it’s Keiko, and she says ‘Elvin wants you to play tomorrow in Chicago at noon, you have to take the next plane at La Guardia, there’s a ticket waiting for you’.

So I take a 7am plane and I end up in Chicago, I get to this school in the middle of a suburb, a 12 o’clock concert for high school kids – me Elvin and Gene. Joe’s still on the gig, he just didn’t make that particular afternoon concert. After the gig we go to the hotel – the Croydon Hotel – very well known for jazz musicians, and Elvin…….. I had no idea if I was supposed to play with him for the next few nights or what, I don’t remember, but he said ‘Come and see me in my room’ and I go up and he’s sitting there, smoking a cigarette, looking like a King (laughs), and he says ‘I’d like you to be part of the band for good now, you start right now, tonight. Joe’ll still be here, you’re gonna take his place, we’ll work you in’. Nothing about saxophonist Steve Grossman yet, though he knew Steve, so from then on I started working with him steady – from that one day, right there.



RG: Let me ask you a specific musical question – so, you’re playing with Elvin Jones, whom you saw many times with John Coltrane, but once you were on the stage, playing with him….

DL: Well I was scared – scared like shit! (Laughs) Shaking!

RG: Of course, but to get to the actual music - at any point in the first night was there a point where you got over the fear and got a feeling of how it felt musically to play with him?

DL: I don’t remember a specific time, but that first audition night probably not. But six months later, after I joined the band, going home every night was either a nightmare or a celebration, depending on how I felt about my playing that night.

RG: Depending on how you felt?

DL: Yes, depending on how I felt – though nobody really said anything. Of course Gene was there and then Steve joined and eventually it became our thing. Me, Gene and Steve were like a loft crew anyway, so with Elvin it became like a family vibe, you know?

But of course the main thing, and the story I tell everybody about playing with Elvin, is the time – playing behind the beat. I mean, if there was anything you knew Elvin for, besides the power, it was the back of the beat. And I just knew it, and understood it, and cognized it, and taped it, but just couldn’t fucking do it! (Laughs) I mean, I always say – I was rushing for six months – and I was! I was very conscious of that aspect of it – that cymbal beat.

And of course the other thing was, after seeing Trane so much, I just wanted Elvin to……….I thought, you know, ‘I’m gonna get Elvin to open up’.

RG: You mean open up playing-wise?

DL: Well you know – start to bash, start to burn! And I’m on my knees, literally and figuratively, and he’s just - {imitates the classic Elvin grunting sound that he made when he played} – he ain’t givin’ up NOTHIN’! And he isn’t givin’ it up until he’s good and ready to give it up. You know, my first chorus I’m squeezing my neck, and he’s just tippin’ like this, and once in a while he’ll say ‘take your time’ – he’ll yell ‘take your time’, and he’s just tippin’, and then eventually he does his dance so to speak. But what I realise is number one, obviously, this is not John Coltrane, and number two - Elvin is not the same Elvin – it’s Elvin Jones the bandleader – the architect of the set. He’s gonna do it in the time that HE wants. And of course he’s now the leader, not the sideman. You know, understanding all this came later on – that this is not him with John Coltrane. So these are the first cognizant things I remember about it. And then of course when Steve got in the band, we had our little scene together, from all our playing in the lofts, It felt more normal, more natural. I mean we just started having a good time then.

RG: So when he said ‘take your time’, do you remember if there were more instructions on playing, or was it just occasional things?

DL: Occasional things, we rehearsed a little – we tried ‘Picadilly Lilly’ but it didn’t work, but he liked ‘New Breed’. Picadilly had a funny bridge and he said ‘I don’t know if we want to do this…..’ kind of thing. Once it didn’t work with him, you know, with those guys – it wasn’t like what we do, like ‘OK, let’s try it again’ – if it didn’t work with them, if it wasn’t natural for them, you knew you were never going to play it again! (Laughs)

Now ‘New Breed’, for some reason, worked, though at about half the speed I had contemplated it at. You know that tune?

RG: Yes

DL: And I had thought of it like that Tony Williams ‘Spring’ record, with brushes and Sam and Wayne and Peacock, and I’m thinking of it like (sings fast snatch of the melody), and Elvin says ‘I don’t think so’ (Laughs), ‘let’s go here’ (sings it much slower). So he’s slowing it down to half of what I ever thought it as being and that became ‘New Breed’

But no, he never gave instructions, in fact I think in Miles’ way Miles might even have done a bit more, and even that was very little. Elvin never said a word about the music really – he never really said anything, and the other thing was, once you had a set, you pretty much played the same set every night.

RG: Once he was happy with it….

DL: Yes, for a couple of years we more or less played the same set – you had your ballad feature etc., and then there was my famous story about playing ‘I’m a Fool to Want You’ every night and going to him and telling him I had nothing left to say on it. It’s a dramatic story that I’m sure you’ve heard, but the point he made to me was ‘it’s your job to make them believe it every night - nobody ever heard it before tonight – don’t be thinking you can play something new every night - refinement is the name if the game’ that whole lesson – that was a big lesson for me when he gave me that. But otherwise, not much really in the way of instructions.

RG: And you said earlier about during the first six months with him, going home was either a celebration or a nightmare….

DL: Depending on my state of mind

RG: Yes, I guess he didn’t say much after gigs?

DL: Oh no, he never said ‘you played good tonight or you played bad tonight’ nobody ever said anything. I mean I learned that from LaRoca, because with LaRoca, who was my first real test, with Chick, with Jimmy Garrison – it was always a different piano player or bass player – with Swallow….. I mean I was a nut case. This was already two/three years earlier in ’69, and I said to LaRoca, you know,’ I’m so nervous here, I’m ready to commit suicide!’ And he said to me, because he was very smart, he was a real intellectual, ‘You’re doing that to yourself – you wouldn’t be up here if you weren’t doing it

RG: Yeah

DL: in other words he said, ‘Don’t expect to be patted on the head, but if you’re playing, then you’re doing it’, and that was a very good piece of advice and I kept that with Elvin, you know, I’m not waiting for him to cop, this is not my mother, no gold star or anything. In other words if you’re there and they’re not saying you’re fired, then you’re doing good! Don’t expect them to say you’re doing good though – they’re not going to come up to you and say ‘you played good tonight’ – it’s just that you got the gig, if you got the gig then you’re doing good.

The truth is, you know, with those cats, the way they were, if you weren’t doing good they’d just say ‘I got a replacement’. Look, I took Carlos Garnett’s place with Miles – he came to the first rehearsal I had in Miles’ house. I was in Miles’ house playing and he comes expecting to play! And the road manager says to him ‘go upstairs’, and he goes upstairs, and then walks out

RG: Because he sees someone else playing?

DL: Yes, because you know, with these guys, when you’re fired, you’re fired! It’s simple, there’s no ‘you know man you played good, but I can’t use you’ – it's more like the next day you come to the gig and there’s another guy there. Those cats didn’t….. for them it was a job – so I didn’t expect Elvin to say anything, and he didn’t! (Laughs)

RG: So also with Elvin, you rehearsed very little?

DL: We did a few rehearsals, but mostly at record dates – if you had a record date then you rehearsed at the record date and it was a first take. Almost invariably a first take – you would rarely do a second take – he wouldn’t do it! You’d finish your tune and he’d say ‘Next’. I learned very quickly – and this was a good lesson for playing with Miles – don’t expect a second take. You’d better be in tune – which was a struggle for me at that time – and you better play good because you’re not going to be able to say ‘I don’t like my solo’ (laughs). And I can tell you, a few times on record, how it sounds – I’m sorry, I didn’t have a second take!

RG: So, recording in general, recording with Elvin….

DL: Three or four hours – max. Because you know, time was money – three hours was a session, over three was a double session, and Blue Note didn’t want to pay overtime. ‘Merry Go Round’ with Chick and Jan Hammer, there was a couple of tunes with a couple of horns – there was one with Farrell, me and Steve, and Frank Foster – four horns – I think that was a six hour session. But it was really like ‘next’, ‘next’ – the first time you saw the music………

RG: That was it

DL: Yeah – that was the way they worked.

RG: So when you were in his band – what did that mean in terms of the amount of work you did – was it a certain number of weeks, months………?

DL: It varied – he certainly worked more than Miles – you’d do a couple of weeks on a week off, a week or a couple of weeks, then another week off. Or you’d do Canada - Montreal, Toronto etc. Or we’d play the Vanguard and then do Boston immediately afterwards – I remember doing that with him at least twice in the time I was with him. With Miles you might do a few gigs and then be off for a month or more. Of course Miles played concerts while Elvin played clubs – I hardly ever played clubs with Miles, though it was great the few times that we did it. And of course the money was better with Miles – with Elvin it was about $300 a week, while with Miles it was $400 a gig.

RG: And after you finished playing with him, you played again with him several times later on.

DL: Yes, in the 80s

RG: Did it feel any different

DL: Yes

RG: In what way?

DL: I was better! (laughs). Just like with LaRoca, I was finally able to keep up with him, and I can’t say lead him, but there was confidence, I had confidence. So the gigs I did with Elvin, they were all in Italy – Palle Danielsson, JF Jenny Clarke, Albert Mangelsdorff, Swallow and Scofield…….. there were three times when we did it, three years in a row where a promoter would put this together, so I had three or four gigs with Elvin for a couple of years, just these little special situations. And I was kind of the leader, because now I was kind of the heavy.

On the gig with Swallow and Scofield, at the soundcheck, we’re trying out ‘Day and Night’, you know that tune?

RG: Yeah

DL: Well Keiko comes running up to me, she says (pointing to Swallow)
‘What’s he playing?’
‘Electric bass’
‘But where’s the other bass?’
‘He doesn’t play the other one, this is Steve Swallow’
and she says in her Japanese accent,
‘I don’t know who he is, Elvin don’t like that – Elvin don’t like that bass!’ (laughs)
I didn’t say a goddamn word, I didn’t say anything and Sco was asking ‘is it cool, will it be alright?’

(You can see a short clip from that gig here)

RG: So what happened? Elvin didn’t say anything?

DL: No he didn’t - he did the gig. You do the gig – it’s a gig, those guys did thousands of gigs. They don’t care about one night, nobody cares – they’ve done it all before. That’s the other thing, they didn’t give a shit – I mean they cared about it at the moment, but they never thought about it before or afterwards. For them it was just another night of thousands of nights. We don’t have that – we have the big deal thing, which is why I was a maniac those first years. But once you do that for years it’s just like, ‘this is just another night – so what?’ And they were really like that and it took me a minute to get to that - this not a big deal – you might think it is, they don’t! (laughs)

RG: On the later gigs, his feel – did it feel any different in the 80s

DL: It was just so mature, what can I say – mature. Everything was perfect, his touch was perfect, he would turn on the energy in a perfect way, he was soulful…. He was classic by the 80s, he was classic Elvin Jones. It was beyond the records he did with Coltrane in the sixties – he was like a Max if you know what I mean….

RG: He was like an institution?

DL: Yes, he was an institution – you went to see Elvin Jones, which was why when sometimes the bands weren’t that great it didn’t matter, you went to see Elvin and watch him turn it on. And of course he had that wonderful smile, that personality, that charisma – which of course was another part of his attraction to people, because he was open and friendly.

I mean in my opinion, as far as I was concerned, he was the heaviest guy I knew in terms of the combination of the spiritual, warmth and knowledge. You know he was a wise man, who’d been around the block, and who was really open and friendly and nice to everybody. I mean he could get out too – if he saw something wasn’t right he’d call it, he could get tough. But for the most part with normal people he was a real gentleman, and not just a gentleman, but inclusive – like ‘come in here and hug me’

RG: As a person, was he a good hang?

DL: He was a great hang! He could be cool, and with me Steve and Gene we really had a good time – the chemistry was great, I mean he said it was his best band and ‘Lighthouse’ was one of his favourite records etc. We had a really good vibe, he would get high with us a little bit, just a little bit – he definitely enjoyed us. You could tell he liked us and loved playing with us, and we had a real band spirit there for a year, a year and half. Don Alias was on congas in the band for six months, and that added even more to it – they were great together.

It was a completely positive experience for me, there’s not one negative thing that I can think of with Elvin. Sometimes his personality, like everybody, sometimes he would have a bad night, that could happen from a physical standpoint – whatever. But he was pretty good, and he was going through methodone, he was kicking, he was on methodone and so when things were good they were good and when they weren’t it could be a little tough. But he was really trying to be cool, trying to control himself, trying to get himself straight. Because he could see that in order to live long he had to be cool. And Keiko, and you’ve got to give it to her, she kept him together – without her he would have been gone – everybody says that and I definitely agree with that.

RG: Great Dave – thank you!

DL: God bless Jonesy!

Radio, Music & Michael Jackson Died Together

One cannot help draw comparisons between the death of the King of Pop, the music industry that created him and the radio stations that made him a star.

First of all, there would be no MTV videos, no world tours, no enormous record sales without radio stations playing Michael Jackson's music.

In fact, without radio there would likely be no Michael Jackson.

Those of my programming brethren who, like me, played plenty of Michael Jackson hits (and catalog items disguised as recurrents and oldies) know this for sure.

The music industry, busy lobbying Congress for the repeal of radio's performance tax exemption, would rather concentrate on all that good free content the nice folks at the labels are giving away to radio -- or so their spin goes.

But there is no denying that Michael Jackson's success was started and fueled by radio even though stations could not receive any of the profits.

Can you imagine Steve Jobs ever going for that deal?

Radio was free to listeners and free to record labels. Now they want to be paid for radio making their talent popular.

In fact, Michael Jackson barely made any money off the labels considering he sold $300 million worth of music before his death -- only $12 million a year on average for an icon of the stature of Elvis, Sinatra and John Lennon.

There was a fascinating article circulating recently called "Michael Jackson and the Zombieconomy". As the author points out, "The world's top hedge fund "managers" regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That's an order of magnitude difference".

Jackson is remembered for "Thriller" and putting music videos in the public consciousness and for breaking race barriers with his music.

And, becoming a U.S. world export in an era when this country is importing more than it exports.

Without radio during Michael Jackson's career, there would be none of this today.

Not so in the future.

When I was interviewed by reporters after the death of Michael Jackson they wanted to know if we will ever see the likes of his iconic self again.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

This is taking absolutely nothing away from Michael Jackson.

But the next Michael Jackson will be made of the Internet and mobile space. Fueled and possessed by social networking. Unprecedented stardom will be available to the next icon that is born even though we will not be measuring success by the number of albums they sold.

We can't even measure Michael Jackson's death in terms of records sold any longer.

Bob Lefsetz, the music industry blogger, writes "MJ only sold 422,000 albums. But he sold 2.3 million individual tracks! Now that album figure is physical and digital combined. 225,000 were digital. And there was only so much physical product in the stores. But it turns out that online people only want the single!"

Fans are not pining for Jackson's entire albums. They are cherry-picking the cuts they want.

When Elvis died, fans were forced to buy his albums -- and the commemorative ones that followed --- if they wanted to own his music.

Jackson's death will turn out to be the demarcation point in history to best illustrate the changing of the guard.

News of Michael Jackson's death was broken by TMZ not CNN even though the parent company, Time Warner, owns both news organizations.

The New York Times failed to adequately cover the Jackson death and all the strange events that accompanied it consistent with its motto "all the news that's fit to print".

In fact, print had nothing to do with getting the news of Michael Jackson's death.

His many generations of fans were not getting the word from news radio or for that matter radio. And radio came up lame in lots of places including being slow to drop voice tracking and syndication to take control of live programming on appropriate formats.

Radio was on auto pilot.

MTV passed the job of mourning Jackson in a fitting way to VH1 -- in my opinion.

We've already covered the music industry's plight -- not enough product in the stores and not enough consumers wanting to buy "product".

This was a shining moment for YouTube as more people decided to watch "Thriller" for free than own it. That, in and of itself, tells you where the music industry is headed.

The value of music in financial terms is now zero.

Free downloads through bit torrent sites. Social network sharing.

Young people already know all of this.

The media establishment -- the one that thought HD radio was the next thing or that consumers would still pay for albums -- is as clueless as ever.

The torch has been passed.

The death of Michael Jackson marks the passing of a singer the nature of which we may never see again because the yardstick for measuring future success had already changed at the time of his death.

A few years ago everyone was crowded around a TV set to await the verdict in Jackson's child molestation case. New media, YouTube, social networking were just a gleam in the eye of a new generation.

Now, perhaps it's fitting that the Assistant Chief of the LAPD trying to avoid congestion at today's downtown public memorial for Michael Jackson told the public to watch it on TV and the Internet.

He never mentioned radio.

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Radio Bankruptcy Fireworks

Question:

How do you get rich in radio?

Answer:

Be born into Cumulus' Dickey family.

Or be the children of Clear Channel founder Lowry Mays.

Or the adopted "son" of Citadel's Teddy Forstmann as it appears Farid "Fagreed" Suleman is.

Or the biological son of a New York cab driver like Mel Karmazin.

Okay, that was wrong. Mel earned his wealth. He wasn't born into it. But the others ...

I mention all of this for two reasons.

One, it was just the Fourth of July and hot dogs were on the menu this past weekend.

And, two -- don't choke on one when you see what's going to happen to the radio industry in the second half of this year.

For context, keep in mind that the same suspects are still running consolidated radio groups. That's right, most everyone who was in place for the original pillaging of the radio industry is still at the helm -- although now they are crying poor mouth.

So as if being born to the Dickey or Mays families was not enough -- or being the son of, say, Radio One and Done founder Cathy Hughes -- not to worry.

The fix is in.

You can't kick these guys out of office even if they happened to be in a sex scandal with an Argentine television reporter. In fact, their boards would probably give them a raise for broadening the company's image in South America. Plus, the right to buy stock at today's price -- two cents.

Radio CEOs have what everyone else in radio does not have -- job security.

And it doesn't matter how bad a job they are doing or how much money they've lost their shareholders, they take a licking and keep on ticking.

You may not hear a lot about it, but the hand-picked boards of directors that oversee the major radio groups are puppets. Can you name one time when a radio board ever stood up to even one of these CEOs -- all of whom have driven their companies and the sector into the ground?

You could overthrow Hugo Chavez sooner than you could oust Cumulus CEO Lew Tricky Dickey.

Citadel has about as much board oversight as the election in Iran.

Clear Channel is one screwed up company -- private, but publicly looking for an exit -- and the workout firm of Lee & Bain rule with the iron fist of a junta in Honduras.

Radio has become a banana republic -- and I'm not referring to the retailer by the same name at America's shopping malls.

Put down your burger, dogs and corn on the cob, I don't want you to choke -- but over the next six months you're going to see radio groups like these get taken down -- not by their boards, not by their shareholders, not by the recession.

There's no bloodless coup.

No, they're about to topple because they've pissed off their lenders.

Take Lee & Bain and their tinker toy, Clear Channel.

A San Antonio newspaper had the audacity to criticize their hometown monolith recently when they wrote a piece that in essence said lenders are ready to call the loan and want to force Clear Channel into bankruptcy to get what they can from this once mighty radio group.

I interrupt this news bulletin to assure you that Lowry Mays, Mark Mays, Randall Mays and everyone with Mays after their first name is doing just fine after profiting from several previous sales of the company.

The demise of Clear Channel has become more apparent lately even though some of us saw it earlier.

You don't piss off your lenders.

Obviously not paying back loans in a recession pisses off lenders.

And, bankruptcy is something lenders like to avoid because it forces them to put their fate into the hands of a bankruptcy judge and they usually wind up with pennies on the dollar.

Imagine that -- lenders would rather take chump change instead of giving Clear Channel another stay of execution.

The reason for this -- as incredible as it may seem for the rest of us is -- lenders don't want to be in the radio business and don't want to take back the stations they funded. They're not worth today what they were when they were purchased.

That's how bad consolidators have screwed things up.

And the firings, cutbacks and move away from local radio isn't a strategy that will work -- as we are witnessing now.

These guys are in a bunker in San Antonio -- waiting for the roof to fall in (so to speak).

Over at Cumulus last week, CFO Marty Gausvik jumped ship and if you think the water was chilly you should have read CEO Lew Dickey's one line statement: “We appreciate Marty’s contribution to (the) Company and wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Ouch!

When you kiss butt for all those years you think you could get a sincere sounding farewell. Gausvik got the terse Wall Street bye-bye.

Gausvik was replaced by an employee from Cintas Uniform company.

Okay, that's a lie, but you believed it, didn't you? Because it seems every new manager Cumulus is hiring comes from outside of radio and specifically, Cintas.

Actually former Lincoln Financial CFO and Regent board member J.P. Hannan was hired to replace Gausvik.

This is a mess.

I thought Citadel would be the first radio group to breach its loan covenants and go into bankruptcy, but it could be that Clear Channel will be first. And that would be a disaster. The sector's number one group in Chapter 11.

Not good.

Stations that would be sold off would go for face value or 2 or 3 times cash flow at best. And that's if buyers could fund the acquisitions.

A time of great turmoil is ahead for the radio industry.

And while we all get caught up in the repricing and reselling of radio, no one is watching that new media is exploding and radio's future is really limited without a significant commitment to a digital business.

So, it was the Fourth of July -- you expect fireworks -- so here it is:

1. Clear Channel and Citadel could snap at any time -- probably by year's end or the first quarter of 2010 and it's going to be ugly.

2. Cumulus just escaped execution by renegotiating its debt in unfavorable terms that will give it perhaps another year or two but will be virtually impossible to service without an influx of cash or the radio industry suddenly turning into the cell phone business.

3. Lesser radio groups -- bottom feeders -- are also subject to bankruptcy. Once the big banana goes limp expect the smaller groups to follow.

4. The new world order for radio will be good groups like Bonneville, Lincoln Financial, Cox, Greater Media -- among other smaller companies -- as the new leaders. Life will not be easy for them after their sector is ravaged by widespread bankruptcy. No assurances of a future can be made even for these well run groups.

5. A relatively debt-free company such as Saga will survive but, again, must compete in a landscape that will be scorched by bankruptcies. Their future precariously rests on their ability to remain live and local and to embrace a digital future where real revenue can be generated. Most radio groups are clueless about the digital beyond.

Just as fireworks peter out after their brilliance dims, there are also a handful of consolidated radio groups that are going to fizzle the same way -- not because they are incapable of being brilliant, but because they couldn't pay the debt on what they purchased.

Years ago when I was teaching the Dale Carnegie Course back in Cherry Hill, NJ, a man walked into the classroom at the Sheraton Hotel on Route 70 -- he was late. I didn't recognize him as a class member and it turned out that he was visiting my class to make up a session that he had missed.

I stopped what I was saying to the class in mid-sentence. Welcomed the gentleman to Cherry Hill. Walked down the aisle and extended a handshake to make him feel at home.

To my surprise, he had two fingers on his extended right hand -- the rest were casualties of a fireworks accident. He worked for a pyrotechnics company as it turned out.

I recall that image now as I think of our industry.

Consolidated radio's legacy beyond the destruction of local radio as we know it will be that it played with fireworks and it blew up in their hands.

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In Defence of Jazz Education

I think it’s fair to say that in the jazz media, jazz education (or at least formalised jazz education in institutions) gets a bad press.

Which is ironic, since many from outside jazz find the idea of it both intriguing and admirable. I once had the good fortune to spend some time with the great American classical composer John Adams, and when he found out I was a jazz musician he went into a eulogy about jazz musicians and their abilities, comparing them to classical musicians and expressing the opinion that fully trained jazz musicians were generally superior to classical musicians these days due to the incredible range of their abilities. His son is a jazz bassist and Adams told me about watching him playing in an ensemble in his school, playing Wayne Shorter tunes. Adams expressed amazement at the harmonic sophistication of those young musicians and their ability to undertake something as challenging as that.

Yet playing through the repertoire of Wayne Shorter’s music is precisely the kind of activity that draws the ire of jazz education’s critics - ‘everyone learns the same stuff’ is the mantra – or one of the mantras – used to reinforce the argument that jazz education has a negative impact on jazz and its practitioners.

Before going further, I should explain that I myself am not a product of the jazz education system. I learned how to play this music in a way that would have been familiar to earlier practitioners – mostly from playing gigs. The jazz scene in Ireland in the late 70s was a throwback to an earlier era in that it was essentially a bebop environment – Broadway and jazz standards, little or no originals, and everyone was supposed to know every tune from memory – no Real Books (I think I saw my first one in 1981 – it was like seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls!). I read music books, picked up whatever info I could from other musicians and figured stuff out for myself – there were no jazz schools here then.

Now, thirty years later I am the head of a jazz programme here in Dublin – a typical jazz performance degree programme with eighty students, with content typical of this kind of education.

So I see both sides of the argument – I see the benefits I gained by being self-educated: self-reliance, development of instincts, ability to think on one’s feet and take decisions without always being told what to do. And I also see the disadvantages to that mode of learning – lack of access to useful (and sometimes vital) information, and making the kind of mistakes for years that could have been set right by a good teacher in 10 minutes. For example: although I knew most of the major and minor modes (found them in a Rick Laird bass book!), and could play them, I was playing them for years before I found out that they were related!

Having been involved in starting a school from scratch here in Dublin, and having seen the positive effect of that in the local jazz community, and having been able to give young musicians access to the kind of information and resources I didn’t have at their age, I’ve always been somewhat exasperated by what I see as the knee-jerk attacks on jazz education. Usually these take three forms:

1) Jazz education turns all who partake of it into clones.

2) The proof of jazz education’s failure is the fact that though there are more practitioners than ever before the percentage of great players hasn’t got any higher.

3) What is the point of turning out jazz graduates when there are no gigs?

To take each one of these in turn -

1. Jazz education turns all who partake of it into clones.

The first thing to remember when dealing with this argument is that academic music education, of any sort, is not ideal anyway. In music schools we tell students that you must learn X amount of information in X amount of weeks, but of course students are always of differing abilities and may have different life circumstances, and while one student may absorb the information fully, another may struggle. In non-academic ways of learning music (such as the one I undertook) you spend as long a time with a piece of information as you need or want and then move on. And in traditional cultures (and in rock music for example) this is primarily the way to learn music. But in western society we have developed a system of education which is geared to educate the many rather than the individual. While this is ideal for certain subjects (science and maths for example) it is less than ideal for music. But for better or for worse, this is the structure we have and the one we have to deal with.

If you want to train young musicians in the techniques of music, and give many of them access to that, rather than a few hand-picked individuals, then you don’t really have a choice other than the academic model – for economic reasons if for no other. It would be clearly impossible to take students in and keep them in school until such time as they felt ready to move on, treating each one individually, so that student X spends three years on harmony while Y spends 6 months on the same subject. It’s just unworkable – an open ended school is just not a practical possibility – for the school or the students. If you discard the academic model you must also discard many of the students - there is no other way to educate larger groups of people efficiently.

Having accepted the jazz school as the most practical model in which to operate, you then have to make a decision as to what to teach. The argument that the schools all teach the same stuff, therefore making all students into homogenised clones, is an argument based on the idea that the older practitioners were helped by the fact that they didn’t go to school and their originality was predicated on their differing knowledge. But their originality was the result of their originality – it had nothing to do with their empirical knowledge or lack of it. What a lot of critics forget about is that most high level jazz school courses are staffed and run by professional jazz musicians. These are musicians who deal with the realities of playing the music, and who are aware of the skills necessary to survive in the professional milieu. And it is largely these same musicians who decide the curricula for the schools – not some faceless bureaucrat. So the information that is provided is largely that body of information which professional musicians agree are basic prerequisites for a life as a professional jazz musician. This basic information – harmonic, technical and rhythmic as well as repertoire – is generally agreed by most professionals to be part of the essential toolkit of the contemporary jazz musician.

Yet the writer James Lincoln Collier says:

‘With students all over the United States being taught more or less the same harmonic principles, it is hardly surprising that their solos tend to sound much the same. It is important for us to understand that many of the most influential players developed their own personal harmonic schemes, very frequently because they had little training in theory and were forced to find it their own way.’

So – there we have it, the noble savage syndrome – for the sake of your creativity and originality it’s better to have no training. It’s hard to know where to start with the refutation of an argument this stupid. It’s like suggesting that if you want to become a writer it would be better to to be illiterate and figure out the rules of English yourself, rather than go to school and be taught how to read, how spelling, grammar and syntax work, and being directed towards great writing of the past. Yet this is the bizarre subtext of much of the criticism of jazz education – in order to be creative and original it’s better to be uneducated. But though these writers idealise the self-taught musicians of the past, how many of these same jazz greats would have taken advantage of educational institutions had they been available to them? Most I’d say. And if they had, would it have stifled their creativity? Would Coltrane have sounded like a thousand other saxophonists of he’d gone to a jazz school? To suggest that he would have is to deny his innate genius and originality.


Some champions of the European jazz scene also use the 'jazz education = lack of originality' argument to attack the US jazz scene, claiming that it is the jazz education system that has largely contributed to American jazz stagnating while European jazz forges ahead. This argument conveniently ignores the fact that most European jazz schools teach (with variations) the same basic core curriculum as their American counterparts. European jazz schools take the American system as their basic model, so all of these young European musicians who are lauded so highly come from a very similar educational background to their US counterparts.

And as to the charge that jazz education produces only clones, consider the following musicians:

Brad Mehldau, Jim Black, Branford Marsalis, John Scofield, Tom Rainey, John Abercrombie, Joe Lovano, Greg Osby, Jeff Watts, Pat Metheny, Scott Colley, Bill Frisell, Brian Blade. All of these have spent time in jazz educational institutions – are they all clones?



2. The proof of jazz education’s failure is the fact that though there are more practitioners than ever before the percentage of great players hasn’t got any higher.

Schools do not teach creativity nor originality nor do they stifle it – creativity and originality have always been in short supply. We are educating the many, but in the end, only a few will ‘get it’ so to speak. The number of musicians of real creativity, the ones who are head and shoulders above everyone else, have always been in the minority. And contrary to the mythology, the pre-jazz education scene was not always peopled by complete originals – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Lester Young, and Bud Powell (to take just a few examples) all had droves of disciples who tried to emulate their heroes. Jazz has always been peopled by a few innovators and many imitators. The imitators either find a personal wrinkle for themselves within the canon created by the innovators, or they just vapidly regurgitate the surface gestures of the great ones. It was the same in 1930 as it is now.

What a good school will do is provide the environment that will give anyone who studies there access to information which will help them towards their goals. A student’s originality will not be created by a school, nor will it be destroyed by it – original people will always be original people. No matter how many people go through the jazz education system the percentage of true originals will not rise. However everyone coming through the doors of a good jazz school will be given access to tools which will help them create a musical career for themselves should they wish to pursue it. Jazz schools cannot manufacture creativity, but they can facilitate in speeding the journey of the truly creative while giving a good music education to those who may not be among the elite in terms of originality, but who nevertheless are talented and wish to partake in the great musical tradition of jazz.

3. What is the point of turning out jazz graduates when there are no gigs?

This is a genuine concern among jazz educators and musicians, and recently Ethan Iverson wrote the following in his blog:

“There’s positive aspects to jazz education, but I do worry about how corporate and money-driven it can seem, especially now that the bubble has burst. As we all know, not only do young players fresh out of jazz college have trouble finding gigs, but for musicians of all ages the current market is completely over-saturated, making it extraordinarily difficult for anything to have any economic value whatsoever”

While it may be true that gigs are getting harder and harder to come by, the question has to be asked, is this the only value that jazz education has – economic value? The bassist and educator Todd Coolman puts it very well:

“We have to quit thinking of college as a vocational school. College, to me, is a place where you go to learn something, to develop intellectual and social skills so that you can become a contributing member of society. No one needs to go to college to learn to play jazz, anyway. In the same respect, college doesn’t create a brilliant economist.”

This point is well made – the idea that teaching the techniques of an art form becomes devalued if there is not immediate or automatic economic benefit to the student is simply wrong. Surely the main point of getting an education is to become educated? The benefits to young people of being involved in jazz are manifold. For example, one of the things that I find most attractive about jazz is the democratic and social nature of the music. The music is brought about by the efforts of a group of people working together, and communicating with each other. Yet within the tradition of this sociable music, the idea of individualism is not only encouraged, but highly prized. So here we have a music which is completely dependent on co-operation between the participants, yet which at the same time encourages each to make as personal and individual a statement as possible. What a wonderful ethos for young people to be involved with!

Another benefit of being in a jazz school and one that’s never even noticed by the critics of jazz education is that schools provide a space in which communities of jazz musicians can exist. In previous times these communities were centred around gigs and clubs and jam sessions, but this environment has almost entirely disappeared. The jazz community has become dispersed, and one of the few places where it still exists is in jazz schools. With the possible exception of New York and a few other larger cities where some gig-centred socialising by musicians still exists, the only place where large groups of jazz practitioners foregather is in jazz schools. Schools not only create a teaching environment, they also provide a place where information can be exchanged, gossip caught up on, new recordings discussed, gig information exchanged, tips for work opportunities given and camaraderie shared.

Like anything, jazz schools are not perfect – in the wrong hands they can churn out graduates without any consideration for the individual. But in my experience that’s the exception rather than the rule - most schools have dedicated teachers with a real love of the music and its traditions and a genuine concern that their students have access to it. In the schools students learn the basic techniques of the music and hopefully are also exposed to the creative ethos of jazz. They provide community environments for musicians whose love of a minority music sets them apart from the mainstream.

I’ve just returned from the International Association of Schools of Jazz annual meeting in Lucerne, where 50 high level jazz students from schools all over the world – from Japan to the US, from Finland to Israel, from Russia to Brazil - got together for a week and played music together and got to know each other through the medium of jazz. I watched them perform six concerts of very high level creative music put together after only three days rehearsal, and watched their mutual delight in sharing this experience with each other. Try telling THEM that the jazz education system was a negative influence on their lives and creativity!

Radio -- People Meter Strategies

Radio program directors will readily admit that Arbitron's diary recall system for audience ratings was imperfect if not inferior.

We always knew that respondents were not carrying diaries around all day to accurately record their radio listening.

We all knew to pull every trick we could to get diary keepers to write down more listening than they actually did.

In fact, we programmers were very comfortable with that fallible system because to paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “you go to war with the People Meter you have---not the ratings system you might want or wish to have at a later time”.

The Founding Fathers of Consolidation didn't exactly move at lightning speed to adopt the People Meter technology even when they were making a profit.

Why spoil a good thing.

Like the hypocrites they were, some CEOs publicly resisted or trashed the new technology while then turning around and signing long term contracts for the very thing they criticized.

Not a smart move with advertisers.

What they eventually adopted was seriously out of date even before the first People Meter markets went live.

Now you can almost see trouble on the horizon.

Some major radio groups may file for bankruptcy and everything they do -- including honor contracts for audience research will be up for grabs.

And there is a question as to whether Repeater Radio, the brand of non-local, syndicated or voice tracked programming really needs to be measured. Does anyone actually think bad ratings for Ryan Seacrest would get him kicked off a Clear Channel station where he's saving them the expense of employing local talent?

There is also the fact that PPM results cannot be considered actual listening and that’s why Arbitron doesn’t use the term. If I have a radio with "Magic Carpet Ride" playing and my daughter is wearing a People Meter, when she gets within the appropriate distance to record that listening on KOOL-FM, you can’t call a 20 something in this case a KOOL listener.

But the radio industry is picking up "cume" (my word, not theirs) and they think it has to do with something they are putting on the air.

In reality, radio is getting credit for being on in a lot of places people visit.

Don't confuse this with listening. You can't call People Meter wearers radio listeners.

So, the game has now changed -- yet, it's alarming how some (not all) programmers are still employing diary tactics to influence recall when all they really need to do is find a way to be on everywhere.

And that may explain a lot of the new breed of unremarkable, mass market formats that are finding their way on the air in People Meter cities.

The goal is not to be good.

Not to convince listeners to think they were listening more than they were.

It is simply to be on in case a meter is in the vicinity.

You can almost see it happening before the industry's eyes in real time.

Small markets, cancel ratings -- not needed.

Medium markets -- muddle through and wait for the People Meter to arrive.

Major markets -- air safe formats that attract lots of potential people so that more meters can record "hearing" the stations. This is deadly to radio because there will be increasingly less variety on the dial -- if that's possible.

I'd move in a different direction.

Make your stations "the favorite" station the old fashioned way -- entertain the hell out of your audience. That way People Meters worn by fans will be on and in earshot and you'll earn the credit you deserve for actual listening.

Of course I am simplifying everything for the sake of this discussion. Programming to the People Meter is so complex. Everyone thinks they are an expert on this topic so, what the hell -- why not ...

1. Have a compelling live and local morning show from 5-10 am. While there is no need to identify the station thanks to the People Meter, I’d make damn sure the names of my personalities got said a lot so listeners can become addicted fans. And, those of you who know me know that I would sign my talent to a five-year contract with an option to renew.

2. The call letters no longer matter for ratings purposes. Constant repetition of call letters is a proven irritant and especially annoying to younger listeners. Now, it's not necessary to brow beat listeners every three minutes or less with call letters, frequencies or positioning statements. Now you have the freedom to entertain.

3. Rethink traffic and weather together. In Phoenix, I wouldn’t do it unless it was monsoon season. Still, each element needs to be reexamined. It's not automatic anymore to be all things to all people because even though radio has not moved on, listeners have found other sources for that which they need. Believe it or not, listeners get time from their watch, weather from The Today Show before leaving home and news – well, not from a radio station.

4. Add news – lots of it. It's a reason for getting fans to keep listening.

5. Never run stop sets longer than one or two units. Listeners are distracted. They actually like a lot of stop and start. There is still room for music sweeps but not at the expense of another irritant -- impossible to listen to six or eight minute stop sets.

6. Reject commercials that cause tune out. Encourage live-reads. If you buy the premise that People Meter fans must not be driven away then stand up to bad commercials and get them off the air (I'm sure that's not going to happen when everyone is losing money, but still...). My experience with young people indicates they like live reads -- sincere ones -- not the ill-prepared live reads some people do.

7. Only mention the call letters once for legal purposes and the frequency never. (Am I fired yet, Mr. Hogan?) Look, ask anyone what station they listen to and if they like it, they are going to either tell you the personality they like or the frequency of the station. They’re not dumb. In either case, this is not necessary information for recording "listening" time. No need to hammer out calls and frequencies in the PPM era especially considering how much listeners tell us they hate radio that sounds that repetitious.

8. Run expanding and contracting playlists for different dayparts.

9. Each daypart should sound different even though listening may be picked up continuously for crediting purposes. In other words, Sunday nights are different from Friday nights. All night is not the same as 6pm. PM drive is not morning drive. Radio people know this, of course but their bosses want stations to have a sameness because it makes Repeater Radio easier to deliver.

10. The quarter hour crossovers now mean nothing. Actually, it meant next to nothing for decades but we programmers convinced ourselves that they did. That’s why we made sure music covered the quarter hour spots on our hot clock. We really knew it was bogus but couldn’t let go. The most important thing in diary ratings is recall – and the best way to get a respondent to fill out a diary the day before they send it back to Arbitron is to make your station their favorite station so they inaccurately report more listening than they actually did. So, with PPM quarter hour crossovers are still not worth doing.

To quote Cookie Monster, “one of these People Meters is not like the other thing”.

Yet, radio continues to program to the diary recall system in PPM markets.

We just can’t seem to let go of the diary that it turns out -- we actually liked.

So now, the new benchmark is – get the highest ratings by – you guessed it, making your station the one PPM wearers like best and listen to the most – then, you won’t have to rely on drive-by exposure to your sound to get credit.

I am going to brainstorm new, solid PPM strategies at the Media Solutions Lab I am putting on in Scottsdale in January.

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Clear Channel Localism Gets Stuck in the Mud

A few weekends back B93, the Clear Channel number two station in Grand Rapids staged their annual Birthday Bash at nearby Ionia – about a half hour outside of the city.

It’s a remarkable event because in this era of voice tracking and network radio, the country station still has enough juice to attract a throng.

The night before the event, Grand Rapids was hit by heavy rains. Some locals say it was five inches or more.

The next day – the day of the event – clearer skies prevailed and everything seemed right for this radio extravaganza.

Except, the locals at Clear Channel must have been listening to their own station that carried the wrong weather forecast.

The National Weather Service knew. They warned of flash floods, but I guess no one was home at Clear Channel Grand Rapids.

Ionia city officials also pleaded ignorance about the prospect for flooding as the Grand River eventually overflowed its banks – during the concert – putting concertgoers and their automobiles in a precarious situation.

One reader sent an email that said the station’s voice tracking was still promoting the event Saturday afternoon even as thousands of cars were increasingly under water and stuck in the mud.

Some locals say the National Weather Service – you know, the free weather bureau – had issued warnings as early as 5 am the day of the concert, but when so-called local stations do voice tracking they apparently think their stale weather forecasts will actually turn out to be what they say it will be.

Oh boy.

What a mess.

Fortunately, no one was killed or seriously injured.

But the spin doctors at Clear Channel who first bragged of 100,000 fans at the B93 Concert Bash quickly revised that number downward to 80,000.

Funny about that -- can you imagine a radio station changing an attendance figure so that it winds up being lower for a popular annual event?

Their current estimate has been downgraded again like a hurricane to a tropical storm – except now their official attendance figure is 60,000.

Maybe they can't count.

Maybe they don't want to count.

If you want to know why a spectacular event feels compelled to keep downgrading the attendance – kind of the opposite of what you’d expected – it’s because Clear Channel is in a heap of trouble.

Look, they did a local event and fans streamed out to participate and hear the country artists they love. Radio listeners sure love local -- just sayin'.

But what passes for local radio at an increasing number of Clear Channel stations -- B93 in this case -- didn’t bother to do basic things like safeguard the people in attendance.

B93 was still cramming cars into the designated parking areas with the river dangerously rising.

Why?

Well, even though the B93 Birthday Bash is free, Clear Channel charges $15 per car to park -- so they can make a profit for Lee and Bain to pay down their debt.

And when you consider that the artists are all appearing for free in return for – I presume – some airplay, that’s a nice day’s take.

It will turn out to be an expensive blunder for Clear Channel which wound up having to pay to tow the 1,033 cars stuck in the mud. That's estimated to be about $60 a car although Reed & Hoppes Towing and Equipment is as happy as a pig in -- oh, well -- never mind. They at least have a heart.

The towing company is apparently cutting the Evil Empire a break on that $60 per car price because the job is so big.

Clear Channel doesn't seem to heart its fans whose cars were stranded.

According to a local news account, "B93 is bearing the cost of moving the vehicles to the staging area, a half mile to one mile away. From that point on, the cars are the owners' responsibility".

Great.

I'm sure they'll keep that in mind if they ever get invited to a B93 concert again.

Or maybe they'll go online and get the weather forecast first.

And once the cars are towed -- 6 to 8 tow trucks working simultaneously -- they may need to be jumped, or fixed – and lawyers start suing – this may be a lesson that the locals will never forget.

Meanwhile, back at Cent Com in San Antonio, I don’t imagine Clear Channel Radio President John Slogan Hogan can be too happy. Things like this are not supposed to happen when you actually do a local radio event live.

Perhaps this best illustrates why consolidators really can’t tell right from wrong.

They believe that they can make a local station sound local by using technology (voice tracking) and outside of market personalities (syndication or network programming).

Many of their local minions don’t seem to have the brains God gave a goose. Otherwise, someone would have – well, called the National Weather Service --- just because that’s what locals do.

Sports teams do it.

Boy Scouts do it before picnics.

You don’t risk putting all those folks in harm’s way when all it takes is to make a phone call or check a website.

WOOD-TV’s online coverage included:

“Storm Team 8's Terri DeBoer is at the concert right now... She says the music at the concert has stopped and organizers are trying to determine whether or not to take down the stage. We have reports right now that everyone is being asked to leave the fairgrounds even though cars cannot leave the parking area. Several cars are at least partially underwater. We have reports of some cars being completely submerged”.

You get the sense that consolidated radio stations are beginning to operate like their bosses, the owners who never considered a Plan B in case their was a recession and they couldn’t generate enough cash to pay their debt service.

At the local level, it seems decisions are made these days under the assumption that sunny skies always prevail over Clear Channel.

We all know that's no longer true.

Clear Channel isn’t alone.

I get several real life accounts each week that local stations are carrying voice tracked inaccurate weather while their communities are being hit by tornadoes or severe weather -- all because of voice tracking.

I feel badly for the hard working B93 employees who were trying to make a popular live local event a hit again this year.

Instead it turned into a nightmare and could have been a disaster if lives were lost.

I’d expect Clear Channel to defend itself by saying even the city didn’t see it coming.

Maybe they listened to the weather on B93.

Often radio people complain about consolidation and feel helpless.

But the disastrous B93 Clear Channel Birthday Bash is an example of how to win the fight to take back local radio from national consolidators.

Just as the record labels have an organized approach to lobbying Congress for the repeal of radio’s performance tax exemption, citizens need only to raise a stink with their elected representatives on behalf of local radio.

To consolidators, "local radio" is a term they use like “the Patriot Act” to add emotional appeal to their defense of local radio performance tax exemption.

I’d scare the living hell out of politicians that near death weather experiences like this could happen in their districts – with an even more fatal result.

And why?

Because people need local radio and they're increasingly not getting it.

Not the repurposed, renamed and reinvented sham that Clear Channel is foisting on listeners, advertisers and politicians.

Listeners need the kind of local radio where someone at least can look out the window or get an accurate weather forecast on the air. Maybe call the local police.

Ladies and gentleman, start you letter writing campaigns – Clear Channel has handed you all you need to get an appointment with your Congressman.

I’ll say it again – radio has a purpose in our country when local people tend to the business of serving the public interest, convenience and necessity.

Since John Slogan Hogan is so good at coming up with slogans like “Less Is More”, radio people who want to take their industry back could use Clear Channel’s latest close call to inspire a slogan all their own.

How about “Flood Congress” with letters, calls, emails and in-person visits and warn them of what could happen next in a district that could be theirs.

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