Radio's big bully

Back in the Jacor days, the boar-killing incident likely would have been laughed off. But now Michaels has to answer to a boss -- Mays, who besides being the patriarchal founder and chairman of Clear Channel, is also a friend of former President Bush's.

"I'm sure all of that made Lowry really uncomfortable," says Unmacht. Mays declined to comment for this story.

While Mays and his two investment banking sons, Mark and Randall, keep a tight rein on Clear Channel's financials, Michaels runs the radio properties. But broadcasters say there's a reason even the company's own employees refer to it as "Cheap Channel"; the Mays family demands high returns for Wall Street through Draconian cost cutting.

Michaels has become a believer in cost cutting; one of his innovations is the implementation of centralized, bureaucratic control over stations. Most Clear Channel stations are now overseen -- and programmed -- by regional, not local, programmers.

"Randy's afraid of Lowry," says Del Calliano at Inside Radio. "If Lowry wants budgets cut, Randy cuts budgets. He can't reinvest in the stations."

Unmacht agrees: "It's clear that Lowry Mays has changed him. He's a very different Randy. Now it's all business -- profits, losses and trying to stay in the good graces of the Mayses. Randy would like to have good programming. We're just not seeing what he could do with a free hand. We saw that at Jacor and it was very good. But the pressure is now on to do more with fewer people. Everything needs to show a profit yesterday."

"It's difficult to do good radio and I think Clear Channel is overworking people, which ultimately drives down morale and success," worries the head of radio promotion at a major record label.

Through a process known as "cyber-jocking," Clear Channel has eliminated hundreds, if not thousands, of DJ positions (and saved tens of millions in salary) by simply having one company jock send out his or her show to dozens of sister stations. Thanks to clever digital editing, the shows still often sound local. And this isn't just for the graveyard shifts but for midday and even morning-drive shows.

Today, traveling across the country, radio listeners hear not only the same songs over and over but the same jocks from coast to coast. For instance, the midday show by a DJ named Randi West has aired simultaneously on Clear Channel stations in Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky.; Des Moines, Iowa; Toledo, Ohio; Charleston, S.C.; and Rochester, N.Y.

According to radio sources, though, the Clear Channel jocks used in this fashion often receive little or no extra money for filling on-air vacancies in dozens of extra markets.

The company claims that it's a way to broadcast major-market talent in small-town stations. But do FM stations in Phoenix really need help landing major talent? Apparently they do: Clear Channel's Top 40 station there, KZZP, has been rebroadcasting Rick Dees' morning show from KIIS-FM in Los Angeles.

Why? The only expense for the Phoenix station is paying a board operator. "They've got a morning show for $6 an hour. That's not programming for the listeners," says Nyren at Emmis.

After purchasing WNUA in Chicago, Clear Channel last year shut down the WNUA Cares for Kids Foundation, which had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.

For more than 20 years in Louisville, AM mainstay WHAS had exclusively aired the Great Balloon Race during the Kentucky Derby Festival. Late last year the Clear Channel station, which in the past had paid a rights fee for the community event, informed derby officials the station now wanted to get paid for airing the event. "What this signaled to me was that there was a change in the way that they are choosing to promote community events," Derby Festival president Mike Berry said at the time.

To be fair, Clear Channel is not alone when it comes to heavy-handed cost cutting in radio these days. Two weeks ago the Chicago Sun-Times reported that local Infinity country station WUSN told its on-air jocks they had to attend the George Strait Music Festival and work the crowd.

What was wrong with that? The jocks had to buy their own tickets!

The station's management suggested they buy lawn seats, which started at $30. How much money did the penny-pinching WUSN bill in ad sales last year? Nearly $50 million.

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Will Clear Channel, radio's big bully, get away with all this?

Can national programmers impose their prefab formats on local radio stations? Won't audiences revolt?

There is some evidence that consolidation economics has damaged radio's popularity. Desperate for additional revenue, stations have substantially increased the number of commercials aired, often cramming 15 or 20 minutes' worth of ads in each hour.

Listeners have taken note of the onslaught. In just the past seven years radio listening has declined nearly 15 percent, according to Arbitron. One in three listeners between the ages of 12 and 24 recently told Arbitron they were listening to less radio specifically because of the commercial overload.

"It pains me to say it, but radio sucks and it has sucked for the better part of consolidation," says Del Calliano at Inside Radio. "And anybody who loves radio knows that. You'd have to be working for Randy Michaels to say otherwise."

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