Adds an insider currently working for Clear Channel in Southern California, "That 'Cheap Channel' nickname really fits because that's the bottom line; they don't care about their employees."

Present and former Clear Channel employees stress it hasn't always been that way, and that sleepy Clear Channel was once known as a staid and, yes, cheap company. Its culture, they say, has gone through a drastic evolution in the last two years.

"The change came when Randy Michaels came on board," says one former salesperson, referring to the bombastic chief of Clear Channel's radio division. (Michaels' history was detailed in a previous Salon report.) He had been head of the radio-broadcasting company Jacor. In 1998 when Clear Channel bought Jacor for $3.4 billion, Michaels was tapped to run Clear Channel's radio holdings; he brought with him a tightknit inner circle of executives to run the company. "It became a micromanagement vs. an entrepreneurial atmosphere. And they started not treating people very well."

The Jacor style was undeniably brash. In fact, back in 1993 while overseeing "The Power Pig," an outlandish Tampa Top 40 outlet, Michaels waged a relentless on-air war with crosstown rival Q105, mocking the station and its employees. When Clear Channel bought Q105, the Pig laid into its new owner, Lowry Mays, with recorded comedy bits, dubbing him "Lowry Mayonnaise," and later "Low Rent Mayonnaise," a womanizing, "evil Texas banker" whose first priority, when not telling a black disc jockey to wax his Cadillac, was to "cut costs" at Q105. Mays is still Clear Channel's CEO -- and now Michaels' boss.

Before 1996, a radio broadcast company could own only two stations in one market and no more than two dozen nationwide. If it earned a too-unpleasant reputation, jocks, programmers and salespeople might simply stay away. But the Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed those restrictions, and now Clear Channel has amassed so many radio stations nationwide that it wields the type of dominance inside the radio business that no player in any other media industry can claim today.

Thanks to laissez-faire regulators in Washington, Clear Channel has put together a stunning piece of vertical integration inside the music and broadcasting business. Its 1,170 outlets represent 10 percent of the nation's radio stations, and a much higher percentage of its major ones. (For example, the company controls 60 percent of rock radio nationwide.)

Radio's big bully
A complete guide to Salon's reporting on Clear Channel

Clear Channel owns SFX Entertainment, the dominant concert-touring business -- a key marketing tool for rock 'n' roll radio stations. Clear Channel also owns radio research companies, an airplay monitoring system, syndicated programming, radio trade magazines, hundreds of thousands of outdoor billboards and 19 television stations.

It all added up last year to more than $5 billion worth of revenue. In other words, while no one was looking, little-known Clear Channel has surpassed traditional media giants like Hearst and the New York Times Co. in size. Indeed, the company is now on a par with Gannett, the Tribune Co. and NBC. (On NBCi's board of directors, Clear Channel CEO Mays is said to be enjoying a budding friendship with GE chairman Jack Welch.)

It's hard to imagine Gannett or NBC or the Tribune Co. operating any of its properties the way Clear Channel does without attracting harsh scrutiny. But the radio industry, traditionally a network of independent companies with a largely local focus, has always operated in a separate universe, away from the media spotlight, which explains why so little attention has been paid to the company's day-to-day practices.

That, and the fact that so many people in the radio business are reluctant to discuss Clear Channel, since its empire reaches into virtually every corner of the business.

"Nobody wants to say anything because everybody knows they're going to own you. Where are you going to go to find a job in radio?" asks one former Clear Channel on-air personality. "People are paranoid. Nobody wants to rock the boat."

Clear Channel itself actively discourages its workers from speaking with the press. One employee recalls his surprise when, after Clear Channel bought the station he worked at, the first e-mail he received from corporate headquarters was about the press: "It said if you talk to the press without our consent you'll be fired."

Recent Stories