U2's longtime manger Paul McGuinness backs up that claim, dismissing the industry's chatter about Clear Channel being the "evil empire" as paranoia. "I don't think the radio business is coherent enough to operate in a vindictive way, or reward Clear Channel concert clients with radio airplay." He notes the band's wildly successful Elevation World Tour last year was promoted by Clear Channel, even though U2, "despite our considerable efforts," didn't have a Top 10 hit.

Yet the allegations, usually aired in private, keep coming. An industry source in Cincinnati reports that earlier this year the young rock band Alien Ant Farm was threatened with reduced Clear Channel airplay nationally if Clear Channel's rock station in that market, WEBN, did not officially present the band's concert in town. Michaels insists the story is untrue. The band's spokesperson declined to comment.

During the summer of 2000, the heavy-metal festival tour dubbed Tattoo the Earth, featuring Sevendust, Slipknot, Coal Chamber and Slayer played Denver. According to a close industry source, following a bitter battle, in which a competitor secured rights to promote the show locally, Clear Channel radio programmers in Denver retaliated by vowing to pull at least one Tattoo the Earth act off their stations in several markets.

"We're absolutely confident we've done everything appropriate and legal in that market," says Becker.

Last year, Clear Channel promoted 'N Sync's outdoor stadium tour, guaranteeing the act $1.4 million each performance. At one point Clear Channel approached the act's co-manager Johnny Wright and asked to renegotiate. He declined. Word spread throughout the touring business that Clear Channel threatened to withhold radio support from the act's upcoming single.

"That threat was never made," reports Wright. Instead, during some "heated debates" about whether the band would play an extra tour date and take no profits in order to help Clear Channel recover its losses, "they wanted us to understand, Clear Channel has always been there for the band and was asking us for a favor. I went back to the ['N Sync] guys to discuss why we should do it," he says. "And I said they have been loyal to us and we don't want anything to happen to our radio airplay. Are you willing to do the show for free? And they said yes."

The problem with Clear Channel, says one prominent artist manager, is "it's never, 'Let's do business.' Instead, they start with the understanding of their leverage and they hit you on the head with it. My bands wanted to go out [on tour] with $25 tickets and Clear Channel won't take the shows because they want more money coming in. Or they'll take the show and add on $12 service fees [to the ticket price]. And the problem is there's nowhere else to go. You just cannot get around these guys. This is not a free market."

Ticket prices are up dramatically since Clear Channel took control of the American concert business; ticket sales, though, continue to decline. In June, an Illinois consumer sued Clear Channel, charging the company's "monopolistic practices" have driven up "artificially high" concert ticket prices.

The court filing is proof that even with Michaels' departure, Clear Channel has not eliminated its radio-related headaches. Last month, Spanish Broadcasting System, the nation's largest Hispanic-owned radio operator, sued Clear Channel alleging antitrust violations. Specifically, SBS claims that in an attempt to eliminate SBS as a competitor, Clear Channel executives, including Mark Mays, contacted SBS's financial underwriters in an effort to get them to withdraw their support of SBS's 1999 public offering, tried to depress the company's stock price by limiting financial analysts' coverage, and "improperly induced significant institutional investors to divest their positions in SBS, depressing SBS's stock price." Clear Channel is a major investor in SBS's competitor, Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, or HBC.

In his companywide "stay the course" e-mail, Mays insisted: "We will fight the lawsuit and we will WIN."

But the court proceeding has given a vocal critic additional ammunition in his fight against Clear Channel brewing at the FCC. Last fall, an advertiser in the small Ohio market of Chillicothe alleged that Clear Channel has been illegally operating stations through shell companies in order to circumvent existing ownership limits.

The practice is dubbed "parking" or "warehousing" stations. Competitors insist that Clear Channel has sold off stations to front companies that allow Clear Channel to continue operating the properties, while allowing Clear Channel an easy way to buy back the stations should the FCC loosen ownership limits.

Clear Channel answered with its own FCC filing, dismissing the "scattershot" and "inconsequential" charges. Company executives insist every station transaction they've made has been proper and legal. The FCC has yet to rule.

But using the SBS case, the same advertiser recently filed another FCC claim, alleging that Clear Channel, which owns a 26 percent nonvoting equity interest in SBS's competitor HBC, is supposed to be a passive participant and not manage HBC. Yet according to SBS's lawsuit, Clear Channel executives were constantly overseeing HBC deals, contacting investment bankers on the company's behalf, even meeting with SBS at one point to discuss an acquisition. (When a deal fell through, Mays allegedly told SBS's representative that Clear Channel "will ultimately buy SBS on the bankruptcy court steps.")

This new FCC claim argues that, as with the situation in Chillicothe, Clear Channel's dealing with SBS "demonstrates a pattern of conduct in which Clear Channel conceals, through numerous material misrepresentations to the FCC, the actual ownership and control of certain radio station groups." Clear Channel has not yet responded to the filing.

The complaint urges the FCC to hand out radio's version of the death penalty if Clear Channel has knowingly misled the FCC about the company's holdings: "It should revoke Clear Channel's licenses and ban Clear Channel and its officers and directors from ever again holding FCC broadcast licenses."

Even if the FCC rules against Clear Channel, almost nobody in the radio business thinks the commission would hand out that type of punishment. But the petition remains one more distraction around Clear Channel.

Like Sen. Russell Feingold's recently introduced Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act, which takes direct aim at Clear Channel's consolidation, allegations of warehousing stations and its involvement in pay-for-play. Lowry Mays told reporters he welcomed the senator's efforts. But just weeks earlier Mays, a stalwart Republican and friend of former President George Bush, announced the formation of a new Clear Channel political action committee, to "effectively communicate our political positions with timely access to elected officials." Clear Channel employees were urged to donate a portion of their salaries to the lobbying effort.

Meanwhile, last summer, a small Denver concert promoter, Nobody in Particular Presents, sued Clear Channel for antitrust, claiming, among other things, that the company "has used its size and clout to coerce artists ... to use Clear Channel to promote their concerts or else risk losing airplay."

Just days before Michaels stepped down as head of Clear Channel radio, a judge in Denver refused to dismiss the NPP suit as Clear Channel had requested. He ruled NPP's allegations "are sufficient to make out a case of monopolization and attempted monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act."

Depositions are now moving forward as agents, managers, promoters and programmers will be questioned under oath about their dealings with Clear Channel, and whether its radio stations rewarded or punished artists based on their business relationships with Clear Channel's concert division.

That could put some industry players in awkward positions, forced to publicly detail their experience with Clear Channel. Jesse Morreale, a principal partner with NPP, suggests the current conditions are just as uncomfortable. "It's not like people are happy getting pushed around by Clear Channel, told where their artists can play and how much they can make or else," he says. "That's not what people got in this business to do. They're excited to see somebody doing something and they're eager to see resolution. This is going to make or break it."

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