Primetime Payola for Clear Channel

A feverish, corporate-sponsored nationalism has taken root in America at a time when the public depends on a vibrant communications culture to sustain its institutional democracy. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio chain.

In the outrage that followed the Floridian scandal and George Bush Jr.'s appointment by the Supreme Court to the Oval Office, many in the media missed an equally alarming familial maneuver. In one of his first bureaucratic decisions as president, Bush named Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. That the son of one of the nation's most decorated and politically entrenched former military officers should be given control of the agency that regulates the domestic news and entertainment networks -- indeed the whole telecommunications industry -- is something that is more imaginable in ... well, Iraq.

The FCC is composed of five commissioners, one of whom is appointed chairman by the president. Typically, commissioners ride out their terms and retire when it suits them. But in a rare move, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) used his considerable influence to block the 1997 re-appointment of a sitting Republican commissioner. Powell replaced him on the FCC and four years later he was chairman.

Powell took over as chief regulator for a corporate communications industry in the throes of a radical transformation following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened the door for deregulation and sparked widespread condemnation from media activists who saw the act as an attack on the public interest function of the FCC. The existing television and radio networks launched into mergers of unprecedented size, while new players with deep pockets were able to claim previously unthinkable levels of market share. One of the act's most prominent benefactors was Clear Channel Communications, a relatively unknown broadcaster based in San Antonio, Texas. Led by L. Lowry Mays, a rancher and one-time George W. Bush business associate, Clear Channel has ridden a wave of acquisitions, spending more than $30 billion to become the world's largest radio broadcaster, concert promoter and billboard advertising firm. Clear Channel owns more than 1,200 radio stations (approximately 50 percent of the U.S. total), five times more than its closest competitors, CBS and ABC. Considering the fact that prior to the Telecommunications Act, a single broadcaster could not own more than 40 stations in the entire country, it is hard to see the behemoth as anything but a creation of the act itself.

But while Clear Channel's unhindered expansion is the result of the deregulation media barons crave, its growth has not been viewed favorably by the rest of the industry. Other would-be monopolists, anticipating the next phase of deregulation, fear that they will be adversely affected by Clear Channel's gluttonous horizontal consolidation. Recent lawsuits and congressional hearings regarding the brutish tactics and political influence of Clear Channel have thrown a spotlight on the FCC and its abandonment of regulatory restraints. Led by articulate critiques by digital journalists such as Jeff Perlstein of Corpwatch and Eric Boehlert of Salon, the mainstream media have been prodded out of complicit somnambulism. With the FCC scheduled to review the last remaining set of protections on media diversity this spring, Big Media is worried that the upstart Texans will ruin it for everybody.

And they have reason to be concerned. In January, Sen. John McCain's Commerce Committee held two hearings that targeted, among other things, the issue of media concentration. At the first hearing, Michael Powell and his four commissioners were subjected to intense questioning about their strategy to protect the public interest from "sky's the limit" deregulation. In a response that clearly surprised the committee, Powell, traditionally an unabashed proponent of the free market and loosened restrictions to ownership, said he was "concerned about the concentration, particularly in radio." Mediageek.com's Paul Riismandel explained: "Indeed, [Powell] didn't want much publicity or input ... But now the cat is out of the bag and yowling like crazy." Smelling the blood of a close Bush ally, partisan Democrats on the committee, led by maverick Republican McCain, called new hearings to specifically examine "consolidation in the radio industry." As the committee's star witness, McCain summoned Clear Channel's Lowry Mays.