Airwaves, Shock Waves

Hearing a Dixie Chicks song on your hometown Clear Channel or Cumulus Media radio station doesn't necessarily seem that urgent for the average radio listener, especially when the government has just finished bombing the hell out of Iraq. A country-pop band's clash with industry execs can't compare in significance to the toppling of a murderous regime in the wake of the biggest terrorist action in U.S. history and thousands of resulting deaths.

But a handful of major networks has indeed grounded the airplay of the war-critical Dixie Chicks and other musicians across the country and in Europe, launching a hum of chatter about quasi censorship and alerting people to the fact that despite assumptions to the contrary, there are politics in the airwaves.

It started with Georgia-based Cumulus Media, America's second-largest broadcasting company, publicly bulldozing Dixie Chicks CDs after lead singer Natalie Maines admitted to a London audience that she was ashamed of the behavior of fellow-Texan President George W. Bush. The New York Times, on March 31, reported that stations owned by Texas-based Clear Channel, the nation's largest broadcasting company, had stopped playing the Dixie Chicks because of the remark. In a decision cited in international media reports, MTV-Europe nixed all B-52's videos to avoid invoking thoughts of war and planes. Madonna also purportedly joined the fray by banning her own Bush-and-fatigues video on April 4, just days before its scheduled release.

"It's kind of a sad statement about the psyche of the nation," says Gary Schoenwetter, operations manager for San Jose rock stations KSJO and KUFX, adding that some touring musicians have asked not to be interviewed about the war, because they're against it and fear reprisals.

Despite Schoenwetter's sympathy for the Dixie Chicks, whose wartime artistic crime was speaking out at a concert, he happens to work for Clear Channel, which owns KSJO and KUFX. Schoenwetter, who is in charge of programming, says that there was no mandate sent down from Clear Channel headquarters regarding the issue, but he combed through station playlists anyway after the war broke out, looking for anything that he thought would be "in poor taste."

His goal, he says, was merely "to try to depoliticize the music," and he didn't end up banning anything. As an example of the kind of thing he might have banned, he cites R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine), but this song, he adds, wasn't on their playlist.

Schoenwetter says that radio stations don't rely solely on the taste of listeners. "You're constantly looking at the music you're playing under the microscope of whatever may be going on at the time," Schoenwetter explains.

"Radio is ultimately a business," he sums up. "It's where art and commerce meet."

Whose Waves?

Schoenwetter's insights beg the fundamental question: Who owns the airwaves, anyway? The answer is simple. According to the FCC, the public owns the airwaves. But in light of recent reports of airplay selectivity, political lobbying by networks and the repercussions of political dissent by artists, some critics believe that it would be easy for the public not to know it.

"Most people think it's advertisers buying time from the broadcasters," says San Jose State University professor Kimb Massey, who teaches the media and society class in the TV-radio-film-theater department. "That's not what's really happening. Advertisers are buying us from the broadcasters. We are the product."

The St. Petersburg Times ran an article just one week after the World Trade Center attacks reporting on the internal memo that Clear Channel sent to its stations suggesting they drop 150 songs. The list included Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'," "The End" by the Doors, "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" by the Gap Band, Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul and Mary.