Tag: radio

Radio is tearing up the nation


More evidence that popular radio is not worth listening to from this column by Roger Friedman on FoxNews.com (I first saw this on Steven Hart’s Opinion Mill). According to Friedman, Clear Channel has opted not to play the No. 1 album in the country — Bruce Springsteen’s Magic — on its classic rock stations.

But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as “Dancing in the Dark,” “Born to Run” and “Born in the USA.”

Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.

Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, “is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them.”

“Magic,” by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.

But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout “mellow” tracks — “Magic” and “Devil’s Arcade” — aren’t even on “lite” stations.

The singles-kinda hits, “Radio Nowhere” and “Living in the Future” — which would have been hits no questions asked in the ’70s, ’80s and maybe even the ’90s, also are absent from Top 40.

What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of “The Girls in their Summer Clothes,” a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, “Girls” will triumph.

I’m not so sure.

Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.

It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.

Like Springsteen, these “older” artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.

That’s why I rarely listen to commercial radio — I tend to tune in to WXPN or the local college stations — and probably never will again.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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A dangerous road

Tom Moran explains the dangers inherent in an individual — especially one who is a state trooper — engaging in what can only be described as vigilantism. Boycotts and appeals to sponsors and management — even competing broadcasts, letters to the editor and web attacks — are OK. The use of speech to change behavior is what the First Amendment is about.

But publicizing the address of someone you find obnoxious can’t be defended. It is intimidation.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Imus and the First Amendment

This is last week’s commentary from the First Amendment Center on the Imus nonsense (how I managed to miss this is beyond me). It seems the most sensible thing I’ve read, recognizing the First-Amendment rights both of the offenders and the offended:

(T)he most immediate answer to highly offensive speech is simply to stop enabling it. Change the channel, boycott the sponsor, or go to another Web site. We should do everything we can to protect the First Amendment right of people to offend, but we don’t have to pay for it.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

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Filtered images

Matthew Yglesias offers an interesting deconstruction of the attempts to link the Duke rape case to the Imus controversy. Like Yglesias, I have avoided writing about Duke — primarily because it was an ongoing police investigation and information was constantly in flux. And like him, I was struck by the attempts of some to dismiss the Imus controversy and its ugly racial elements by tossing the Duke case onto the table.

For months, …, every time I blog on anything even vaguely race-related, I’m struck by the sheer volume of people who want to respond “what about the Duke lacrosse case?” Well, I think, what about it? Then I read something like this from Victor Davis Hanson who really doesn’t cover these issues either, and it hits me. There’s this huge block of people out there, primarily reasonably prosperous middle-aged middle class white men, who in all genuineness seem to believe that what went down there is emblematic of broad-based social problem. They see the Imus controversy through the same lens — the lens that makes them think the issue here is Al Sharpton or hip-hop. It’s a mentality that believes — deeply and sincerely — that the middle-aged white dude just can’t get a fair shake in this country.

My sense, after this week, is that Yglesias’ depiction of the race filter is accurate. Much of the defense of Imus — and of others who have made race-denigrating coments — plays off this attitude.

That it doesn’t reflect reality, however, that white middle-class men are not a put upon class, not as a class, anyway.

If white middle-class men feel they aren’t getting a fair shake — and they aren’t — they should get together with all the rest of those not getting a fair shake and hold the people in power accountable.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.