Stern pulled from Clear Channel, radio gets even worse

posted by Jeff | Thursday, February 26, 2004, 10:47 AM | comments: 4
Clear Channel is pulling Howard Stern from its radio stations.

More knee-jerking if you ask me. Stern's show is far from politically correct, but obscene? Please. If the FCC and Michael Powell want broadcast to return to its "public service" roots as he said in a letter to the networks, then they need to break up Clear Channel and Infinity and put broadcast licenses back into the hands of local businesses and communities. I want my fucking radio stations back from New York. Reinstate the ownership limits.

National radio owners have proven that they don't serve the local community because in an effort to save cost, they program from the coasts. They have absolutely no idea what serves the local interest. There are some rare exceptions (one of our AM stations here does news and it airs on the other owned stations in the market), but they're rare and barely affect the bigger picture.

We lost radio. It's a damn shame. We won't get it back until broadband is everywhere and we can pick up a "station" as easy as we can a Web site at home.


Comments

Tobe

February 27, 2004, 12:08 AM # Jeff, it's really sad the state radio is in. We can only hope that Powell is gone from his position soon, there's other more worthy commissioners at the FCC. The whole ownership limits need to go back to what they used to be, the whole "commercialized radio" that Clear Channel has brought up just leaves me sour. Can't we go back to the days when DJs wrote their own playlists?

The only radio station I can handle listening to anymore is our award winning college station of the year, 88.9 WDBM here in East Lansing. Variety, personality (sometimes :o) and stuff you just won't hear a clear channel station ever play. I once had interest in radio, with all of the DJ experience I've had it sounded like fun at one time. Who would want to deal with all of the corporate nonsense and low pay of today's radio world though?

Jeff

February 27, 2004, 3:12 AM # Powell is not the problem. The problems with radio were around long before he got there. We can thank Congress in the Bush I era for really trashing the industry.

Tobe

February 27, 2004, 4:24 AM # True, true...

I just don't particularly like Powell :o)

gregleg

February 27, 2004, 11:05 PM # Pittsburgh is one of the markets affected by Clear Crapple's pulling of Stern. It irks me, and will REALLY piss me off next week when I start getting out of bed before 10am to go to work, and have no Howard to listen to during my commute.

Some people may not like his show -- hell, I frequently don't agree with him myself. But if you don't like it, change the damn channel. Is it REALLY that hard?

Apparently, yes...


Post your comment: