Consolidation is particularly extreme in the case of Clear Channel. Since passage of the Telecommunications Act, Clear Channel has grown from forty stations to 1,240 stations--thirty times more than Congressional regulation previously allowed. No potential competitor owns even one-quarter the number of Clear Channel stations. With more than 100 million listeners, Clear Channel reaches more than one-third of the US population.

....listeners are losing. With an emphasis on cost-cutting and an effort to move decision-making out of the hands of local station staff, much of radio has become bland and formulaic. Recall Steiner's hopeful theory that an owner would not want to compete against his own company and would therefore operate stations with different programming. We found evidence to the contrary: Radio companies regularly operate two or more stations with the same format--for example, rock, country, adult contemporary, top 40--in the same local market. In a recent New York Times article, "Fewer Media Owners, More Media Choices," FCC chairman Michael Powell denied this, propping up Steiner's theory by saying things like, "Common ownership can lead to more diversity--what does the owner get for having duplicative products?" But we found 561 instances of format redundancy nationwide--a parent company operating two or more stations in the same market, with the same format--amounting to massive missed opportunities for variety.

Still, from 1996 to 2000, format variety--the average number of formats available in each local market--actually increased in both large and small markets. But format variety is not equivalent to true diversity in programming, since formats with different names have similar playlists. For example, alternative, top 40, rock and hot adult contemporary are all likely to play songs by the band Creed, even though their formats are not the same. In fact, an analysis of data from charts in Radio and Records and Billboard's Airplay Monitor revealed considerable playlist overlap--as much as 76 percent--between supposedly distinct formats. If the FCC or the National Association of Broadcasters are sincerely trying to measure programming "diversity," doing so on the basis of the number of formats in a given market is a flawed methodology. As someone who has worked in commercial radio on and off over the last 20+ years, I can tell you that from a creativity, musical diversity, and employment standpoint, commerical radio is a disaster. Talk about cultural imperialism: it exists much more WITHIN the US than without, with a few companies dictating what the public will hear. Only the safest, lowest-common denominator music is even considered with vast financial leverage hanging over the stations, causing the programmers to aim for offending the least, not playing the best.

From an employment standpoint things couldn't be much worse with syndicated shows eliminating any hint of local flavor, computerized voice-tracking removing even local jocks from real-time involvement, and an emphasis everywhere on generic predictability. Commercial radio today is hell for all except the suits, and the FCC's Powell wants to allow EVEN MORE consolidation.