{"id":4347,"date":"2012-03-10T08:51:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-10T13:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=4347"},"modified":"2012-03-10T14:51:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-10T19:51:57","slug":"clear-channels-war-on-conservative-talk-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=4347","title":{"rendered":"Clear Channel’s war on Conservative Talk Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s start with what I believe – I believe<\/span> Robert Pittman\u00a0 (CEO of Clear Channel) wants Barack Obama to be reelected and wants the Democratic Party to have complete control over Congress.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Why do I believe that?\u00a0 The last 15 years of political contributions he has made<\/a>, especially the one to Barack Obama in April of 2007.\u00a0\u00a0 State Senator Barack Obama launched his campaign in February 2007, and few people knew who he was or gave him any chance of winning the Presidency in 2008.<\/p>\n

Robert Pittman has an obstacle in the way of achieving his goal<\/span> – his employer Clear Channel owns Premiere Radio<\/strong>, by far the biggest provider of “Conservative” Talk Radio, which for 3 years has been airing non-stop Anti-Obama “hate”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert Pittman was the founder of MTV, ran AOL and has extensive ties to people in the entertainment industry and Hollywood, as demonstrated how he was able to round up folks for the iHeartRadio launch in Las Vegas.\u00a0\u00a0 In his youth, Pittman was also a radio programming prodigy with a track record of success.\u00a0 There is no doubt in my mind that Pittman would be fully on board with helping the White House in any way he can, including destroying Conservative Talk Radio from the Inside.<\/p>\n

Clear Channel is owned by its debt – something over $20 billion of it.\u00a0\u00a0 The company is managed by two private equity firms Thomas H Lee and Bain Capital, both of Boston.\u00a0\u00a0 Mitt Romney worked for Bain Capital, still owns a significant financial interest in it, and personally knows the people who run it.\u00a0 Bob Pittman did not get the job at Clear Channel unless Bain Capital wanted it.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 I believe, but can’t prove it outright that Harvard University’s endowment fund was a significant force at Bain Capital, at least in the early days.\u00a0 If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, Harvard wins no matter who wins the election.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So now the smoking gun<\/strong> – this is going to take explanation, so I apologize for the length, but think if you care anything about radio or politics or the future of the United States, you’ll want to take the time to understand what is going on.<\/p>\n

Tom Taylor published a leaked copy of an email that was sent to radio stations that carry Premiere’s radio shows – that would include Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.\u00a0 (Tom Taylor is not a fan of Conservative Talk Radio at all if you read his own writing)<\/p>\n

“To all Traffic Managers: <\/strong>The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory. More than 350 different advertisers<\/span> sponsor the programs and services provided to your station on a barter basis. Like advertisers that purchase commercials on your radio station from your sales staff, our sponsors communicate specific rotations, daypart preferences and advertising environments they prefer. . .They\u2019ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content<\/span> that you know<\/span> are deemed to be offensive or controversial<\/strong><\/span> (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity<\/strong><\/span>). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now what this means – explaining some of the industry jargon and the context (Disclaimer: I’ve never worked in radio)<\/p>\n

“Traffic Manager<\/strong>” is the person who has the job of managing the commercials for a radio station. The Sales Person sells the ads, the Traffic Manager schedules when the ads will run in accordance with the sales contract and the policies of the station, makes sure the ads do run, and tracks to make sure the station is getting paid for the ads that are run (and schedules “Make Good” replacements if the air staff botch the running of the ads or otherwise fail to play the ads correctly). The smaller the radio station, the more likely that some of those functions are combined into one person.<\/p>\n

National radio advertising<\/strong> is sold mostly by the one remaining National Representation firm Katz Media Group<\/a> which just so happens to also be owned by Clear Channel.\u00a0\u00a0 How the other people in radio allowed this to happen is a mystery to me – when you hear an ad for Ford on your local “independent” radio station, it is very probable that Clear Channel gets a piece of the advertising revenue on that commercial and is cherry picking the best advertising time slots from its competitors.<\/p>\n

The “Commercial Inventory<\/strong>” is those commercials which have been purchased by an advertiser, but not yet run.<\/p>\n

“Barter Basis”<\/strong> is the most important thing to understand, and hard to pin down, because it is done fairly secretly to the public’s view.\u00a0\u00a0 Here is an example of how barter works in radio:\u00a0 The Sales Guy wants to get the local Ford Dealer to advertiser on the radio station but isn’t getting anywhere.\u00a0 He proposes a “Barter Deal” – rather than Ford dealer writing a check to pay for the ads, the transaction is done “off the books” – the car dealer provides the radio stations with cars to use and the radio station runs advertisements and does promotions for the car dealer.\u00a0\u00a0 Barter is done for a variety of reasons – it makes it easier to close the deal with advertisers who don’t like to spend cash, it has implications for purposes of accounting and taxes, and for the dishonest an opportunity to steal from the radio station.<\/p>\n

In Syndicated Radio, how shows are paid for varies, depending mostly on the clout the show has and how many stations are willing to compete to give something of value up to get the show.\u00a0 Shows with no clout just give the show away for free to any radio station who wants to run it (or even pay the radio station to run it) – the syndicator sells ads or products to pay for the show, and leaves holes in the programming for the local stations to run their advertisements to pay their bills.<\/p>\n

On the other extreme is Rush Limbaugh<\/strong> – Rush’s ability to attract a desirable audience is well proven for over 20 years.\u00a0 Unless a radio owner is blinded by their own political convictions, they would all jump at the chance to carry Limbaugh.\u00a0\u00a0 When Premiere is faced with a contract renewal, they have significant leverage to force radio stations to do things the radio station may not want to do.\u00a0\u00a0 A radio station may outright pay for the rights, but more commonly as alluded to in this letter, the stations agree to a barter deal with Premiere – they agree to take ads from Premiere and run them at other times of the day (like during the desirable morning drive time).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The station is not paying cash to get Rush, but is giving up advertising time that it would otherwise be selling to local advertisers.\u00a0\u00a0 They may have to run “Rush Limbaugh Minutes” during other parts of the day (with the ads embedded), may be pressured to carry other Premiere shows (If you want Rush, you have to carry Hannity), run the show for all three hours live and have no sports preemptions, run “Best of” shows on the weekends, maybe carry Ryan Seacrest on the music station the company also owns.\u00a0\u00a0 Clear Channel used to own LiveNation and put pressure to promote concerts at venues managed by Livenation, and demand stations run music from artists who had signed to appear at LiveNation concerts.\u00a0 LiveNation has since been spun off as its own company, in part due to pressure from musicians and threats of an antitrust investigation.<\/p>\n

“Rotations”<\/strong> is requirements about how the ads are to be run, i.e….\u00a0 “No more than one per hour, no more than 2 in a daypart, no closer together than 30 minutes, no more than 20 a week, not during the last 15 minutes of the show”….\u00a0 to generally set the rate at which the ads should be played – if McDonalds is running McRib ads for a month, they may want them spread out over the month, not all played in the first 2 days.<\/p>\n

Daypart<\/strong> is industry jargon for “Time of Day” and day of week.\u00a0\u00a0 For almost all radio stations, “Morning Drive” daypart is the prime advertising that demands the best advertising rate.\u00a0\u00a0 An ad at 7:45 AM as people are close to arriving at work is much more valuable than one at 1:15AM when the audience is asleep and the people who are listening have little disposable income.<\/p>\n

Now to the bullet:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 The memo doesn’t say content that “Some may find objectionable” – Premiere outright says the list of shows that ARE objectionable<\/strong> in the eyes of advertisers, and gives specific examples:<\/p>\n