Sound and Fury

part 3

by Dan Kennedy

My first insight into radio's possibilities came in 1969 or '70. It took the form of a long, loud fart, followed by a high-pitched, British-accented voice demanding: "Are you embarrassed easily?"

This scatological revelation -- courtesy of a Monty Python sketch, broadcast on WBCN, then a fledgling flagship of the counterculture -- may not seem like much. But to a teenager brought up in the carefully controlled universe of Top 40 radio, it signaled that there was a whole world out there I didn't know about, a world of creativity and anarchy. Of freedom.

In a sense, the moment was made possible by the federal government. Much as corporate radio's defenders may characterize the current state of affairs as the triumph of the free market, the history of radio is actually the story of how big business and government have worked together. But more often than not, that partnership has worked to the detriment of listeners.

For instance, in the 1920s the dial was filled with stations operated by amateurs and nonprofit groups, including churches and unions. But as the commercial potential of radio became clear, the fledgling networks, NBC and CBS, began agitating for government protection. It came in the form of the Communications Act of 1934, which threw noncommercial stations off the AM band in return for a vague requirement that commercial stations would have to meet certain public-interest obligations as a condition of holding their licenses.

University of Wisconsin professor Robert McChesney, author of Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for Control of US Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (Oxford University Press, 1995), sees striking parallels between the 1934 law and the drafting of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "Neither of them had any public debate," he says. "Both of them were rammed through by powerful lobbies."

The FM band languished into the early 1960s. Few people had FM radios, especially in their cars. Nonprofits and college stations congregated on the band, joined by AM stations that would grab an FM signal and simulcast their regular programming. But in the mid '60s, FM got a big boost. Once again, government was the driving force: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to foster innovation and diversity, ordered that simulcasting be phased out.

It was in this new environment that WBCN was born. From the moment in 1968 when it switched from classical music to rock, WBCN was a national leader of the counterculture, playing a mind-bending variety of music (in the early days, you could not only hear Jimi Hendrix, but also Miles Davis and even, on occasion, Tchaikovsky) and politically progressive news and public-affairs programs. The station fostered a broad sense of community and solidarity, from Lock-Up, which focused on prisoner's rights (and musical requests), to nightly updates on lost dogs and cats on the streets of Cambridge, Somerville, and other youth enclaves.

Today, WBCN offers a mix of Howard Stern, the New England Patriots, and rock and roll aimed at 18- to 24-year-old males. Call the station, and the receptionist chirps, "CBS." Just last week the station unceremoniously gave the boot to Mark Parenteau, a disc jockey at 'BCN for 20 years, because management decided the six-figure-salaried DJ no longer appeals to younger listeners. The Parenteau story illustrates a larger trend in the making: older, highly paid talent can and will be replaced by younger and less expensive on-air personalities, or syndicated shows.

The corporate pressures that eventually turned 'BCN into just another station actually began long before the '90s. As Danny Schechter, WBCN's "news dissector" in the 1960s and '70s, tells the Phoenix, WBCN was unusual even for its time; the pressure to go more mainstream began as far back as the mid-'70s, when the station began to feel the heat from competitors with no obvious political orientation.

"The traditional forces in radio began to push more music, less talk. And that was basically to sanitize the market of people with something to say. As the counter went out of the culture, market logic began to predominate," says Schechter, who writes about his WBCN days in his new book, The More You Watch, the Less You Know (Seven Stories Press).

This renewed corporate mentality was helped along with yet another assist from the government. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan's FCC attempted to work its free-market religion on radio, granting hundreds of new FM licenses and virtually removing public-interest requirements. In this new cutthroat environment, stations jettisoned much of their news and public-affairs programming. With too many stations chasing too few advertising dollars, profits plummeted and, in many cases, turned into losses.

The FCC responded in the early '90s by relaxing ownership restrictions, both in local markets and nationally -- culminating in the Republican Congress and Democratic president's eager capitulation to monopoly forces in 1996.

The current state of music radio is a good illustration of what happens when just a few companies control most of the stations. Some radio executives actually argue that fewer owners leads to more musical diversity, since any given owner will seek out a different audience with each of its stations.

The problem comes when the theory is turned into reality. The result: narrowly focused stations whose mission is not to explore a particular genre of music, but rather to appeal to advertisers who might want to sell beer to 25-to-54-year-old men and don't want to have to pay extra to reach 18-to-24-year-old women. Music by consultant and focus group, in other words.

"It's not eclectic. It's so out of whack with the reality of our culture," says Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine and a pioneering force in the early days of freeform and progressive radio. "It's the corporatization of the culture -- a corporate culture controlling, basically, art. Office workers and corporate managers can't really have a feel for this kind of stuff."

Phoenix-affiliated WFNX, like the shrinking number of independents, is committed to eclectic programming, such as jazz broadcasts, gay and lesbian programming (One in Ten), and special events like the broadcast this year of Allen Ginsberg's Howl.

So insular and centralized has the industry become that insiders are afraid to talk about it. Mark Parenteau, unemployed after two decades at WBCN, won't, even though his departure from the airwaves was hastened last week after he made a sarcastic remark about Mel Karmazin at an awards ceremony. (So sensitive is Karmazin to criticism that Howard Stern has a clause in his contract prohibiting him even from speaking the name.) "It would perhaps be unwise of me to make any statements," said Parenteau when contacted by the Phoenix. Ditto for Ken Shelton, currently looking for an on-air gig after stints at WBCN, WZLX, and WBOS, who declined to be interviewed for this article.

Says Harrison: "This is too sensitive. This is volatile stuff. I can't lose my job. That's why I'm outspoken."

Corporate power is also having a distorting effect on the record industry, which finds itself increasingly beholden to a handful of executives. Piss off a program director in San Francisco, and now you've got a problem in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston, too.

"A company can literally punish an artist or punish a manager or punish a record company up and down the corporation, on a national basis," says a knowledgeable industry source. "That's pretty profound."

The new radio conglomerates also strong-arm labels into keeping their bands from making promotional appearances on smaller rival stations and independents. Several months ago, WAAF, then part of a smaller radio group, charged WBCN with just such tactics.

Back to part 2 - On to part 4

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www1.shore.net/~dkennedy/

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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