From the folks who bring you Rush Limbaugh

The Wall Street Journal has been abuzz recently over Clear Channel. First came a doom and gloom piece. But the agreement is full of gotchas and ways Clear Channel can force the potential buyers in ways from either keeping it alive or denying that its dying.

If the deal falls through, the private-equity firms would likely have to pay a breakup fee to Clear Channel that could be as high as $600 million. The firms would probably try to force the banks to pick up the bill.

One of the issues surrounding the deal is what one banker called the "onerous" requirements on the deal's debt. One person involved in the deal said that the banks want the two private-equity firms to sell Clear Channel assets to pay down the future maturities on some of the company's debt. The first of those maturities occurs in 2011, which would give the firms three years to figure out how to refinance, this person said, but the two firms have balked.

But then came all the articles and commentaries about how the deal is going to force some very strange statements and some dissonant actions among the parties.

What does Rush Limbaugh have to do with this? Follow me into the ether...

Clear Channel owns Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere, and a pretty serious percentage of the actual kilowatts used to blast him into our lives. Their stations like KFI, Los Angeles and WIOD Miami dominate the AM signals in their respective markets, and are used to provide a nearly steady diet of right wing reactionary rhetoric. That's true too in scores of markets more.

But they've been in severe financial decline, and the Mays family, which put the chain together as the aggregation of major radio groups that were too big themselves (like AM/FM and Paxon's radio properties), wants to get out through privatization.

They've already dumped many of their television properties, though those buyers tried to get cold feet and a lawsuit was required to force the close of the deal. But things are worse now, and radio doesn't have the lingering value that television does.

So it may benefit the big banks that would back this to walk away from the deal while acting like they're not, and taking the hit in penalties and fees for walking away.

There are strange times for right wing radio. The front people on are are singing the praises and urging the reelection of the very people who presided over their potential catastrophic failures.

Maybe Rush can take up a collection among the dittoheads, because the future for AM radio doesn't look bright.

•  Buddy, can you spare a I-A clear...

  tips or interference here.

  by PBCliberal on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 01:11:22 PM PDT

•  As much as I respect the idea of "free speech,"

  I will admit to times I wish there were a way to
  "cleanse" our airwaves of people like Rush and the Fox folk.

  by Alan Charles on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 01:14:41 PM PDT

•  Rush and the rest didn't get a start until Reagan

  dropped The Fairness Doctrine.  Even the left-wing talk radio hosts don't want to go back to it, because it would clip everyone's wings.

  I, personally, thought it was a good idea and kept the conversation far more civil than it is today.

  Someone like Rush could not just sit and spout lies without giving the other side an opportunity to respond.

  We would probably see fewer talk-radio programs, but I don't think that would be a bad thing.

  by importer on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 01:25:14 PM PDT

  •  There was little political speech

    Talk radio saved AM radio. When all of the music went to FM talk radio was the format that saved AM. When the Fairness Doctrine was in place there was little political speech. Typically the station would air an editorial position and invite someone representing the other side to respond. I would feel better about the support on DKOS for the Fairness Doctrine if it were the progressives who were dominating talk radio and not the wingnuts. I personally think imposing the Fairness Doctrine will inhibit political speech. People can choose not to listen to any radio channel. I think the current system is works, let's find more support for progressive talk so that it becomes successful in this market.

    by VClib on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 01:50:14 PM PDT

  •  That's not how the "Fairness" doctrine works

    If the fairness doctrine, in its previous incarnation, existed today it would not change Limbaughs program one iota.  It's a common misconception that there must be equal time within a given program.

    Having said that, it was a bad idea then, and is now, and would clip everyones wings.

    by BraveheartDC on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 01:59:41 PM PDT

    •  It'd be helpful though to have his program

      prominantly announced as editorial or entertainment in nature at multiple times during the hour, and announce that his views don't represent the station management's views.  Those with opposing views should be invited to submit their tape or copy.  

      If the Fairness Doctrine would help this sort of 'bracketing' to frame his material, I'm for it.  I'd want that for any talk show dealing with politics.  If there happens to be real fact checking before statements are made on the air, that sort of show can be deemed a news show.  If it's just a talking points catapult, identify it as such.  

      I would rather see our public-owned air time used to provide reporting from real, hardworking investigative journalism than give another minute to talk radio.

      by antirove on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 02:16:17 PM PDT

      •  I really don't think...

        ...anyone listening to Limbaugh's show for me than 3 minutes could mistake it for anything but infotainment...i.e., to use you words, an editorial.

        And I think a "does not necessarily represent the views of the management" disclaimer would be both unnecessary and an insult to the intelligence of the listeners.

        As for "fact checking"...facts are funny things.  Just taking the Iraq war, for example, there are many ways to interpret the "facts" and there are a lot of disagreement about them.  And who does the fact checking?

        Talk saved AM radio; if you turned it into just straight news, it would go under.

        Disagree with what the guy says?  Absolutely.  But limit his right to say it in any way?  No. Not on my watch.

        by BraveheartDC on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 09:50:23 PM PDT

    •  It wasn't required that the response be within

      the same program, but the station was required to give equal time for a response.  Likewise it impacted political exposure on tv if I remember correctly, they couldn't show one candidate over and over without offering time to another-I could be remembering that incorrectly.

      It would preclude back-to-back scheduling of right-wing talk that runs to several hundred hours a week right now, and allow for an infusion of left-wing talk on some basis.

      When I first lost my mind - 1999 I think it was - I couldn't find an outlet anywhere for left-wing talk.  It was all right-wing.  I moved to Seattle and finally found a few shows that qualified.

      To be honest, I don't know that talk-radio is that big a blessing.  Maybe if we all listened to some nice quiet jazz while driving to and from we would be better off!

      Being able to get online and discuss all this stuff one on one, (actually one on a thousand or two) is a better medium for political talk, or any other kind of discussion.

      by importer on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 02:26:49 PM PDT

      •  Equal time and equal opportunity

        Equal time in political campaigns arises from a different requirement than equal opportunity for opposing viewpoints under the fairness doctrine.

        In political talk reimposing the fairness doctrine would be like forcing a rock station to give an equal opportunity for country, or classical to give an equal opportunity for polka. You could daypart them, of course, but there are so many stations and the audience is so confused these days because of the blast of media coming at them, that at the top of the hour when The Train's On Time Hour with Benito and Adoph ended and The Red Breakfast Club with Leon and Vlad began, you'd lose whatever listeners you had and probably never get them back.

        There's a good reason for stations to air the same shit all day long whether its our shit or the rightwingers.

        What is wrong is that there the only outlets are owned by megaliths with a corporate republican viewpoint. There's little or no creativity because there's no money for it, so much money has been put into buying up all the properties so that there is no competition that isn't also saddled with tremendous debt.

        by PBCliberal on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 03:59:58 PM PDT

        •  I see where the banks are baulking now

          at the Clear Channel purchase by Mitt Romney's guys-Bain Investment.

          With all the free money drying up for the mega-investors, maybe some of these massive conglomerates will start shedding stations.

          I believe the only reason we got left-wing stations to begin with was that Clear Channel was trying to hedge their bet in the event the wind started blowing in the other direction.

          No one could say that they hadn't given left-wing radio "a chance"; but, obviously, there was no market for it and it died a natural death.

          There was a recent situation in SD? with a chemical spill.  The police/sherif tried to call the "local" radio station to put out a warning, but no one was home.  When my kids were working in radio they still did "overnights" where someone was available at the station in an emergency.

          I may be old fashioned, but I think things worked pretty well before Reagan, before all the telecommunications legislation was gutted in favor of the mega-owners.

          by importer on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 07:44:29 AM PDT

          •  You raised "the event that must not be described"

            I raised it on a subscription radio site and the Clear Channel minions literally came out of the woodwork trying to blame the police.

            Anyone who believes that media consolidation, whether it be terrestrial radio or consolidation of the satellite radio duopoly that already restricts competition to one, should know the details of this story.

            There's an article in Harpers that's great. And the Wikipedia piece on the Minot Train Derailment is pretty good too, even though Wikipedia is awful on radio subjects (a consequence when a group of people who know nothing about a subject edit people who do.)

            This was a kind of an aberration because Minot wound up under the complete stranglehold of Clear Channel because CC was the amalgam of several other superchains that all had Minot stations, and it later had to divest some of them. But not before they were caught sleeping at the switch.

            The biggest problem with Minot, at least to me, is that CC claims there really was somebody in the 6 radio stations that were all importing programming at that hour, but they've never identified that person. No one with the ability to compel an answer to that question appears to have ever asked in a demanding way.

            CC claims the police didn't install the equipment necessary to attract their attention. I say that a company that owns nearly all the stations in the market should have enough people on the ground to pick up the fact there was a major disaster on its own. Answering the phone would be a good way. Having a journalist on staff who gave a damn would be another.

            by PBCliberal on Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 11:52:31 AM PDT

•  Media diversity or fairness doctrine...

  We shouldn't need a fairness doctrine. There's a plethora of media. Progressives aren't going to listen to a lot of old technology. We're progressives, and 100-year-old technology that makes you listen when it wants to broadcast and doesn't let you control the stream isn't going to cut it. When Gold Bond Medicated Powder can't even motivate enough chafing octogenarians to make a radio campaign worthwhile, its pretty obvious public taste has moved on. Radio shouldn't be required to be made "representative" when its audience isn't representative of the public at large and probably never will be again.

  The argument for deregulation was that there's enough channels available that all points of view will find an outlet. I'd be happy with that if there were controls in place to keep four or five companies from owning everything across every platform.

  If Clear Channel, Citidel, CBS/Infinity and Salem are going to own the vast majority of broadcast facilities doing talk, then we need a fairness doctrine. If we had one-per-market ownership caps, no newspaper or television or cable cross-ownership and true diversity in station ownership, we don't.

  I'm happy to surrender AM radio to the right wingers, but there ought to be a lot of them speaking with different voices while we have more modern media promulgating more modern ideas. This concept of Fox and Clear Channel dominating talk radio while also having a major presence in cable-satellite program production/syndication, plus satellite ownership plus Dow Jones, et al is too much concentration.

  by PBCliberal on Wed Mar 26, 2008 at 02:59:41 PM PDT