Is CCC Again Giving Listeners the Finger?

For a music head like myself, there is nothing quite as liberating as not having to listen to commercial radio – which more often than not means stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, a thuggishly monopolistic media conglomerate with a conservative political streak.

Clear Channel owns over 1,100 AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations, 11 satellite radio channels and more than 30 television stations in the U.S. -- and four FM stations in Philadelphia alone -- although that number probably will go up by the time you finish reading this.

I don’t have to listen to Clear Channel because I webstream music from non-commercial stations, but most folks are not so lucky and are stuck with having to listen to what the nannies at Clear Channel insist that they listen to.

For Clear Channel's classic rock stations, that apparently does not include cuts from Magic, Bruce Springsteen’s No. 1 gadzillion-copy selling album. The reason, according to Faux News, is that Clear Channel doesn't want cuts from the singles-rich album diluting all of the Springsteen oldies that are staples of class rock.

It apparently even has banned two of the softer tracks from Magic from its so-called "lite" stations.

Not so fast there, says blogger Southern Beale, who notes that Clear Channel "would put the devil himself on heavy rotation if they thought it would make them money."

Beale notes that some Clear Channel stations are playing the Boss's latest album and acknowledges that while the conglomerate throws its weight around -- like banning certain songs post-9/11 and those Dixie Chicks altogether, as well as promoting pro-Iraq war demonstrations -- she scoffs at the notion that there's any kind of political agenda in this particular instance.

The big question, she says:

"[I]s should we allow any corporation to have so much control over the public airwaves that they could single-handedly banish an artist from being heard on over 1,000 radio stations across the country for any reason? Clear Channel’s corporate office claims their radio programming reaches more than 110 million listeners every week. There are 300 million people in this country. Should we allow one corporation to control what over a third of the country hears at any given time? Shouldn’t there be a little more, you know, competition than that? A little more diversity in the "marketplace of ideas"?

Of course there should be. But I won't be listening.