No Room for Protest Music on Corporate Radio
February 29, 2008
In the 1960s the Vietnam War raged, the military draft was in place, and young people took to the streets in protest. The radio waves burned with protest songs. Bob Dylan sang about the death of the military-industrial complex in his song Masters of War, and in their song For What its Worth Buffalo Springfield proclaimed, “We better stop, hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down.”
Flash forward to the present. It is not dramatic to say that America is going to hell in the proverbial hand basket. The Bush administration lied to the Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, and five years later the American military is still occupying the country. Over two years ago hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and thousands of people were left stranded to navigate the toxic gumbo the city had become. President Bush admitted he authorized warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. In 2005 photos surfaced of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by U.S. military personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison.
Where are the protest songs? The answer is simple: U.S. radio does not have room for protest music. Owned by a handful of large corporations, radio stations are afraid to play anti-Bush and anti-war music. Owning the largest number of radio stations, 1,200 in total, Clear Channel is the grand-daddy of them all.
Clear Channel is also a big contributor to the Republican Party. In 2002 Clear Channel gave $35,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee, $26,000 in 2001, and $80,000 in 2000. Lowry Mays, the Chairman of the Board at Clear Channel and co-founder, gave money to President Bush’s re-election campaign. Mark Mays, the Chief Executive Officer of Clear Channel, contributed to the Texas Republican Congressional Committee in 2007. Randall Mays, the President and Chief Financial Officer of Clear Channel, also contributed to President Bush’s re-election campaign.
How did we get to this place in American society where one corporation is allowed to own so many radio channels? Thank former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. In 1987 the U.S. Congress voted to extend the Fairness Doctrine, which insured media would be balanced and serve the interests of the public, but Reagan vetoed it, and it was eliminated. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed by the Congress and signed off by President Clinton, deregulated the telecommunications industry, supposedly allowing more companies to provide more services.
When Neil Young released his album Living with War in 2006, he lamented the lack of protest songs coming from young artists. Singer-songwriter Stephan Smith-Said wrote an open letter to Young which ended up published in newspapers across the U.S. In the letter Said mentioned his 2002 anti-war single The Bell, which according to him was “downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, printed over 250,000 times on various compilations, and was covered by artists from Dave Matthews to DJ Spooky.” The song was never played on the radio. In March 2003 Protest-Records.com launched providing free protest MP3s. During the first six days the website received over a million hits.
Clearly there is a market for protest music, but Clear Channel does not care. It does not have to care, for the government has given it free rein to own the airwaves.
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And here is why such songs are not finding their way into the ears of the public: corporate censorship and control of the airwaves: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/24/10580/ . Great to see a songwriter of Neil Young’s caliber, conscience and commitment helping others find an outlet.
A great example of a way to use the status and recognition one has earned to help others achieve an outlet. It would be great to see more songwriters achieving such things.