Stern Gone?

[rexallllsc]

Originally Posted by Bubba Wheels

Stern's whole act from the beginning was to push the envelope, see what he could get away with, be as shocking as possible in a very casual way and see what the reaction would be. He got away with it for so long he lulled himself into a false sense of security, so when the boom finally came done he's like '...what happened? What did I do?" He reminds me of my 8 yr old, used to getting so many warnings that they think all of a sudden endless warnings are an entitlement. Stern knew every step of the way that he was violating FCC regs and it was all just a joke to him. Too bad, so sad, let him broadcast over the internet.

The problem is, no one really knows what the FCC regs are.

[Suicane75]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

You mean kinda the way most laws are enforced? i.e. you either follow the law or face the consequences? Gee, how awful of a government to do such a thing

That wasn't the argument I was making. Cam said that CC suspended Stern becuase they disagreed with his content, I was simply pointing out that that wasn't the reason. And by the way, I'm not even sure there is a law, it's a random enforcement of what they do or don't like to hear.

[ice4277]

I read an email today from management at Clear Channel Detroit talking about things not to say on the air. Many of the examples given were things that are generally common on the air nowadays. Personally I think the thing is one big PR move, we shall see.

By the way, I am a Cheap...er...Clear Channel employee as well.

[Bubba Wheels]

The thing not being said is that Stern was for all intents and purposes the leading Pioneer of 'shock jock' radio and has reaped alot of wealth from it. So if an example was to be made of someone way out of line, he being the 'front-runner' was the natural choice.

[pjstp20]

Im not sure how radio "law" is enforced but I think it's through community standars. Which means if theres too many people complaining about what your putting on the air then you get fined, so its all open for interpretation.

[vtbub]

Originally Posted by Suicane75

The problem is not that they they're deciding anything based on content, they're deciding based on the fact that the goverment is strong arming them into doing what they want.

[long winded answer]

No. They are basing this on their bottom line. The current biggest threat to that is woozy advertisers who get spooked out over having their products associated with bad publicity, i.e. FCC probes.

CC had a tremendous debtload thanks to the fact they have purchased so many stations. I belive in most CC markets, they sell cluster ads. Buy x units and get them on all stations, from the dinky AM talk to the FM CHR's. Other ads sold are station spefic, and a third kind of ad buy are actual barter for program swaps. You want to run my canned music program, you air my 5 minutes of sponsers per hour and you can sell the other four.

You can blame the FCC all you want for CC being able to own too many stations, and you would be partly right. When people made the switch from AM to FM, the FCC granted too many licenses. The supply of stations exceeds the demand. Howard Stern's best numbers in New York are 2/3rds what then market leaders WOR and WABC got in the late 1970's. The talk and music giants commanded roughly one out of four listeners in New York City, 24/7/365 and could bill for it, they drew advertisers and made money.

Today, Stern gets about 6.5-7% of the total NYC market. A tremendous number in this day in age. He's made Infinity a shitload of money. And he's well compensated for his services. Now he's a victim of his own success. More on that in a bit.

Stations target advertisers by offering content that targets demos. When Mom and Pop's lil AM/FM full service/CHR stations numbers went from a 25 combined share to a 6, they had to drop their rates and started losing money. They had two choices, go bankrupt or sell. That's how CC/Infinity got so huge into radio, they went into debt trying to make money. They can charge decent dollars for their shows becaus a 4 share nationally or 5 million households gets more money than a 4 share in Fargo or 5000 households. Some genius realized that Males 12-34 were receptive to advertising and liked to laugh at tit jokes, voila Howard Stern.

Then that same genius realized that if you have tit jokes all day, they'll staywith you, because they aren't listening to the same 50 rock songs played over and over after Stern signs on, and voila they did. You then had a whole parade of shows offering off color jokes and the ante ws raised on how close to dark blue could you get without going over. Stern got away with this for years because the revenue he brought in EASILY outweighed any fines given out. Wanna descibe Pam Anderson fingering on the air in code? Fork over 27 grand, you can make that in two sixty second spots. But then, the stations carrying that grew and now for Paris Hilton blowing Joe Schmoe with Howard giving vague descriptions now cost you $250k or $500k simply because each fine is per station.

When the dolts at CBS/Infinity/Boston Brewing Company(Sam Adams Beer) okayed a contest that had an option of sex in a Catholic Church "scoring points" on the Opie and Anthony show, that crossed the line. If I owned a hardware store and bought time on the local Oldies station who also owned the O&A station, then I started to hear about it from groups, how dare I sponsor a program that's so filthy. Chances are, I yank my ads. The dolts fired Opie and Anthony, with pay, and waited for things to die down, i.e. my ads go back on.

Things do die down until, surprise surprise, CBS/Infinity/AOL sponsor the halftime show at this years Super Bowl, starring Janet Jackson's right breast, Nelly's dick, Kid Rock's armpits and flag, and Justin Timberlake's version of hide the sausage. Vulgar if on MTV? Perhaps. Fox News would have shown scarred for life stories for 3 days along with CNN and MSNBC. But on the Super Bowl? Completely tasteless. The whole show, (I liked Janet's boob). CBS had 200,000 complaint calls. 200,000 people were so pissed they got up off their couch and called New York to complain, let alone the people who flooded talk radio and the cable news channels with e-mail. Now you have a problem.

When faced with $200k per station per violation, CC and Infinity had no choice but to cut that off because the fines and the backlash cost more then the revenue generated by the cluster. If they thought that they could get away with liberal lesbians pleasing each other orally on the air, they'd do it in a heartbeat and advertisers would be knocking on the door to pay for it. Radio, however, is a business, a very weak one at that. Ratings are falling and they can't afford the loss of revenue. If they thought that playing Brittney Spears clones 24/7 would bring in more teenage girls and Revlon ads than Stern and Sam Adams, see ya Howie.

Are CC and CBS/Infinity blameless, hell no. You think I'm going to buy time on a station and be ad number 6 in a 20 ad cluster? Yeah, right, especially when I can spend a little more and get the same viewers by buying time on ESPN or Spike for local breaks.

It's all about the money.

[/end long winded answer]

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by vtbub

[long winded answer]
[/end long winded answer]

I don't mind long-winded one bit when it's as good as post as you just made.

I belive in most CC markets, they sell cluster ads. Buy x units and get them on all stations, from the dinky AM talk to the FM CHR's. Other ads sold are station spefic, and a third kind of ad buy are actual barter for program swaps. You want to run my canned music program, you air my 5 minutes of sponsers per hour and you can sell the other four.

From my own experience over the past few years, with roughly two dozen markets that included CC, the "cluster" approach is used most often with short spots (:10s, :15s) and perhaps with jumbo-sized clients for :60s. Much more common are what you might call "semi-clusters", i.e. they'll try to package up 2-4 stations in a demo & get you for those instead of trying to forcefeed you all of the 5-8 stations they own in the market. But I've really had no problem narrowing to single stations where that was what made sense for the client. (Some of the problem here IMO is the amount of money being trusted to very inexperienced media buyers who haven't quite caught on to the fact that the paying customer is still usually right when push comes to shove. They don't know/have forgotten that & don't really push much when they get shoved by the sales reps)

As a side note, even I'm still surprised how often I get asked "what rate would it take for us to get 100% of the buy for CC?". No other ownership group I deal with is as focused on taking money away from the other stations/groups than CC. I've had discounts offered of more than 50%, which still kinda shocks me (and I've been around the block a couple of times).

Are CC and CBS/Infinity blameless, hell no. You think I'm going to buy time on a station and be ad number 6 in a 20 ad cluster? Yeah, right, especially when I can spend a little more and get the same viewers by buying time on ESPN or Spike for local breaks.

I wonder if you realize just how many advertisers fail to understand that fairly simply point? (At this point, I kinda have a suspicion that you know that pretty darned well actually). Working on a buy for a national cable network for this spring drove that point home for me in great detail. If you can set your ego aside long enough to look at the numbers (i.e. don't feel as though you just have to be in the program with the biggest name, just go with the biggest numbers) you'll end up with a lot more bang for the buck.

Fork over 27 grand, you can make that in two sixty second spots.

This might be the only quibble I've got with your whole post. While I think you were just illustrating a point, I think it's worthwhile to point out that even in NYC, I don't believe radio spot rates ever reached $13.5k/spot in a single market. You could cover the $27k pretty easily with a stopset or two, but not with a spot or two. Like I said, that's a small quibble & your point is still quite valid. (Again, as a sidebar, the highest single-market spot rate I've ever been quoted was some $4k/spot, but that wasn't in NYC. It was Minneapolis of all places).

All in all, a damned fine post, and one that really was a pleasure for me to read. Thanks.

Jon

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by rexallllsc

The problem is, no one really knows what the FCC regs are.

Problem is, that's simply not true. Any broadcaster knows quite well either
a) what the rule is OR b)where to find out. Again, the content being discussed in the large majority of the high profile cases is not grey area stuff, it's things that anybody who knows which end of the microphone to speak into knows full well which side of the line it rests on.

from the FCC order involving Bubba the Love Sponge
http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2004/FCC-04-17A1.html


Specifically, it is a violation of federal law to broadcast
obscene or indecent programming. Title 18 of the United
States Code, Section 1464, prohibits the utterance of
``any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of
radio communication.''8 In addition, consistent with a
subsequent statute and court case,9 Section 73.3999 of
the Commission's rules provides that radio and television
stations shall not broadcast indecent material during the
period 6 a.m. through 10 p.m."


Indecency findings involve at least two
fundamental determinations. First, the
material alleged to be indecent must fall
within the subject matter scope of our
indecency definition -- that is, the material
must describe or depict sexual or excretory
organs or activities. Second, the broadcast
must be patently offensive as measured by
contemporary community standards for the
broadcast medium.

In our assessment of whether broadcast material is patently
offensive, ``the full context in which the material appeared
is critically important.''22 Three principal factors are
significant to this contextual analysis: (1) the
explicitness or graphic nature of the description; (2)
whether the material dwells on or repeats at length
descriptions of sexual or excretory organs or activities;
and (3) whether the material appears to pander or is used to
titillate or shock.23 In examining these three factors, we
must weigh and balance them to determine whether the
broadcast material is patently offensive because ``[e]ach
indecency case presents its own particular mix of these, and
possibly, other factors.''24 In particular cases, the
weight of one or two of the factors may outweigh the others,
either rendering the broadcast material patently offensive
and consequently indecent,25 or, alternatively, removing the
broadcast material from the realm of indecency.

It's pretty darned black & white. And while some may claim that
the "contemporary community standards" phrasing is too vague, it's
defined more clearly by the three tests that are applied.

Bottom line -- any broadcaster who tries to claim ignorance has
no excuse and probably had no business broadcasting in the first place.
at all.

[Craptacular]

Originally Posted by CleBrownsfan

If you don't like Stern - don't listen!!!! Easy as that...

I never said anything to the contrary. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough though. If they (Clear Channel) want to take that crap off their airwaves, more power to 'em.

[JonInMiddleGA]

from today's Capitol Hill testimony from CC CEO John Hogan (when questioned about why Stern was taken off the air now)

said subcommittee chairman Fred Upton. "I don't think what he said this week is much different from what he's been saying for years. Why didn't this happen earlier?" Hogan agreed that Stern's show hasn't become more shocking of late. "I don't think he's changed his tune; we have changed ours," Hogan said. "We're going in a different direction."

[Suicane75]

I find it incredibly vague, maybe i am an idiot, i've been accused of worse. Even if it is incredibly obvious to everyone involved, the sanctioning is random, the fines are levied when and If someone complains or if the FCC decides to focus on you, it's not an across the board regulation.

[vtbub]

The standards of indecency are community based. What may be ok in New York may not be in Dallas.

With such large clusters of stations under current ownership and the fact that a lot of shock jocks are syndicated across the country means there isn't a true litmus test.

They, the programmers, have known about this for a long time.