There is Enough Content: How to Decentralize South Florida's Radio Markets

Photo by Stephanie Rae Berzon

relate to our region. This week, questioning corporate control of radio.

Given the explosion in great local, regional, unsigned artists, why is

corporate radio, using the publicly owned airwaves, allowed to generate

billions in profits each year publicizing an extremely narrow selection

of acts? The fact of the matter is that there are local artists in

Austin, New York, Portland, South Florida, etc. that can't get in on this

rigged system.

But first we must examine how media is controlled by

private interests. For starters, the market in radio is an indirect

relationship between musical content and the audience. The market in

radio is purely buyers (advertisers) and sellers (radio stations) that

sell products (audiences) that sell a product to the buyers

(advertisers). The product is the audience.

There are many

historical reasons that private power has been able to control

information and use it to extend and maintain the dominance of the

private sector over civil society, a matter that I won't delve into

here. But the bottom line for radio is that it is part of the broader

media framework that included television and film being solidly

maintained by private business interests -- and that power is protected and

enforced by the government through the FTC (Federal Trade Commission),

and after 1934 the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

It is

currently 2010, the web-based social networks have really only been on

the scene for six or seven years, at least for the general populations of the

U.S. and perhaps the rest of the world. MySpace came out in 2003, and

Facebook not long after. The ability to distribute your own playlists,

your own news is something that is only going to increase with time.

Audiences are continually fragmenting. Print publications are losing

audiences and advertising revenue, and radio is on its heels in terms of

profitability. And that is why it's time to democratize the airwaves.

What we will lose by a people's takeover of the radio industry is not

worth what we'll gain from it.

Local radio "markets" should be

broken up and mandatory splits should be placed upon them that will

force them to play a certain percentage from

local/regional/national/international acts. I suggest that they should

play 25 percent content from locals, 25 percent from regional artists, 40 percent national,

and 10 percent international content.

I asked Steev Rullman, who books acts for the

club Propaganda in Lake Worth` what he anticipated from the takeover idea, his

response: "Diversity. The SoFla community would get to hear a more

eclectic mix of music instead of the same song over and over by

different bands. We'd see the local music scene flourish. More people

would discover great local talent and attend their shows. It would be an

enormous boost for the local economy and just maybe I would finally

find the right backer to help open my own venue."

There is enough

content to fill this space. There has been an explosion in

independently produced music, and there is no decisive way to subsidize

or remunerate artists for their work. A small amount of overall money

can be generated by a wide number of artists through vouchers and

council control of a media environment and a tax based royalty system

that the public will not be allowed to "opt out" of. Estimated cost:

$20 billion nationally. This is chump change compared to the money we

are currently spending on upward wealth distribution. And it is money

that would circulate fluidly -- unlike the private investor driven

economics that are the ideological favorites of privately financed

politicians.

Filtering the content would be in order, but by

creating a greater public and elected radio outlet--an entirely

different system of checks and balances would have to come about. The

major challenge with this system will be how to fairly split local

content -- how to reformat stations based on style, and things of this

nature. But these are what we call "problems you want to have."

Perhaps for another column.

-- Evan Rowe