Friday, July 3, 2009, 11:11 pm
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The Story That Black Radio is Afraid to Tell
The Story That Black Radio is Afraid to TellMonday, June 22, 2009
Paul Porter
EbonyJet.com
For decades, Black America has been the victim of all kinds of media distortion. It doesn't take a keen eye to see the regression of images in the past twenty years, in the eighties Cosby was America's number one sitcom and twenty years later VH1's "Flavor of Love" held television's highest rated African American program. Historically, one critical form of communication – Black radio - was the antidote to that distortion, consistently standing as a reliable source of news, information and culture throughout local communities nationwide.
Unfortunately, Black radio is swiftly becoming part of the problem, not the solution. It began, of course, with black-owned stations losing their independent voices and turning into sterile corporate jukeboxes limiting both information and community access, while feeding us music that reinforced the same stereotypes that for decades radio helped to defeat.
Now the few surviving Black-owned radio stations are abusing their unique influence in the community to misinform listeners about the impact of a new Congressional bill designed to support the kind of independent, creative and positive musical artists we all have demanding.
Cathy Hughes, Founder of Radio One, as one example, has been leading the charge against HR 848, an act of legislation that Hughes charges will “end black radio.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
The facts on HR 848 are clear if you take the time to read them. Formally called The Performance Rights Act, the bill proposes what should be simple - paying performers royalties for radio airplay. Only the United States, North Korea and Iran don't pay royalties for performers on free AM/FM radio. Currently performers and recording owners are only paid in the States when their songs are played on satellite radio, cable stations and internet radio.
Songwriters and publishers continue to be paid by AM & FM radio. So why should the performers be excluded? The fact is that most of music we love is not made by people who are that rare combination of singer/songwriter. When performers lose a route to compensation – especially in this age of the download – we eventually lose those performers. The equations is easy: no money=no performers, no performer=no music, no music=no Black radio in the long term.
U.S broadcasters argue that they don't compensate foreign performers when they play their music. That argument loses an estimated 70 to 100 million dollars abroad for U.S. performers under the current law. Without reciprocity, American performers lose twice for their work here in the U.S. and abroad.
The Copyright Act of 1909, was implemented before there was a record industry or recording artists. If H.R. 848 passes, it would finally allow the people whose talent makes the work come alive to be fairly compensated for it in any country where it gets played. American music makes up nearly 30 to 50% of foreign radio airplay. It's time for the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the free world.
Naturally, radio stations – particularly Black radio stations – consider any new compensation for artists to be a financial burden, even as they continue to ask artists to perform free for radio promotions. Popular syndicated hosts Tom Joyner, Al Sharpton, Michael Baisden, Warren Ballentine, Yolanda Adams and hundreds of radio stations have all followed Hughes' lead, merely reinforcing the broadcasters’ mandate. Hundreds of public service announcements and interviews about the bill have lacked clarity and an opposing side of the debate.
Still, Black radio's cry to "Save Black Radio" has been heard loud and clear by legislators who have added several safety measures to help broadcasters in these tough economic times. H.R. 848 takes into account smaller radio stations. Noncommercial stations such as NPR and college radio stations would pay only $1,000 per year. Religious broadcasts would be exempt. And any station making less than $1,250,000 would pay no more than $5,000. Chairman John Conyers and his committee also have stated there would be no payment for any station making less than $5 million annually for two years due to the tough economic times.
The facts when debated are quite clear. But Black radio has a problem much larger then any pending legislation. It's been suffering on life support for a while but no one's leading. While minorities make up well over a third of the population, less then seven percent of stations are owned by minorities.
Radio broadcasters have done a number on Black America over the past fifteen years. First, by allowing a "pay for play" list of hip-hop that distorts or alters the mind set of the next generation with a steady diet of misogyny, violence and drug culture. We all sat back and watched while BET and Black radio simply mirrored the local news at eleven, reinforcing stereotypes and replacing lyricists with the lyrically challenged.
Black radio is syndicated 25 times more than its white counterparts, reducing the historic community connection of local personalities. When you limiting the voices you can control the messenger and the message. Sadly, Black radio is black these days only in name. From Radio One to Clear Channel, the independent voices have been silenced and critical information has been replaced with jokes, condensed play lists and little to no local community or grassroots outreach of the kind that established Black radio’s power.
There's more to H.R. 848 than radio is telling you.
Paul Porter is the co-founder of Industry Ears, a non-profit that seeks media justice.
Black Radio Speaks with Fork Tongue
It is time that broadcasters start telling the truth. The recent flood of one sided information by radio on the pending "HR 848 - Performance Rights Act" is uncovering a much larger problem. The First Amendment calls for "Freedom of Speech", but unfortunately broadcasters continue to feed misinformation to millions of Americans, without a murmur of opposing opinion.Radio One, Founder Cathy Hughes has rediscovered her microphone after a ten year hiatus. While shaping the Performance Rights Act as an end to Black Radio, Hughes and her staff have done a great job of concealing the facts.
In a series of PSA annoucements, Hughes has framed HR 848 as the end of Black radio. Broadcasters, in this difficult economy have not allowed advertising dollars to be spent by denying air time to supporters of this Bill.
In Detroit, on Tuesday, Congressman John Conyers held a hearing on HR 848 at Wayne State University. While Joyner, Baisden and Hughes have continued to deliver blatant lies on air, the forum was the perfect situation to finally hear both sides.
Although invitations were extended to the entire broadcast community, only one representative stepped up to the mic. Rev. Al Sharpton, who's syndicated Radio One show airs nationwide, presented his side and left without listening to the audience that pays his check.
Sharpton, on his show later that day only mentioned the forum as "one-sided" and failed to mention any of the stories shared by a short list of living legends, Dionne Warwick, Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Sam Moore, Duke Fakir, George Clinton and writer performer Rhymefest informed those in attendance of the simple facts on why performers should be paid for radio airplay.
Maybe if Sharpton, Baisden, Hughes or Joyner stop talking they might take the time to listen to some alarming facts.
*Performers are paid in over 30 countries, for radio airplay. Only the U.S., China, Iran and North Korea do not pay performers for radio airplay.
*Performers are paid for television, satellite radio, cable stations and Internet radio but not paid for terrestial (AM & FM) radio airplay.
*An additional $70 to $100 million will be paid to American artists for airplay from foreign countries.
What Black Radio is not telling you:
*Urban radio continues to be the most syndicated music format. While limiting voices and local issues, Black adults are 25 times more likely to hear syndication than Whites. Eliminating the messengers, by limiting the voices.
*Radio One, the nation's largest African American broadcaster, has cut staff and 401k benefits for staffers, while awarding CEO Alfred Liggins a 10 million dollar bonus.
*Radio consistently makes millions from the recording industry, requiring Free promotions, Free product and Free performances that get charged back to the artist bottom line.
No matter what the color of radio ownership -- serving local audiences with better music, information and content is the key to thriving business model. American radio must finally catch up with the rest of the free world and pay performers their just do.
It is time that radio broadcasters allow audiences to hear both sides of this important issue.
Paul Porter
www.IndustryEars.com
HR 848 or Black Radio?
Is it really HR 848 or Black Radio?Once again the big media machine is working, while Congressional lawmakers are being besieged with lobbyist and broadcaster rhetoric, the truth is being diverted by Black radio about the Performance Rights Act, HR 848. Founder and Chairman of Radio One, Cathy Hughes recently made her opposition public on the syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show. Joyner, who broadcasts to millions of listeners in over 100 markets, once again demonstrated that information to people of color is often one sided. Hughes, framed the conversation as if the pending legislation would put an end to black radio, while Joyner failed to ask his business partner the tough questions. Millions of listeners were fooled into believing HR 848 was the certain end of Black radio. The truth is Black radio is it's own worst enemy.
"The Performance Rights Act" was the creation of John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who for decades has backed the effort to win performers and artists royalties for their radio-played works. Conyers, believes it is finally time to establish equity for recording artists and allow them to be paid fair compensation for their creativity.
For decades, radio has profited from airplay, free promotions, and concerts in a pay for play situation, often leaving artist penniless while turning their backs on local audiences that they are licensed to serve. Black radio has been the testing ground for syndication for close to twenty years. Black listeners are 20 times more likely to hear syndicated programming then whites. Syndication, unknowingly has limited the voices and opinions, while condensing the play-list and stifiling local news and information.
Black radio for decades was the only voice in local communities, it's been replaced with a share holder mentality reacting only to revenue and not listeners. If Black radio fails, it's not HR 848, it's simply failing to serve the local communities they are licensed to serve.
So the next time you hear black radio framing an issue, make sure you question the source.
Paul Porter
Industry Ears
Should We Save Black Radio?
Should We Save Black Radio?Paul Scott
Funerals are funny things, sometimes. Never mind that the dearly departed cheated on his wife, borrowed a small fortune of unpaid loans from friends and habitually kicked his neighbor's dog, according to the pastor during the eulogy, the man was a saint.
I thought about that scenario when I heard folks mourning over the impending doom of black radio.
Radio One's owner Cathy Hughes was on the Tom Joyner Show this morning begging for a black community bailout of black radio because of a proposed bill by Rep. John Conyers that would make radio stations have to shell out some major dollars to stay on the air. The best part is when she mentioned that Conyers turned on his boom box during a meeting with radio execs, drowning out their whining.
She considered it an an insult. I call it karma.
For years, members of the African American community have begged "urban" radio stations to be more responsive to the needs of the community, especially highly impressionable black youth. Unfortunately, our cries have largely fallen on deaf ears. Seems that profit before people has been the order of the day.
The politicians are selling the proposed legislation, HR Bill 848, (the Performance Tax) as a way to put more money in the pockets of musicians who were forced to work at Mickey Dee's after their short careers were over but the radio folks are saying that it is a conspiracy to not only silence black voices but to prevent us from ever hearing good black music ever again.
Clear Channel Stations Adopt Shared Music
CC Stations Adopt Shared Music Programming17 stations in four formats ID'd as musical carbon copies
By Paul Heine
Radio and Records
The music on pockets of Clear Channel stations in multiple formats is now being programmed from a central source, according to research conducted by R&R chart managers using monitored airplay data provided by Nielsen BDS.
The company's CHR/top 40 stations in Albany, N.Y.; Dayton; Lexington, Ky.; Louisville; and Rochester, N.Y., are airing virtually identical music programming outside of morning drive. (Each of the five stations carries "On Air With Ryan Seacrest" in middays and either Premiere Radio Networks-syndicated Elvis Duran or WNCI/Columbus-based Dave & Jimmy in morning drive.) At AC, a total of six stations -- in Beaumont, Texas; Columbus, Ga.; El Paso; Fresno; Springfield, Mo.; and Syracuse -- are musical carbon copies, apart from occasional fill songs, request features or different night-time programming. Three hot ACs (in Fresno, Providence and Sacramento) musically match up 24/7, while two alternative stations (Albany, N.Y., and Oklahoma City) and one rock station (Beaumont, Texas) are musically identical outside of morning drive.
The company's Premium Choice initiative, which was announced April 15 by Clear Channel Radio president/CEO John Hogan, distributes programming featuring the broadcaster's top on-air personalities, as well as pre-programmed music logs, designed to air on multiple stations. The talent and music logs are available to local stations to pick up on a voluntary basis, according to the company. Local program directors add weather, traffic, news, promos and other local content. Clear Channel officials wouldn't comment on how extensively the company would use Premium Choice.
According to sources, CHR/top 40 Premium Choice music logs are programmed by KIIS-FM/Los Angeles PD John Ivey and Clear Channel/Pittsburgh OM Alex Tear, AC logs are generated by WLTW/New York PD Chris Conley and hot AC logs by WLIT/Chicago PD Tony Coles.
A total of 17 stations are affected, all of which have been dropped from R&R's chart panels due to chart policy regarding stations that carry syndicated or identical programming throughout most of the day.
"R&R has longstanding policies regarding the inclusion of syndicated networks on our spin-based chart panels, as well as the amount of non-local programming that reporting stations air," director of charts Silvio Pietroluongo says. "We continue to monitor the extent of identical music programming on our reporting Clear Channel stations and will make adjustments to the respective panels as necessary."
Hate Speech, Media Activism and the First Amendment
Hate Speech, Media Activism and the First AmendmentPutting a spotlight on dehumanizing language
By Candice O'Grady
Fair.org
In just over a month last winter, two Latino men were beaten to death in New York state while their attackers shouted racial slurs and epithets (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/25/09). Such hate crimes, motivated by anti-immigrant prejudice and other bigotries, have spurred a media justice campaign to reveal the potential human costs of hate speech.
When the FBI reported that hate crimes against Hispanics had increased by an astonishing 40 percent between 2003 and 2007 (FBI: Hate Crime Statistics, 2003 and 2007), UCLA professor Chon Noriega began to ask “whether the media plays a role in the persistence of hate speech and hate crimes.” In a pilot study that attempts to quantify hate speech in commercial radio, Noriega tracked language on the Lou Dobbs Show, Savage Nation and the John & Ken Show (Latino Policy and Issues Brief, 2/09). On these programs he found “systematic and extensive use of false facts, flawed argumentation, divisive language, and dehumanizing metaphors that are directed toward specific vulnerable groups”—which results, Noriega argued, in marginalized populations being “characterized as a direct threat to the listeners’ way of life.”
While deeply unsettling, Noriega’s findings should come as little surprise. Last August, San Francisco–based shock jock Michael Savage unleashed this xenophobic tirade (Savage Nation, 8/4/08):
BET, MTV to launch Centric Network cable channel to compete for TV One audience
By R. Thomas UmsteadMultichannel News
(April 22, 2009) Viacom's BET Networks and MTV Networks are combining channel resources to create a new programming outlet, Centric, set to launch in October, targeting African-American adults, network officials said.
The new network will take aim at Comcast/Radio One-owned TV One in targeting the 25- to 54-year-old African-American audience, while also reaching out to other multicultural audiences.
BETN officials say it will launch with 45 million subscribers, a sizeable base for a new channel. BET Networks will handle its operations, with BET J executive vice president and general manager Paxton Baker overseeing the new venture.
Multichannel News reported earlier this month that Baker would oversee a channel that combined BET J and MTVN's VH1 Soul, two existing digital networks that between them are in about 47 million homes, and that the announcement could come at BET's April 23 upfront in New York, which is when Centric is expected to be announced.
CCFC: Nick and Burger King: SpongeBob and Sexualization Don’t Mix
April 7, 2009 --The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has launched a letter-writing campaign demanding that Nickelodeon and Burger King immediately pull a new, highly sexualized, television ad for SpongeBob SquarePants Kids Meals. The ad, viewable above, features The King singing a remix of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1990’s hit song, "Baby Got Back” with the new lyrics, “I like square butts and I cannot lie.” The ad shows images of The King singing in front of women shaking their behinds for the camera intercut with images of SpongeBob dancing along. Send a Message NOW!“It’s bad enough when companies use a beloved media character like SpongeBob to promote junk food to children, but it’s utterly reprehensible when that character simultaneously promotes objectified, sexualized images of women,” said CCFC director Dr. Susan Linn, a psychologist at the Judge Baker Children's Center.
At one point during the ad, The King even measures the behind of one of the woman who has stuffed a phonebook under her dress. After the King informs children about the free SpongeBob toy they get with the purchase of a Burger King Kids Meal, the ad ends with Sir Mix-A-Lot—lounging on a couch with two female admirers—saying, “Booty is booty.” The ad ran during the NCAA men’s basketball championship and other programming last night.
Nick and Burger King Commercial link
The Hope of John Hope Franklin
By George E. CurryNNPA Columnist
When I first heard last week that historian John Hope Franklin had died, I reached for a copy of And Still We Rise, a collection of 50 interviews with Black role models by Barbara Reynolds. There are two stories Franklin recounted that I have never forgotten - and probably never will.
The historian told the first one when Reynolds asked him to describe his first encounter with racism. "When I was 7 years old, we took a train trip," the Oklahoma-born Franklin recalled. "The train was loaded with people, so we just sat down in the white-only section. The conductor told us to move. My mother refused because we were going only six miles. The conductor stopped the train and put us out in the woods. That was a searing experience a 7-year-old lad would never, never forget."
Nor would he forget what happened to him when he was 30 years old.
"I was traveling from Greensboro, N.C. by train during the closing months of the war," he told Reynolds, then editor of USA Today's inquiry page. "The blacks aboard were crowded in a half coach while about five whites rode in a full coach. I suggested to the conductor that we exchange with them so we could all sit down. He told us those whites were German prisoners of war and they could not be moved. Those prisoners were watching us, laughing as we stood and stumbled because we didn't have anywhere to sit."
John Hope Franklin would never forget that experience, either. But two years later, in 1947, he could claim a small victory over America's version of apartheid. He told the Washington Post that he had traveled to Richmond, Va. to donate blood to his sick brother. When he boarded a bus afterward, he sat in the front of the bus reserved for Whites because he was too tired to walk to the back. The driver ordered him to the back and threatened to have him arrested. "The blacks were yelling at me: 'Stand your ground!' And you know what? That bus driver drove off with me sitting right there."
That was the first of many victories for Franklin. Like W.E.B.DuBois, another noted historian, John Hope Franklin graduated from Fisk University in Nashville before earning a master's and doctorate from Harvard. He taught at three historically Black colleges: St. Augustine's College, what is now North Carolina Central College and Howard University. He then began a long list of firsts: at Brooklyn College, he was named chairman of the history department, the first time an African-American chaired a department at a predominantly White college; the first Black chair of the history department at the University of Chicago; the first African-American to hold an endowed chair at Duke and the first Black president of the American Historical Association.
Generation Diva: How our obsession with beauty is changing our kids
Jessica BennettNEWSWEEK
There's a scene in "Toddlers & Tiaras," the TLC reality series, where 2-year-old Marleigh is perched in front of a mirror, smothering her face with blush and lipstick. She giggles as her mother attempts to hold the squealing toddler still, lathering her legs with self-tanner. "Marleigh loves to get tan," her mom says, as the girl presses her face against the mirror.
Marleigh is one of many pageant girls on the show, egged on by obsessive mothers who train their tots to strut and swagger, flip their hair and pout their lips. I watch, mesmerized by the freakishness of it all, but wonder how different Marleigh is from average girls all across America. On a recent Sunday in Brooklyn, I stumble into a spa that brands itself for the 0 to 12 set, full of tweens getting facialed and glossed, hands and feet outstretched for manis and pedis. "The girls just love it," says Daria Einhorn, the 21-year-old spa owner, who was inspired by watching her 5-year-old niece play with toy beauty kits.
Sounds extreme? Maybe. But this, my friends, is the new normal: a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor. Girls today are salon vets before they enter elementary school. Forget having mom trim your bangs, fourth graders are in the market for lush $50 haircuts; by the time they hit high school, $150 highlights are standard. Five-year-olds have spa days and pedicure parties. And instead of shaving their legs the old-fashioned way—with a 99-cent drugstore razor—teens get laser hair removal, the most common cosmetic procedure of that age group. If these trends continue, by the time your tween hits the Botox years, she'll have spent thousands on the beauty treatments once reserved for the "Beverly Hills, 90210" set, not junior highs in Madison, Wis.
