Skip to content

Blog

Evil Corporations #2: Clear Channel

Fortune has a great article up about Clear Channel radio.

Lowry Mays, the CEO of Clear Channel has clear ideas about what business he’s in. From the article:

“If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn’t be someone from our company,” says Mays, 67. “We’re not in the business of providing news and information. We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.”

Personally, I’m extremely disturbed what’s been going on in radio for years. When I left Minnesota in 1994, I left behind my favorite radio station ever- Revolution Radio, Rev105. Founded by one of the Cargill Corp heirs, the station never made money, only breaking even, but they played whatever they wanted. When they said Alternative radio, they meant it. This is the station that introduced me to Semisonic (I won tickets on Rev105 to see Pleasure before they were Semisonic!), Soul Coughing and Ani DiFranco. (Ani DiFranco on the radio. It’s 6 years later and I’ve never heard her on the radio again – though I’ve bought all her CDs).

I moved back to the Twin Cities in January of ’97, and after watching the alternative station in Philadelphia die in ’96, I was subjected to it again. On March 11, ’97, the station flipped over to hard rock – which explains why when I got in my car that night to go home I heard Van Halen playing. Only later was I to find out that ABC / Capital Cities bought out Cargill Communications for $11 million and made them sign a non-compete. Now ABC owns all the rock – classic rock on 92KQ, Alt-rock on 93.7 The Edge, and hard rock / heavy metal on X-105. Through the last 6 years ABC has gone from Hard Rock (X-105), to alt-rock (Zone105), classic alt-rock (Zone105), R&B, and now alt-rock again (Drive105) while turning 93.7 the Edge from alt-rock to heavy metal (93X).

The irony comes in that Drive105 has just started adverstising: Not a Clear Channel radio station! But yet they’re Capital Cities, the #2 radio company in the U.S. Playing popular “alternative” music. To 40 spins a week.

There’s not much left on the web about Rev105, though Google comes up with 4 pages of results, not much works when you follow the links. I’ve found a couple though – here and here. Rev105 will always live in my heart – and my coffee cup! (Which is a Rev105 cup, the only choice for me to drink cofee out of).

Rev105

You call THIS archaeology?!

You call THIS archaeology?! — Indiana Jones

The Digital Bits has the press release and details on the upcoming Indiana Jones box set. Set to be released 11/4, the box set will include the three movies (in anamorphic or full frame) and a fourth disc with featurettes.

I’ll have to agree with the boys at the Digital Bits. I was expecting a lot more from a special edition. If they made us wait this long for the movies, they could have at least done it right. Oh wait, it’s George Lucas. He’ll want us to buy it again and again.

Damn him!

Evil Corporations #1 – Phone Companies

This almost sums up why I want to sign up for . Vonage, the Voice-over-IP phone company (phone over your broadband connection).

Slashdot has linked to a story done by Forbes (click here to read the Forbes article) on how the phone companies are bilking us, normal consumers, out of billions.

After years of declining revenues, the Bell companies, working with the long distance carriers and the FCC, came up the with the “FCC line charge” item you see on your bill every month. But in 2000, when FCC auditors went to audit the equipment that makes up this charge on your phone bill, they found that the bell companies listed $5 billion in equipment that couldn’t be found, and another $5 billion in equipment that varied in prices – from $4 for the exact piece of equipment that the same phone company line listed for $133,000 elsewhere. Or $458 for a pair of gloves.

Instead of declining revenues, phone companies have posted an 18% growth in revenues — and how much of that is due to this line charge?

Read the article linked above and think for yourself.

Phair thee well

Oh, the new Liz Phair songs are yummy! Her new album comes out 6/24 and those songs rock.

Extraordinary is probably my favorite so far. The 2nd song listed, the one that will be the first release, sounds a little Avril-ish. But we all know Liz was around years before her, and Liz writes her own stuff.

Quote of the Day

Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

–Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg trials

Whoa

Watch me in Quicktime. Or Xine. Or Mplayer. Whatever your mojo, but watch it.

Unless you’re Slivers and don’t want spoilers.

Red Hat 9

I just installed Red Hat 9 on my old gaming rig, and I just can’t believe how great it is.

I thought Red Hat 8 was good, worthy of up a full number upgrade over 7.3, Bluecurve was a step in the right direction, but 9 is really that good. The fonts are the best I’ve seen – and that’s something I had always wanted to update previously on my RH and Debian boxes, but 9 is fantastic. The software is good and up to date without being scary new, apt-get works like a charm (thanks Freshrpms!), the menu issues were fixed, and the network browser works great.

Just having installed it again, it’s slick, installs easily, and just runs. I replaced my Debian box with it — running a version called “unstable” just never seemed right, though I love Debian, both from a technology standpoint and a belief standpoint. I think Red Hat is doing the right thing in taking a stance on copyright issues similar to Debian with MP3, NTFS, etc. And Red Hat is doing it without falling behind on the applications front.

I can’t recommend Red Hat enough – it was more than worth it to buy a Red Hat Network subscription.

  • in General
  • 1 min read

Under Construction

As you can see, the site is still under construction. Updates will be sporadic until the site is done.