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It's bad enough when I'm out driving and hit the scan button on the radio, only to turn the damned thing off after a couple of minutes. It's also bad enough when I'm doing the monotonous parts of my job and reach over for a radio to switch on and decide to "suffer" with a certain limited pick. When I read articles such as this and some of your links, I want to run screaming off into the woods as if there's some imagined relief there. The fact that we've really done this to ourselves because of the people we elect to office is pretty much another layer of depression on a pretty stinky cake. Having been at a "rock & roll" age at a time when you and doc and *many* other home town jocks were spinning some of the greatest sounds ever heard, I guess I should be thankful that at least "I was there" for that shared moment in time. The biggest problem with deregulation (well, not the biggest, but one of many, *many*) is that once the horse is out of the barn, you're pretty much not gonna drag him back in. I can already see the indignant cries from the media (should we start calling it The Medium yet?) on how a bunch of socialists want to "take away" thousands of stations that "legitimate companies spent their stockholders' hard-earned money to purchase..." I'm afraid we lost our pony. I had been planning to point out that with broadband and the web, there's an alternative out there. And there are, thousands of them, as I type. But Melanie's article dashed that thought. Yes, in a few years that will all be "content" owned by "legitimate companies who spent their stockholders' hard-earned money to purchase the networks they're so selflessly sharing...."

The horse is not only out of the barn, he's been taken to the glue factory. Not that very long ago, a large number of radio stations were owned by something other than corporations. They were called “individuals,” and sometimes, “rich bastards.” One of them owned the station I worked at in the Macon area. He had maxed out two parts of the 7-7-7 rule (AM & FM stations), and owned two TV stations plus two cable networks (they were also limited in the number you could own back then, as well). The AM & FM I programmed represented 2 of the 14 stations he owned, spread over South Georgia and North Florida. He reminded me of a Southern GodFather, drove a Rolls Royce, and we lowly paid peons all detested his obvious riches ... since he was so tight with them. He's long gone, as are the many like him. Their properties were bought out by the likes of Clear Channel and Viacom, with big money offers during the boom times of the late 90's. In my case, when I left the station I programmed it took a harder rock course, and within a year, had switched to country. The rock refugees went to a local competitor who had switched to album rock, another stationed owned by a local individual. Today, my old station is a Clear Channel property, as is the album rock station where the refugees fled. Those individual owners are gone. This small story has been repeated hundreds of times over in markets all over the US. Especially in medium and smaller markets, the ties to the community that came from local individual ownership are long gone, and sorely missed. And their corporate successors are given no regulatory incentive to maintain them. In those medium and smaller markets, they are quickly converted over from live stations with a staff of a dozen or more, to satellite fed voice tracked pap, with a few salespeople and maybe a couple of guys to run a real airshift now and then. I read an article recently about such a small town, which came under serious threat from a tornado. What are people told to do when there's bad weather overhead? Turn on the radio for emergency information. Well, in this town, as I recall, 6 of the 8 radio stations were satellite fed voice tracked pap, and they had no weather alert on the air at all! A tornado is approaching town, and these stations were unable ...or rather, unwilling ... to provide the most basic service a community needs; a connection to the Weather Alert System. “In the public interest” has become a phrase of absolute mockery.

Wow, I didn't even know that people still listened to radio!

Just stumbled on your site with its comments on deregulation of media, and especially Macon! Our MaconWaves site is aimed at providing Macon with a perspective on National issues, that brings them down to the local level of Bibb County and nearby. Our first column was published this week and the web site is just up and running (and a "poor man's version" of a real site like this one). The very first subject is Media deregulation and the effects on Macon! Columns are printed in the very small and struggling alternative newspaper, The E11eventhour (that thinks that Creative Loafing is something to use as a model for an alternative paper in Middle Georgia!) The E11eventhour does not yet have a website but if you would like to keep up with Macon's music and entertainment scene, pick one up at multiple locations around Bibb and Houston Counties. [The E11eventhour was established in Statesboro.] The Macon Waves columns will pull issues and try to relate them to our location in the "public interest". Frankly you in Atlanta can complain all you want about the lack of choice, diversity and the monopoly on advertising slots, but are all much worse in Middle Georgia! Don't forget the "other Georgia". Visit us at MaconWaves

I stumbled across my half remembered story about the "small town," and it was indeed half remembered. It wasn't a tornado, it was a cloud of poison gas. What really happened: In January of last year, a train derailed in Minot, North Dakota. Two hundred and ten thousand gallons of ammonia ...and a toxic cloud ... spilled out of it. Authorities wanted to get the word out to Minot residents: stay indoors and avoid the area near the derailment. So they tried to get in touch with six local, commercial radio stations. All six of those commercial stations — out of a total of seven in minot — are owned by one huge radio and advertising conglomerate: Clear Channel Communications. It's been buying up radio stations across the country and replacing their live, local programs with shows recorded in far-off studios that only sound local. Minot authorities say when they called with the warning about the toxic cloud, there was no one on the air who could've made the announcement. Clear Channel says someone was there who could have activated an emergency broadcast. But Minot police say nobody answered the phones.