Radio Silence

Novelist Walter Kirn used to navigate his summer road trips by the changing landscape of his car radio, a "modern Walt Whitman." But now, he complains, the voices and the music all sound alike, everywhere he goes. Is America droning?

In "Signals from Nowhere," a recent essay in the New York Times Magazine, Kirn bemoans the loss of independent, local radio, and the local sounds and tastes that gave our nation variety.

"A drawling update on midday cattle prices meant I was in Wyoming or Nebraska. A guttural rant about city-hall corruption told me I'd reach Chicago within the hour. A soaring, rhythmic sermon on fornication -- Welcome to Alabama!"

He misses the musical variety, the pockets of Texas swing, polka, head-banging rock. He once "heard America singing," but now he hears the same pop playlists shuffled over and over, and even some of the same announcers, from sea to shining sea.

The culprit? Kirn blames Clear Channel Communications, which owns over 1,000 formerly independent stations, along with its smaller competitors Infinity Broadcasting and Cumulus Media. Together, according to Kirn, they have been "body-snatching America's sonic soul, turning Whitman's vivacious democratic cacophony into a monotonous numbing hum."

As one example of the radio giants' hold on radio's voice, Kirn points out that Clear Channel owns all six stations in Minot, North Dakota. Further, he points out, many of the stations in the US are not real stations anymore, anyway, but rather "automated pods" that have their music and banter sent to them by satellite from distant studios. These announcers "don't even know the weather there."

Although Clear Channel's 1,250 stations represent only around 10% of the nation's total, far from a monopoly, its fiercest critics have launched web sites denouncing their hold on the US airwaves.

Read Kirn's complete essay in the June 22, 2003 New York Times Magazine [fee required]

Visit radio giant Clear Channel, or one of the sites devoted to criticizing them

Visit Infinity Radio and Cumulus Media