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Talk Is Cheapened
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Business New Haven
7/12/1999
By: BNH
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Not New York. Not Hartford. Not Bridgeport.
Not New Haven, either.
If anyone still doubts that the swallowing up of local media by faraway conglomerates is a bad thing, they need look no further than 960 on their AM radio dial.
For decades WELI was the radio voice of the New Haven region, one of New England's first full-service AM outlets - a familiar and dependable (if a bit staid) fixture in the life of the community.
Now that the Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest radio conglomerates, has taken over WELI and its sister stations, WKCI-FM and WAVZ-AM, the once-proud station has literally crumbled before our ears.
Local programming on WELI has been almost completely gutted, replaced by low-cost satellite feeds of syndicated offerings like Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Rush Limbaugh and loony-magnet Art Bell. The news operation scarcely exists beyond re-readings of page 1 of the Register (minus attribution).
In establishing the Federal Communications Commission in the 1920s, Congress established the principle of public ownership of the public airwaves. Accordingly, the FCC required radio stations to operate in the public interest.
By operating their hundreds of cookie-cutter radio outlets on remote profit-control, and doing so in clear contravention of the public good, Clear Channel Communications mocks regulators, cynically sucks millions of dollars out of the local economy while reinvestment nothing back into our community.
That doesn't sound good to us.
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