Again, in the Post: an op-ed about the consolidation in media. Marc Fisher points out a couple of interesting anecdotes which put a different face on this issue. Not only is the mass consolidation of radio destroying any local focus, but it also leaves stations as little more than automated transmitters, shirking their public service duties:
The prime example wielded against the industry stems from an accident last year in Minot, N.D., where Clear Channel owns all six commercial stations. When a train derailment in the middle of the night released a frightening cloud of anhydrous ammonia, Minot police sought to notify the citizenry of the crisis. They called KCJB, the station designated as the local emergency broadcaster, but no one was home; the station was being run by computer, automatically passing along Clear Channel programming from another city.
Clear Channel argues that only a technical glitch prevented word from getting through. But glitches aside, the six stations now have only one news employee among them.
Even in Washington, where Clear Channel’s stations do offer news headlines and WRC relays the audio of CNN Headline News, there is not one reporter gathering news on the street. When the planes struck on 9/11, several of Washington’s FM stations had nowhere to turn but to TV; they merely fed the sound from those newscasts.
