This isn’t only unfortunate, I believe it’s illegal. Unless all of the FCC safety precautions have been de-regulated along with everything else.
I would so love to publish more details about how 1) this was able to happen and
2) what steps Clear Channel has taken to see that it never happens again.
If Clear Channel isn’t doing everything in its power to convince the FCC that it’s revising whatever policy it needs to so that someone is always on-hand to answer the telephone, it seems to me that the company has clearly demonstrated reckless disregard for the safety of people living in the “markets” it owns.
Anyone in the Minot, North Dakota area that’s interested in working with me on this?
Why Worry About Who Owns The Media?

It’s like something out of a nightmare, but it really happened: At 1:30 on a cold January night, a train containing hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic ammonia derails in Minot, North Dakota. Town officials try to sound the emergency alert system, but it isn’t working. Desperate to warn townspeople about the poisonous white cloud bearing down on them, the officials call their local radio stations. But no one answers any of the phones for an hour and a half. According to the New York Times, three hundred people are hospitalized, some are partially blinded, and pets and livestock are killed.
Where were Minot’s DJs on January 18th, 2002? Where was the late night station crew? As it turns out, six of the seven local radio stations had recently been purchased by Clear Channel Communications, a radio giant with over 1,200 stations nationwide. Economies of scale dictated that most of the local staff be cut: Minot stations ran more or less on auto pilot, the programming largely dictated from further up the Clear Channel food chain. No one answered the phone because hardly anyone worked at the stations any more; the songs played in Minot were the same as those played on Clear Channel stations across the Midwest.

Here is the full text of the entire article at:
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin12.html#1
MoveOn.org: Democracy in action.
SHOWDOWN AT THE FCC
MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, May 2, 2003
Co-Editors: Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudry, AlterNet
Subscribe online at: http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/
CONTENTS:
1. Eli Pariser: Why Worry About Who Owns the Media?
2. Jeff Chester: Showdown at the FCC
3. Neil Hickey: The Gathering Storm Over Media Ownership
4. Bill Moyers: Barry Diller Takes On Media Deregulation
5. Danny Schechter: The Media, the War, and Our Right to Know
6. Eric Boehlert: Clear Channel’s Big Stinking Deregulation Mess
7. Paul Schmelzer: The Death of Local News
8. Caryl Rivers: Where Have All the Women Gone?
9. About the Bulletin
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WHY WORRY ABOUT WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed
by Eli Pariser
It’s like something out of a nightmare, but it really happened: At 1:30 on a cold January night, a train containing hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic ammonia derails in Minot, North Dakota. Town officials try to sound the emergency alert system, but it isn’t working. Desperate to warn townspeople about the poisonous white cloud bearing down on them, the officials call their local radio stations. But no one answers any of the phones for an hour and a half. According to the New York Times, three hundred people are hospitalized, some are partially blinded, and pets and livestock are killed.
Where were Minot’s DJs on January 18th, 2002? Where was the late night station crew? As it turns out, six of the seven local radio stations had recently been purchased by Clear Channel Communications, a radio giant with over 1,200 stations nationwide. Economies of scale dictated that most of the local staff be cut: Minot stations ran more or less on auto pilot, the programming largely dictated from further up the Clear Channel food chain. No one answered the phone because hardly anyone worked at the stations any more; the songs played in Minot were the same as those played on Clear Channel stations across the Midwest.
Companies like Clear Channel argue that economies of scale allow them to cut costs while continuing to provide quality programming. But they do so at the expense of local coverage. It’s not just about emergency warnings: media mergers are decreasing coverage of local political races, local small businesses, and local events. There are only a third as many owners of newspapers and TV stations as there were in the 1970s (about 600 now; over 1,500 then). It’s harder and harder for Americans to find out what’s going on in their own back yards.
On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering relaxing or getting rid of rules to allow much more media concentration. While the actual rule changes are under wraps, they could allow enormous changes in the American media environment. For example, one company could be allowed to own ABC, CBS, and NBC. Almost certainly, media companies will be allowed to own newspapers and TV stations in the same town. We could be entering a new era of media megaliths.
Do you want one or two big companies acting as gatekeepers and controlling your access to news and entertainment? Most of us don’t. And the airwaves explicitly belong to us — the American people. We allow media companies to use them in exchange for their assurance that they’re serving the public interest, and it’s the FCC’s job to make sure that’s so. For the future of American journalism, and for the preservation of a diverse and local media, we have the hold the FCC to its mission. Otherwise, Minot’s nightmare may become our national reality.
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Interested in taking on the FCC and other media-related concerns? Join the MoveOn Media Corps, a group of over 29,000 committed Americans working for a fair and balanced media. You can sign up now at:
http://www.moveon.org/mediacorps/
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SHOWDOWN AT THE FCC
Jeffrey Chester and Don Hazen, AlterNet
Despite wide protests and the Clear Channel debacle, the FCC is about to award the nation’s biggest media conglomerates a new give-away that will further concentrate media ownership in fewer hands. The impact on the American media landscape could be disastrous. Recent TV coverage of the Iraq war already illustrates that US media companies aren’t interested in providing a serious range of analysis and debate. This overview describes what’s at stake and offers an introduction to the following articles.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15796
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THE GATHERING STORM OVER MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Neil Hickey, Columbia Journalism Review
CJR’s editor-at-large explains just what is at stake in this fight over media ownership. He provides an in-depth look at the issues, and major players in a battle that is pitting journalists against their bosses, breaking up old alliances, and gathering momentum as the day of reckoning draws near. He traces the snowballing trend of media consolidation and its implications for the future, revealing just how the drive for profit is eroding diversity, local control, and more importantly giving a few mega-corporations a monopoly over the dissemination of news.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15654
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BARRY DILLER TAKES ON MEDIA DEREGULATION
Bill Moyers, Now with Bill Moyers
The founder of Fox Broadcasting and present CEO of USA Networks is an unlikely but passionate opponent of plans to loosen media ownership rules. In an interview with Bill Moyers, the media mogul explains how deregulation creates corporations with “such overwhelming power in the marketplace that everyone has to do essentially what they say.” Diller argues that government regulation is essential to prevent media companies from controlling everything we see, read, and hear. As he puts it, “Who else is gonna do it for us?”
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15768
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THE MEDIA, THE WAR, AND OUR RIGHT TO KNOW
Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org
Why did the media do such a poor job of reporting on the Iraq war? The boosterism of news anchors, the suppression of antiwar views, and the sanitized images of war that defined television coverage are not a simple matter of bias or ineptitude, says media analyst Danny Schechter. He draws attention to the connection between the decisions made by journalists and the lobbying efforts of owners who will profit immensely from the upcoming FCC decision in June.
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/moveon.shtml
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CLEAR CHANNEL’S BIG STINKING DEREGULATION MESS
Eric Boehlert, Salon
Clear Channel, the radio and concert conglomerate, has been the greatest beneficiary of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which stripped all ownership limits in the radio industry. The rapacious company, led by Bush supporter Lowry Mays, has grown from 40 stations to 1,225 since then, and now uses its power to routinely bully advertisers and record companies, and more recently censor antiwar artists. However, as Eric Boehlert points out, its “success” may be the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of media activists. Clear Channel’s stranglehold on the radio industry is the best and clearest example of the effects of rampant deregulation.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15281
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THE DEATH OF LOCAL NEWS
Paul Schmelzer, AlterNet
Meet the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the “Clear Channel of local news.” Since 1991, the company has managed to acquire 62 television stations or 24 percent of the national TV audience. The company’s modus operandi is the centralized production of homogenized, repackaged faux “local” news. Its success offers an alarming glimpse of the post-deregulation world in which all news may be produced in one giant newsroom and from a single viewpoint — which in Sinclair’s case is wholeheartedly conservative.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15718.
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WHERE HAVE ALL THE WOMEN GONE?
Caryl Rivers, Women’s Enews
Once the war on Iraq took center-stage in the headlines of newspapers and magazines across the country, women writers became increasingly rare in the media. In their place are mostly white men who write on a narrow band of foreign policy issues, mostly recycling their views over and over again. From the all-male line-ups in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times to the dwindling female bylines in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, women’s voices have been caught in a “spiral of silence” that is unprecedented since the pre-women’s movement days.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15677
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