The Columbian (Vancouver, WA.)
July 11, 1999, Sunday
'RIMSHOT' RADIO
CLARK COUNTY SUFFERS IN THE SHADOW OF PORTLAND'S ELECTRONIC MEDIA UMBRELLA
BYLINE: BRETT OPPEGAARD, Columbian staff writer
SECTION: Northwest Life; Pg. d1
LENGTH: 3183 words
Sometime during the next couple of months, Vancouver's newest radio station will go on the air -- from downtown Portland.
This makes perfect business sense for the owner, Clear Channel, because the company already has several stations in the metropolitan area and says it can operate more efficiently by sharing studio space, sales staff and equipment.
Southwest Washington residents, though, once again are losing out, community leaders say.
Instead of becoming the most powerful electronic media source in Clark County, this new station will serve as just another example of direct access to public airwaves slipping away to Portland.
Southwest Washington cities join suburban brethren throughout America in this predicament as they collectively suffer the repercussions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This act, which further deregulated electronic media, has allowed unprecedented consolidation of radio. In turn, second-tier and smaller cities across America, such as Vancouver, virtually have been silenced as their radio and television stations have been bought by huge corporations, moved to the nearest big city and refocused toward the core of the mass populous. The process is known in the business as "rimshot."
Dollars have been won, radio business experts say, while communities have been lost.
Bottom-line business
"This is all about commerce," said Jeremy Wilker, co-founder of Americans for Radio Diversity, a nonprofit organization in Roseville, Minn. "While these megamedia companies are able to make money hand over fist, radio has become homogenized and bland, and no matter where you go, you hear the same voices, the same sounds and the same songs. " Unless you happen to hear a freeway report, it's hard to know what city you are in by just listening to the radio."
Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of telecommunications law in more than 60 years, companies could own no more than four stations in one market and no more than 40 nationwide.
Now, companies can own as many as eight in one market, and there is no limit on the total number. Consequently, thousands of stations (more than 40 percent in the country) have changed hands during the past three years, mostly gobbled up by corporations. Clear Channel, for example, now owns more than 400 stations. Combined with the other two largest radio companies, Chancellor and Infinity, the three own more than 1,100 stations and generate nearly $5 billion in revenue each year, according to industry sources.
This has caused most independent owners -- such as Vancouver's Dave Granger, who sold the city's KVAN-AM (1550) to Pamplin Broadcasting in December -- to get out of the business. Granger said he just couldn't compete financially with the resources and efficiency of chain ownership.
"It really has changed the complexion of the industry," Granger said. "The great thing about radio for years was that it was local." Now policies are passed down from some corporate office in some other city. The focus is on the almighty dollar, and these companies can't take serving the community to the bank."
Silencing of Southwest Washington
KVAN is one of the two stations still operating in Vancouver, a city of about 135,000 residents in a county of about 330,000. While KVAN focuses much of its local programming on Southwest Washington news and talk, the other station, KBMS-AM (1480), serves a more general and urban audience.
The other three stations licensed to Clark County cities Entercom's KFXX-AM (910) and KNRK-FM (94.7) and Clear Channel's new station, KXMX-FM (105.9) are based in Portland. KNRK, for example, is licensed in Camas, yet has no presence there physically or otherwise. Its format "new rock, aimed at males 18 to 34 years old " doesn't fit the area's image as a small mill town, nor is it necessarily intended to. A search of the stations public file shows not one Camas -- or even Clark County -- specific act of community service. In this report, the station claims its nightly broadcasts of the nationally syndicated show "Loveline" and two early Sunday morning syndicated programs fill the community's needs.
When the Camas station originally was granted its license, in 1992, the owners were local and the adult contemporary format of the station fit the town pretty well, Camas Mayor Dean Dossett said. "Initially, some people here tried the station and liked it and listened to it fairly regularly," he said. "Now, as it has changed, it doesn't really fit us as far as the overall character of the city."
The FCC licenses stations to a particular city, rather than a market, because it determines there is a need for that area to have its own electronic media. Portland, for example, has enough radio and television stations that no more licenses are being granted for it, according to the FCC.
Yet companies still want a shot at the Portland market, the nations 24th largest, so they resort to the "rimshot" approach. This technique involves the purchase of a station on the fringes of a major market, such as Clark County. The company then moves the operations of the station to the major city, boosts its power and essentially gains a new station in the prime market. Clear Channel, for example, paid more than $20 million for its Vancouver license.
Ron Saito, Clear Channel's vice president and general manager in Portland, said, "We regard Vancouver no differently than we do Beaverton or Gresham or Salem. To us, it's all one and the same."
Saito said because his company's five Portland-based stations -- KKCW-FM (103.3), KKRZ-FM (100.3), KEX-AM (1190), KEWS-AM (620) and the new Vancouver station -- are broadcast throughout the metropolitan area, including Clark County and Multnomah County, his staff must focus on the market as a whole to make money and succeed as a viable business, rather than on the city of license. Anyway, he said, Vancouver's issues don't differ that much from Portland's or its other suburbs. Many people in Clark County work in Portland. Even more have business dealings there.
"I don't think there is a feeling of separation," Saito said. "Portland stations have always covered things in Vancouver, politically and newswise. There has always been that close connection."
Saito said he feels the same about the rest of the counties where his stations signals hit. "They all deserve the same service," he said.
Clear Channel owns 17 stations along the Interstate 5 corridor, from Medford to Centralia, and has the capability to operate all of them from its Portland offices, a plan the company is considering, Saito said. He said such consolidation of radio has allowed companies nationwide to operate with fewer people, therefore reducing the cost of operation.
"It allows us to become a more powerful company," he said. "We can offer advertisers better deals." We can go after the bigger national accounts."
Listeners benefit, Saito says, through stronger signals and higher-quality programming provided by national sources.
Chris Bennett, owner of the group that operates Vancouvers KBMS, said even though his Clark County station is small, it couldn't survive on local advertising alone. It must tap the Portland market.
"That's just the way the business is," he said. "People aren't spending that kind of money to buy stations to lose business. " Wherever our signal hits, thats the community we serve."
FCCs diminished power
With the sweeping deregulation that began in the Reagan era and crested with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, stations now are merely required to identify the city of license at the top of the hour and keep their base of operations within a 25-mile radius of that city. Such flexibility has allowed stations to essentially ignore the city of license as well as community service, opponents of the act say.
In turn, budget cuts since the 1996 act have diminished the power of the FCC. Portland's office of six agents since has closed and been replaced by two resident assistants who work out of a private office in Vancouver. Their main function is to respond to emergency calls regarding interference with frequencies. Any concern about content -- or lack thereof -- is handled by FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C., said Binh Nguyen, one of the local resident assistants.
"We cannot tell the stations what to do," Nguyen said. "It's up to them."
System failure?
This type of self-government doesn't seem to be working in Clark County, but Southwest Washington isn't alone, industry sources from throughout the region and nation say. Just in the Portland area, similar cases can be made in Lake Oswego, Gresham, Beaverton, Tigard and even Banks.
Banks - a town of about 800 people, about 25 miles west of Portland - has a radio station licensed to it, KBBT-FM (107.5), which many of the city's residents, including the town's mayor, did not even know about.
Banks Mayor Ray Deeth said he knew nothing about the alternative rock station "based out of downtown Portland - that is using his city's license, valued at more than $14 million. He asked around town and couldnt find anyone else who knew about it, either.
"It's ridiculous. It's weird. ... It's unethical," Deeth said. "I think somehow or another we should have been notified about it as a city. ... We should at least be compensated for it or something. We're losing our voice on radio while the company is making millions."
To take the problem to other extremes: A station licensed to Gresham, KMUZ-AM (1230) operates out of Washougal and broadcasts a Spanish language format that appeals mostly to Latino communities in Portland.
This dilemma is spreading to the fringes of other metropolitan areas throughout the country, said opponents of the act. The same thing is happening in the suburbs around Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other big cities in America.
"It's a shame because these places ought to have their own media," says Robert Fulford, a professor of communication at the University of Portland. "That's where a particular character of a place comes through, the local styles, the local ways of doing things. " Without media focused on your community, you're not going to know about the possibilities it offers to make your life better and more interesting."
Dick Schwary, who owns KMUZ and was part of the groups that sold KNRK and the television station KPDX to Portland investors (see accompanying story), acknowledges that the state of the radio business may irritate or even enrage some people. But he says it comes down to simple economics: Portland can support the stations and Clark County can't.
"City of license doesn't mean a damn thing to these stations," Schwary said. "In reality, you have to have a certain number of paid ads or you go out of business."
Schwary said before the telecommunications act, FM stations in the Portland market were selling for between $500,000 and $2 million. Now they cost more than $20 million. "FM stations were a dime a dozen before deregulation," he said. "Since then, there are only so many slots available, and it has become a matter of supply and demand."
Schwary said once these companies spend millions on a station, they want high returns. For the most part, they can't get that from local programming and local advertisers. The largest advertising accounts are regional and national, and those businesses prefer to be paired with regional and national programming with which they are familiar.
Some say this kind of system will work. "Eventually, the market will be forced to provide what the people need or don't have," Schwary said. "To survive in radio, you have to find your niche."
Others, mostly those not involved in the business side of radio, disagree and think the system is flawed.
Shaheed Haamid, a volunteer program host at the advertisement-free KBOO-FM (90.7) in Portland, says radio has gotten away from community values or even listening to its communities.
"It's all part of the dumbing down of our society. The media has the role of educating as well as entertaining the populous," he said. "If you're going to have music on a station for 24 hours of the day, how are you maintaining or perpetuating a value system? How are you educating the community? "Radio has become part of the whole media network that corporate America is attempting to dominate."
Wilker of Americans for Radio Diversity said, "This natural resource, our public airwaves, is being handed over to the wealthy, and were not doing anything about it. ... This money is not being given back to the community."
Wilker and others say the best option for the concerned public is contacting the FCC and state and national legislators. "Otherwise, nothing will change. They will continue to get away with this, and they will continue to lower the standards of our communities," he said. "It's really important that people get involved."
One idea under discussion at the FCC is offering low-power FM stations that could serve specific areas, such as neighborhoods or suburbs with local programming ranging from school news to ethnic music.
The National Association of Broadcasters is vehemently against such a proposal because it could mean loss of advertising and listeners to current station owners, but FCC Chairman William Kennards said recently about the issue, "We cannot deny opportunities to those who want to use the airwaves to speak to their communities because it might be inconvenient for those who already have those opportunities."
Wilker said anyone could start up one of these low-power stations for less than $5,000 and bring community voices back to the radio. "Just by its nature, these stations would have to be community involved or they wouldn't work," Wilker said. "People could broadcast meetings, city news, social news, whatever's going on around them." The FCC will take comments on this proposal until August. (More information about it is available on the departments Web site, www.fcc.gov.)
Solutions?
"To be a successful citizen in a democracy requires you to do more than just vote," communication professor Fulford said. "In order for people to participate in a meaningful way, they need to know their opportunities. Those are made available through active public communication, in print as well as broadcast. As people become aware of the politics, the recreation, the events, the arts of a community, they can participate."
Haamid of KBOO adds, "It comes down to this: Do we want to hear a variety of voices from different communities? Well, we're headed toward one monolithic audio presentation. "If the community won't clamor for a change, who will?"
Right now, like the mayor of Banks, no one here even seems to be aware of Clark County's dwindling access to radio. Ginger Metcalf, executive director of an influential local group called Identity Clark County, said her members hadn't discussed the issue. City officials in Southwest Washington towns, from Vancouver to Camas, also did not know about it.
Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard said though the issue has not been discussed by the City Council, he does think it is important enough to add to the list of future topics for review.
Limited access to radio "just adds to the difficulty we have in creating an identity in our community," Pollard said. "I hope at some point in time, someone would see the value of basing a radio station in this area. "If we have a radio station that puts an emphasis on local stuff, it can become an outlet for advertising and public service announcements, telling people what they can do here rather than in Portland."
U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat from Vancouver, said, "People generally don't realize how fragile local broadcasting is until its gone."
Listeners, as well as advertisers, who are interested in local content need to champion for it and support stations that provide it, he said.
"There's a real concern right now about the public's ability to access local information and local news and have independent voices," Baird said. "Frankly, though, the responsibility falls to the viewers and listeners."
Baird said the only way to makes changes in such a system controlled by competition is for listeners to "vote with their ears." He compared the radio crisis to that of local retailers who are being systematically replaced by malls and Wal-Marts.
"Listeners need to demand something of real quality," Baird said. "They need to ask themselves if the station they are watching or listening to is giving them real useful and accurate information. If not, they need to let those stations know they want something better."