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An
Affirmative Action Plan for Indies Now that the US Supreme Court has ruled that affirmative action plans are constitutional in order to ensure a critical mass of diversity, I think its is time to consider an affirmative action plan for independent artists. Let's face it, indie artists have been systematically shut out of key markets and areas that have left them marginalized from the music industry and buying public. Rare are the artists fortunate enough to land the much-desired major label contract, and of those, only the profitable 10% get any real support/attention from their patron. This is in part due to media conglomerates like Clear Channel & Viacom interested only in that 10% that will fuel their real businesses: advertising. Walk into any major music store and that same 10% occupy 95% of the retail space. Even the average online CD retailer's homepage is more likely to feature Eminem & J-LO instead of Molten Mike or Tom Fox. This condition has been driven by the need to perpetually generate, milk & remix hits. Hits = repeat business = ad $ = profits. Not sure whether you're artist is hit material and therefore likely to fall into the magic 10%? Just ask the folks at Polyphonic that use artificial intelligence to predict the future hits. This chase for hits/profits of course drives up the cost and risk of developing artists, especially new ones, thus reinforcing the disparity. But the music industry needs to be about more than generating hits. It needs to also be about finding, developing and exposing new artists and music. The overwhelming focus on profitability has effectively created a two-tier industry, separate and unequal. And society as a whole is the main loser, deaf to an army of talented, hard working, creative & innovative musicians and works while being dumb-downed by repetition.
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Is the band gigging? The effect would trickle down to the recording music sector where indie labels would be empowered to expose the great talent they've nurtured and invested in while majors scramble to counter the emerging competition by finally returning to artist over Idol development. For us Americans, the proposal seems pure lunacy. But we could take a page from our neighbor up North and trans-Atlantic allies who have used "quotas" for decades in order to ensure a critical mass of their culture was present on the major media outlets. Can anyone argue that this nationalistic affirmative action policy is not in at least some way linked to the disproportionate success of Canadian artists in the US & worldwide, or the fact that France is one of the few thriving music markets in these depressed times? A Structural Separation Plan for Radio Backlash to FCC Chairman Michael Powell's attempted reengineering of the media landscape continued as the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee passed the FCC Reauthorization Act. In addition to extending the media ownership rules review process from two to four years, an amendment by Senator Hollings would expand sanctions for "broadcast of obscene or indecent matter." Nothing watershed - it's just a reauthorization bill - but still another salvo over concerns with runaway corporatization. And those concerns span well beyond Congress. The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) took the opportunity at their 95th Convention to issue a series of resolutions addressing certain of the more pressing issues facing its members and the industry. Most notable were those addressing radio consolidation and media ownership rules. Reaffirming that "the public owns the airwaves, and that in return for the right to the free use of the public bandwidth broadcast stations must serve the public interest and their local communities," the union called on the Congress to pass the Competition in Radio and Concert Industries Act of 2003 as well as condemned the FCC new rules, joining FCC Commissioners Copps & Adelstein to call for their repeal. This spells more trouble for radio conglomerates, and particularly Clear Channel, which faces criticism of not only its market share, power & practices in broadcast radio, but also of anti-competitive practices "by radio station owners that also own important local venues and entertainment promoters in the cities where they own radio stations." While the media conglomerate has little to fear of any significant forced divestiture from its stations, the present conditions could significantly hamper its growth strategy, and eventually its bottom line. What the company needs is a proactive strategy that would literally reshape its public image while courting political approval. I had previously suggested taking the lead from the Supreme Court in proposing an 'indie' affirmative action plan. But a more serious and realistic alternative might be to propose some form of voluntary structural separation between the parent company, its broadcast and live event divisions. More specifically in order to address concerns over diversity & localism, the conglomerate should propose a structural separation plan between Clear Channel Radio and its local stations. The plan would provide greater flexibility to Clear Channel and other radio groups that would follow its lead to engage in the expansion they claim is required to ensure growth and profitability while keeping day-to-day operational decisions, including the playlist, in the hands of local management. Structural separation would also alleviate concerns of anti-competitive practices where a conglomerate owns both local station(s) and venue(s) in the same market. In addition, the FCC is well versed in overseeing and monitoring structural separation arrangements as they've commonly been employed in the local telephone industry, for example. By proactively and voluntarily placing the idea on the table, Clear Channel would gain huge leverage in determining the actual details & fine-print of its implementation. It's exactly what AT&T did when they presented the Department of Justice with a divestiture plan of its own corporate empire, a plan they could live with and avoided a lot of the tough issues for some future date when they'd be in a better leveraging position. And if properly implemented, the proposal would remove the need for the contentious media ownership review process - at least for the broadcast radio sector - by shifting regulatory oversight to where it counts: the local independence of our broadcast outlets.
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