The Buzzard is dead, killed by the march of Jacor.It was during a trip to Cleveland on Saturday I heard the obituary: WMMS 100.7 FM is changing formats and dropping its mascot of 30 years, the Buzzard. The new format will emphasize soft rock and the new mascot will be none other than Mr. John Tesh.In reality, the new format is under wraps until Nov. 1, but with Jacor, don’t rule out anything. The radio equivalent of the Third Reich, Jacor Communications is slowly taking over the industry. Based right across the Ohio River, Jacor started in Cincinnati then spread like a disease across the state. Their web site says it all:”Like kids in a candy store, Jacor has been shamelessly opportunistic about its growth and acquisitions. Including announced, pending acquisitions, Jacor owns, operates, represents, or provides programming for 205 radio stations in 56 broadcast areas.”To be honest, WMMS has been pretty lame the past few years, but that’s more an indication of the sorry state of rock ‘n’ roll than anything. The fact is, the Buzzard is as much a Cleveland institution as the Browns.O.K., bad example.But Jacor’s arrogance is as offensive as that of Art Modell. The company has its own version of Modell, CEO Randy Michaels. “We need to have our arms around the local community,” Michaels told the Dispatch during Jacor’s acquisition of three Columbus stations, bringing it’s share of the local market to 58 percent.It’s more like Michaels has his hands around the community’s throat. The Department of Justice made him loosen his grip a little, agreeing to swap or sell five local stations, which brought its Columbus total to six stations, 38 percent of the ad market.Can you say monopoly?Well you could, but after the 1996 Telecommunications Deregulation Act, you could shout it from the rooftops and it wouldn’t do any good. The act eliminated rules limiting broadcasters to owning no more than 20 FM and 20 AM stations. Jacor grabbed the opportunity and Michaels guesses his company may one day own 1,000 stations.Once again, the cocky web site tells the story better than I could make it up: “Since Hubble, galaxies are thought to be arranged in clusters… Who’s imitating whom?”In Jacor language, “clusters” are large numbers of stations in the same city that can share hosts, managers and sales staff, thus cutting costs. In straight talk, this means Jacor wants to eliminate costs by gobbling up every big station in major markets, then force the same lame cookie-cutter formats onto every city, complete with syndicated hosts.With Jacor, these hosts include (try not to gag) psycho babble shlockmeister Dr. Laura Schlessinger, smug sports punk Jim Rome, conspiracy theorist Art Bell and Fascist gasbag Rush Limbaugh.Welcome to the Disinformation Age. It’s made more frightening by Michaels take on news in the next century. “We can focus more on making newspapers relevant to those training pets,” he told an industry magazine.Does he plan to do this with Dr. Laura?Pay attention kids, Jacor (The noise you can’t ignore, as they call themselves on that damn web site) has the same sort of twisted plan for Cowtown as the rock ‘n’ roll capital. They’ve already eliminated 105.7 FM the Fox, a station Lantern editor Tim Paradis referred to as “phenomenal… because they didn’t play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ ten times a day, but they play stuff like Jim Croce.”Paradis is a little weird about the Croce stuff, but you get the point. In the Fox’s place, Channel Z was moved from 98.9 to 105.7, and an urban adult station originally on 106.3 went to 98.9.Confused? I’m not done yet. 106.3, is a (choke) smooth jazz station, but that’s the only thing in this equation you can’t blame on Jacor. No matter which way you cut it, it spells even less originality and local flavor on Columbus radio, which didn’t exactly have an excess to begin with.Not only does Jacor need to be stopped, but local radio needs to be reborn. Columbus is sorely lacking a unique, independent station… yes, you can see where I’m going with this.Now more than ever, the time is right to get the student-run station a FM frequency. President Kirwan, are you listening?
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who is shamelessly promoting his self-interests as a talk show host on the Underground. His show can be heard tonight at 7 p.m. And Crabbe’s appears on Wednesdays in the Lantern.
