Clear Channel grabs thumbs

So, the mysterious "major media company" who is set to snaffle Thumbplay - the unpopular US subscription service - is revealed: All Things D report Clear Channel Radio are paying not very much to acquire the company.

It sounds like they're less interested in the handful of subscribers, and are instead keen to use the Thumbplay technology to drive their radio business.

The good news is all staff will be kept on; existing subscribers will be able to carry on listening in their dozens but, for now, Clear Channel isn't looking to grow their numbers:

[Bob Pittman, chairman of media and entertainment at Clear] says Thumbplay’s technology will be integrated in the coming months into Clear Channel’s “iheartradio” service, which offers 750 free Web radio stations and boasts 25 million monthly uniques. He says all 65 Thumbplay employees working on music services will get jobs at Clear Channel.

Clear Channel will get into subscriptions “eventually”, Pittman says. Clear Channel says existing Thumbplay subscribers won’t notice any change, but that the company will stop marketing for new customers.

Which also suggests the rest of the world won't really notice any change, either.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

A couple of strong pieces on the New York Times today. First, John Pareles travels to Munich to meet Portishead:

Meanwhile, although Ms. Gibbons’s lyrics are wounded public confessions, she is so painfully shy that she dodges interviews. The refrain of the album’s closing song, “Threads,” is “I’m always so unsure.” (In a brief hello at the Munich sound check, she fretted that she might forget lyrics during the concert.)

Then the paper reviews a history of Clear Channel Communications, Right Of The Dial:

But when Alec Foege, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Spin and Playboy, set out to write the definitive history of a company that possesses more radio stations than any other, he decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

“I was not out to do a hatchet job,” he writes in the preface to “Right of the Dial,” “but rather to get to the bottom of a company that I suspected had gotten a raw deal as its bad publicity had snowballed.”

The reader need wait only three paragraphs before Foege renders his final verdict: “Having spent a lot of time talking to some of the company’s most prominent critics, as well as some of its most devout supporters, I have concluded that Clear Channel is indeed to blame for much of what it has been accused of.”

Clear Channel starts the long, slow fade-down

The evilest radio media empire in the US, Clear Channel, is starting to smash itself to pieces. It's shareholders gave approval for the sale of itself to a private equity partnership, Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and Bain Capital Partners LLC, with a plan for the new CC to slim down by selling off its television holdings and 440 of its smaller radio stations - roughly a quarter of its total. It still owns more stations than anyone else, but at least there's a bit of room for some plurality now.

Clear Channel upset Britney, people with mental health problems

Lumbering media giant Clear Channel has royally pissed off Britney Spears - and offended anyone whose ever had a mental health problem - with a promotion for its Florida radio station WFLZ-FM. Because nothing is as funny as mental illness:

The WFLZ billboards included the slogans "Total nut jobs", "Shock Therapy" and "Certifiable", which ran across pictures of a bald Spears.

Law firm Lavely and Singer demanded the "immediate removal" of the banners in a letter to the station.

WFLZ's Todd Schnitt said the adverts were down but he was "not happy".

Let's hope that Scnitt's unhappiness doesn't deepen into a depression, otherwise he might find photos of him with the word "nut job" splashed across, up around the town.

Spears is annoyed not just with the implications of the ads, but also the uncleared use of her face.

Rage against the clock

There's been some sucking of teeth over behind the scenes at the Wikipedia Rage Against The Machine page; one contributor had suggested that, if you went to the RATM website and set your PCs internal clock to match the zero hour on the two countdown clocks, you would see details of some sort of secret gig:

Can anyone else verify this as well?

no i did this and cleared my cookies and cache and restarted the browser and it still counts down the same way (i.e. still says that theres XX days/hours/mins left). i'm removing the info from the article until someone can back up the claim (and even then it would be considered "Original Research" so... yeah).68.255.229.29 16:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[...]

I can verify that it does indeed change the site. It says "August 24th, Alpine Valley" and that tickets will be on sale at 10am 6/16. I'd be happy to take a screenshot of it and upload it if you'd like. FireC 07:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

What's perhaps more interesting is the website at the heart of the excitement - ratm82407.com had its domain registered by LiveNation. Is it possible to Rage effectively against the Machine when a substantial part of that machine is handling your PR work for you?

Select Committee to ponder touting

In response to the calls from the events ticket industry and... well, just the events ticket industry, actually, that "something must be done" about ticket-touting, the Department of Media Culture & Sport select committee are... well, not actually going to do anything, but are going to have an enquiry.

Stuart Galbraith, managing director of events company Live Nation, said he welcomed the new probe, but added he "remained to be convinced" it would be of any use.

"I have to say that I'm very more cynical about the government's intentions to do anything about ticket touting than I was at the start of this process."

LiveNation? Cynical? As in 'cynically using Glastonbury regsitrant's private data gathered supposedly in the battle against touting in a way they promised they wouldn't', would that be?

Clear Channel and NPR share a program

The outrageous new rates for US internet radio company royalties has managed to unite the yin and yang of American radio: National Public Radio and Clear Channel are leading a call for the Copyright Royalty Board to think again:

Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents major online companies affected by the decision, asked that the judges specifically allow a per-tuning-hour approximation measure for paying the royalties.

Potter also asked the judges to clarify a $500 annual fee per broadcasting channel, saying that with some online companies offering many thousands of listening options, counting each one as a separate channel could lead to huge fees for online broadcasters.

NPR argued in its filing Monday that the new rules would have "crippling effects" on public radio's ability to meet its mandate of serving the public interest, and it also objected to the $500 per-channel minimum fee.

A group of commercial broadcasters including San Antonio, Texas-based Clear Channel, the largest radio company in the country, also asked for a reconsideration of key parts of the ruling, saying that the methods used to calculate the fees were faulty.

The only people who seem to think that setting rates at a level which will totally kill off the medium are, erm, SoundExchange, who make their money from collecting the fees:

SoundExchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes them to rights holders, has said the ruling was fair and that the rapid growth in advertising revenues from online music broadcasting would more than allow webcasters to cover the new fees.

SoundExchange haven't really worked through their thinking here: they believe that because the total advertising take from internet radio is an estimated half a billion, that means that a total royalty rate of less than half a million leaves a profit. However, the new rates means that every service will have to pay at least five hundred dollars - but many (probably most) internet broadcasters are hobbyists or small-scale, and few of those will be making five hundred bucks a year from advertising.

Here come the payola kings

We knew it was a danger, and after the Queen's Speech announced that the broadcasting legislation is going to come ahead in the current Parliament Clear Channel have admitted they want to get their sweaty little paws on Capital Radio Group. Good news for any company who wants to buy their way onto Capital, Beat, X-FM or Century, then.