Consolidation Kills Radio Airplay of Conscious Rap
Posted December 20th, 2006 by Jen Howard
Excerpted from Nashville Testimony of Akilah N. Folami
For the Hip Hop community, radio consolidation has had a deadening effect on the much needed discourse that was occurring among America’s younger generation prior to the corporate takeover, particularly among its young, urban, Black men, through Rap.
Before the rampant radio consolidation, local radio stations played more of a diverse sound in Rap — along with more community programming, local political news and activism, and advertisements of businesses and events in the area. Local DJs, who were deemed to be the pulse of the Hip Hop community, were regularly featured, as was new talent that was often discovered by such DJs as they mingled in the community.
After the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the resulting rapid buy-out of local radio stations by larger media conglomerates, community programming disappeared on such stations, as did the local radio station managers. They were replaced by national managers who were removed from the community and sat in distant regional offices of the station owner.
Local DJs were fired and replaced by advanced technology that allowed shows to be pre-recorded at one of the owner’s radio stations and distributed to its other sister stations for radio airplay. New Rap talent — catering more to the tastes of the local community than that approved for play by national managers — was rarely exposed on the radio. National executives were not interested in playing a new undiscovered sound that had not already been heavily marketed and approved by record companies.
Today, Gangsta Rap dominates the nation’s radio airwaves with messages of misogyny, violence, and excessive consumer consumption. It is largely corporate driven, heavily marketed, and commercialized by corporate media in a way that more socially conscious Rap cannot be. Overlooked for radio air play are female rappers, and non-Gangsta Rap songs that might appeal to niche audiences or to audiences with smaller buying power.
The current radio ownership rules do not promote competition or a diversity of viewpoints. Instead, they have fostered a discussion that seems to circulate around the interests of a handful of media conglomerates who own a majority of the radio airwaves, and for all intent and purposes, control access to them.
More space needs to be made for a diversity of viewpoints and cannot turn — as it has for Hip Hop — on corporate-backed marketing and visibility, or the consumption habits of a particular buying demographic.
Click here to read the complete testimony
we have let this monster big radio and major label to grow for 30 years.it is to late to kill it.we have to support a new media. for small labels and unsigned bands satillite radio is our only hope.in the film Running Man there is a scene with Richard Dawson and the line is “we have been telling people what to think,what to wear, and what to eat for 40 years.he was talking about TV. the same can be said about radio.
February 5th, 2007 at 2:04 pmI think Wall Street should get out of local radio altogether, and give the stations back to the people who are passionate about radio. I work at a jazz station near St. Louis, and we basically play whatever we want, as long as it’s within the format. We play a lot of local artists on the station; it is also the market’s only jazz station, after three other stations abandoned variations of the format.
Besides new media, we should support reregulating radio…it’s time to tell the NAB that their free ride in Washington is over.
February 15th, 2007 at 10:14 am