Wither WHFS, or the Winter of our Dischordtent
I want to return again to the retired notion of format doctrine for U S
Radio. While people noted and mourned the passing of WHFS from the DC
airwaves, no one bothered raising any objection to it. That's not how it
used to be.
I should try to give you an idea WHFS's history in the shadow of
the format doctrine. A sense of WHFS's place as a DC and national
alt/rock, new wave/punk institution. It was big - Rodney on the Rock
big. I first heard WHFS soon after moving to Washington DC. I was still
in the Navy at the time. They were conducting an interview with
musicians from a band called Nightman, which had some connection with a
band called the Razz, which in turn had some connection to someone
named Tommy Keene. All they did was talk. It drove me nuts, this is not
radio I thought. But I tuned in again a few nights later - they were
doing the same thing with a guy named Syl Sylvain. The next time I
tuned in, on a saturday, a DJ who called himself Johnny Walker played
Minor threat and the Bad Brains. Its hard to characterize the effect
Minor Threat and the Bad Brains had on me hearing them for the first
time. If you have ever read the Wind in the Willows it was like that
scene where Mr. Toad is sitting in the road by himself among the
splintered remains of his caravan repeating over and over to himself
"beep beep, beep beep." This was when they got their mail on Cordell
ave. in Bethesda and broadcast at 102.3fm. In May of 1983 they played
Joy Division's Transmission, then ended their transmission selling the
frequency to someone else. One pointless and ineffective listener
petition to the FCC later. A Phoenix arose when Jake Einstein bought
another radio station to keep his kids off the street, WHFS 99.1fm.
Washington High Fidelity Stereo.
From there followed a multi year struggle for nation level
advertising. You have to show up in arbitron to get it and WHFS wasn't.
If you don't whatever else your doing your not really running a radio
station as a business. In 1987 the Einsteins sold the station to
Duchossois Communications. Before long the remaining Einsteins and
holdover dj's left, but the songs remained the same. Ironically this
opened into the Heyday of WHFS and what it stood for in the light of
grunge and the "HFStival". They became popular and profitable and
salable and passed through several hand before ending up with Infinity
in 1995. The Post had a good feature on WHFS last saturday, which
covers all this and more: WHFS: For Many, The Only Alternative (washingtonpost.com).
This obscure notion of a format doctrine, and FCC's
market approach to all broadcasting issues is central. For this I turned to
books on shelves:
Glasser, Theodore L.
Competition and Diversity Among Radio Formats: Legal and Structural Issues.
Mass Communication Review Yearbook 1985, Vol. 5, p547
(orig. pub. in) Journal of Broadcasting Spring 1984, Vol. 28, Issue 2, p127.
In the 1970's there were four cases that went before Judge McGowan
of the 2nd circuit Court of Appeals. In aggregate McGowan's opinions
formed something that people referred to as the Format Doctrine. Simply
put Judge McGowan cautioned the FCC that when significant public
disgruntlement was apparent, manifested perhaps by listener petitions,
or when programming changes would leave a broadcast area without a
unique format, the FCC ought to take that into consideration at license
renewal time, the FCC having been organized to oversee the airwaves to
the 'public interest'. This nearly drove the FCC around the bend. In
1976 they wrote a long memorandum (Memorandum Opinion and Order, 41
Fed. Reg. at 32953) in which they described this format doctrine as a
"fearful and comprehensive nightmare". They did not have to tremble
long in sickness and dread the Supreme Court took up the last of the
format doctrine cases on a writ of certiorari (WNCN, 101 S. Ct at 1269)
and ruled in favor of the FCC's view, ending forever anything the
public might have to say about radio, as the public. The future
of entertainment formats wound down a long road of increasing niche
marketing, while American culture and technology changed around it. One
of these changes is rock and roll no longer has the market share to
splinter into subformats or maintain multiple enterprises within
a market. Another element is technological change - the era of digital
reproduction. Again I'm going to stop here because the Washington Post
covered well on Monday: washingtonpost.com: Rock, Rolling Over.
Four words satellite radio, iPod, streaming radio. Dj's at
some college radio stations just run their entire shows into the board,
out of their iPods. The old school mind (mine) reels, it even reel to reels. Compressed Digital audio moves digital beyond
the lp model - the CD into competition with radio itself. I also note a news item which
uses 'format' in a lateral sense as a technological fork in the
road. DRMS in compressed digital audio players prevents
interoperability and dampens the effect of the overall MP(x) base
BBC NEWS | Technology | Format wars could 'confuse users'
Beyond entertainment formats, I still have some questions
left over concerning diversity, the market, and the public. Glasser
seems curiously relevant. Supporters of diversity were a little
nonplussed at the FCC's attitude: the marketplace- most desirable,
least objectionable. a soft-focus vision of laissez faire. The Format
Doctrine had evolved in a perfect vacuum at the FCC in the first place.
Now they insisted on the right to do nothing for the public on the eve
of a generation of broadcasting consolidation into limited sets of
hands, much of it requiring positive action to negate inconvenient
rules,and call this their duty. Glasser appears to have had a sense of
this from where his article goes next.
In the section headed consumer welfare, pluralistic
programming, first amendment values he examines what might make
cultural pluralism a value worth preserving or facilitating. It is not
an accidental adjacency that leads the 1rst amendment from free speech
into free press. The Press gets all the benefit of doubt due free
speech because only a free press can meet "public communication needs
of a democratic society." Only a press free to assume a natural
pluralism is "[a] press able and presumably willing to accommodate
divergent points of view." This is a "Public understanding". A
"Political Freedom." Glasser notes this is Alexander Meiklejohn's term
(Political Freedom, 1965). A 'cultural interpretation' essential to self government" Glasser sees
shading into John Dewey's thought.
Political Freedom, a cultural interpretation of Meiklejohn, is to see
this freedom dedicated not just to a level of information exchange some
degree of enlightenment but to the principle of plurality itself, From
which these thing will emerge. The principle of associated life;
democracy as a "conjoint communicated experience" (Dewey, Public and
its Problems, 1927). "Only a culturally plural society ... can
embody the spirit of democracy"
The FCC's format policy is fundamentally flawed, Glasser
argues, because it accepts competition not diversity as the goal of the
first amendment. He agrees with former FCC commissioner Nicolas Johnson
that a pricing mechanism [set up on these terms] represents a
'normative not an empirical judgment'. What he means by this is that
for free marketors, that the market delivers the best of all possible
worlds is an a priori truth judgement - they don't let facts interfer
with it. Variety is mistaken for
diversity. Variety equals intraformat diversity; true diversity equals
inter-format diversity. One can see these same arguements in play today
As Sinclair, Infinity and clear Channel and only a few others take up
ownership of all media outlets across the country. Not to worry we are
told with cable and satellites and your internets you can get your
information many ways. I'm grasping for an analogy that voices my
disquiet. Consider a content management engine in a XML publishing
process: many looks, feels and ways. One ultimate document in serving
database of unified information with mere associated extensible (or is
that expendable) style sheets. Format variety masks the message.
Glasser views the essential difference between what he terms
variety and diversity as the difference between wants and needs. Wants
are private and idiosyncratic a personal preference, an individual
gratification. Needs are public and shared, transcending personal
preference to the purposes and interest common to a class of people.
When the mechanics of governance conspire to supply one without the
other. It is all mere bread and circus.
Addendum: Even before I manage to finish typing this I see that
Infinity is letting the old WHFS alt-rock programming back on - as
internet streaming radio. I don't know yet whether Djs come with that.
Also I heard on the news tonight that Michael Powell is stepping down
as Chair of the FCC. I suppose the stress of being a free market
deregulator on one hand, and responding to the "there oughta be a law"
social conservatives who want the heck regulated out of all
broadcasting, got to him.
11:16:26 PM  ;;
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