Fight for the mike

Hip-hop youth challenge Clear Channel's local radio license renewals

By Camille T. Taiara

Sept. 16 was a big night for Panama and Imerald Bay. The two up-and-coming teenage rappers from Oakland were opening for Zion I, the Team, and Crown City Rockers at the Fillmore. But first they stopped by a protest at the San Francisco offices of Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio conglomerate and the owner of KMEL, 106.1 FM, the region's foremost hip-hop station, and 10 other Bay Area radio stations.

"I'd like to hear more local artists that are saying something to uplift their people," 17-year-old Panama, an Afro-Latino immigrant who raps in Spanish and English, told the Bay Guardian.

"Most of the kids I know don't have an iPod, they don't have DSL," chimed in Chris Wiltsee, executive director of Youth Movement Records, an independent label. "They really count on radio. Unfortunately, the messages that are targeting them are really negative. It's a social justice issue."

Panama and Imerald Bay are just the kind of listeners KMEL hopes to attract: young people immersed in hip-hop culture. Instead, they were among 50 or more Bay Area young people who participated in a march and rally to "Unplug Clear Channel" that day – and, indeed, who represent the heart of a movement posing a critical challenge to the company's domination of the public airwaves.

A coalition headed by the Youth Media Council (YMC) and including Media Alliance, the Eastside Arts Alliance, and Acción Latina is filing formal complaints with the Federal Communications Commission objecting to its renewal of the broadcasting licenses for local Clear Channel stations KMEL; KYLD, 94.9 FM; and KNEW, 910 AM.

Clear Channel – which has 1.5 million listeners in the Bay Area and also owns two out of three of the largest concert arenas in the region, the two largest promotion and production companies in the country, and 18,000 local billboards – locks out local artists, ignores local issues, promotes prejudice and war, and refuses to make itself accountable to members of the community, they contend. And now they're taking the company to task.

California radio station licenses are up for renewal Dec. 1. Listeners have until Nov. 1 to make themselves heard.

"It's a once-in-a-decade opportunity to challenge Clear Channel," YMC organizer Taishi Duchicela told us, noting that radio broadcast licenses only come up for renewal every eight years.

The YMC has been building a strong case. Most recently it collaborated with Global Exchange in denouncing the US Navy's cosponsorship of KMEL's Summer Jams Festival – northern California's largest hip-hop concert – for the sixth year in a row, and gathered approximately 100 signatures at the Aug. 21 concert, to be used as part of its case before the FCC.

One month earlier, the YMC and others launched a campaign that generated 488 letters and e-mails to KYLD demanding the station fire Rick Delgado, who'd lost his DJ post at an East Coast station after making racist comments about victims of the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean area last December.

Nineteen local civil rights organizations signed on to a letter objecting to Delgado's hiring and asking for a meeting with KYLD management. "We never heard anything back," Asian Law Caucus attorney Malcolm Yeung reported.

Clear Channel also operates right-wing talk station KNEW. Media Alliance monitored Michael Savage's and Jeff Katz's shows on KNEW from Aug. 8 through Aug. 26. In one instance, Savage referred to undocumented immigrants as "vermin" 43 times in 40 minutes, the group reported. Savage used stereotypes or slurs in 100 percent of his shows, and promoted physical violence as a solution in 57 percent. Katz's program didn't do much better: The show's MCs used stereotypes or slurs in 90 percent of the shows and even proposed to "torture, kill, pull their fingernails out, and crack their skulls" as a "solution" to Islam.

Neither featured a single local guest during the period surveyed.

"Everyone has a right to their politics," Media Alliance executive director Jeff Perlstein told us. "What's not appropriate on the public airwaves is inciting people to violence as a solution to social problems."

Clear Channel community affairs manager Gerry Dove informed us that neither Clear Channel nor Delgado would be making any comments for this article.

"There's no accountability to the community. There's no accountability from market forces, because of consolidation. And there's no accountability from the FCC, because of deregulation," the ALC's Yeung explained.

Significantly, it's the young people who are mounting the challenge. The coalition headed by the YMC is demanding Clear Channel reinstate community affairs directors at each of its Bay Area stations (currently only one community affairs manager represents all 11 stations), answer to an advisory board made up of local listeners, and increase local programming to 50 percent. It's also asking the FCC to revoke Clear Channel's license to operate KMEL, KYLD, and KNEW. And it's in final negotiations with an attorney to mount its legal case against the corporation.

One way or another, they're determined to make themselves heard.

To participate in the Unplug Clear Channel campaign, go to www.action.youthmediacouncil.org. For details on the FCC license renewal process, go to www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/renewal.

E-mail Camille T. Taiara at camille@sfbg.com.