Clear Channel loses a big oneThe San Francisco Board of Appeals did the right thing last week and blocked Clear Channel from using its corporate power to shake down small property owners. The board sided with Cheon Hool Lee, a retired Korean immigrant dentist who owns a building on Market Street, who lost a billboard because Clear Channel yanked it down when he demanded fair rent.
The legal issues were tricky, but the principle wasn't: The giant conglomerate was acting like the mob. It had to be stopped.
And yet, the Board of Supervisors, usually far more progressive than the Board of Appeals, went along with Clear Channel and gave the evil media barons a twenty -- that's 20 -- year contract to sell ads on bus shelters in the city. Only Ross Mirkarimi voted no.
I know it was a tough one for progressives -- somehow, Muni management, which wants the money from the bus shelters, convinced the union for the bus drivers to lobby for the contract. And I realize that the estimated $15 million a year Muni will get out of the deal isn't peanuts.
But I have to ask: How much is Clear Channel making? The company won't say. All we know is that the contract is very lucrative, because the media barons went to great lengths to get it. Which means the city could have built the shelters itself, brought in even more money for Muni, hired even more bus drivers ... and sent a message to Clear Channel.
Nope. DIdn't happen.
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Comments (3)
Kudos to Ross Mirkarimi for voting against the Clear Channel deal, and to the Guardian for providing some coverage of the issue. The initial numbers that came out when the contract deal was first reported showed that about 75 percent of the ad revenues will go to Clear Channel, NOT to MUNI. The only responsibility Clear Channel will have is to occasionally re-build bus shelters. Ridiculous! Anyone with knowledge of advertising knows how much those MUNI ads are worth, and there is no reason whatsoever that MUNI can't get at least 75 percent of that money, and NOT Clear Channel! What is worse, there are plenty of local ad agencies perfectly capable of fulfilling such a contract, and that would mean ALL of the money would at least stay local. My sense is that Clear Channel muscled everyone else out.
I have always wondered, seeing the massive ads on MUNI, how the heck MUNI could ever be strapped for cash with all of this ad revenue flowing in. Of course, I didn't realize that the ad contract was doled out in a corrupt fashion that failed to guarantee the millions in ad revenues would flow into MUNI coffers. Unfortunately, this will now be the case for another 20 years! This is why we need a progressive mayor! This deal with Clear Channel is basically corporate welfare.
Posted by Erika McDonald | October 22, 2007 06:53 PM
And ClearChannel also controls the paper media distribution with those pedmount newsracks.
Posted by Guest | October 22, 2007 08:53 PM
I did cast my no vote on second reading today. I missed last week's vote.
Posted by Chris Daly | October 23, 2007 11:40 PM