Radio Broadcast in Rochester Metro Reflects Nationwide Ruin of Theater of the Mind

Concentration Kills

I’m a long-time listener to good (well-prepared, well-presented) radio. 

I’m a person who appreciates excellence in broadcasting: good voice, good delivery, and good content—regardless of slant, subject matter or genre (news, analysis, humor, etc). Good “theater of the mind” should offer knowledge, useful learning—without preaching, proselytizing, or demonizing. I like learning and having my own knowledge challenged, broadened, expanded. I like respectfulness. Good radio respects its audience.

I abhor trash, vulgarity, carelessness; and unprepared, unstudied, intellectually inferior content. I abhor delivery in poor voice quality, unsuitable timbre, and delivery in nonstandard English language. I abhor rank amateurs (unprofessional broadcasters or podcasters), ignorant personalities and entities, parrots and rip and readers who spread trash and ignorance and pander to the basest and most ignorant element in society.

Unfortunately, that last bit reflects the caliber of iHeart and other concentrated media owners, employers and operators whose personalities and programming broadcast on radio in Metropolitan Rochester, New York.

Takeover and Vulgarization

Orchestrated Decline of Radio Broadcasting

United States Federal and Private Entities conspired in removing Rules and Regulations and proper Standards in Broadcasting and have thus Stymied all Possibility of true Excellence in Broadcasting

1987: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine of 1949 (requiring that audiences be exposed to a variety of viewpoints) was repealed.

Before destruction of the Fairness Doctrine, broadcast license holders were required to present “controversial issues of public importance;” and to do so in a manner determined by FCC rules to be “honest, equitable and balanced.” (And clean!)

1990s: FCC relaxes regulations on ownership of multiple radio stations.

Entertainment Communications (aka Entercom) in 1999 purchases 43 radio stations from Sinclair Broadcasting and becomes the fifth-largest radio broadcaster in the United States its ownership totaling “88 stations in 17 markets.”

Without broadcasting standards, shock jocks begin to rise and pander to pop and commerce and the basest of society: tough-guy aggression, vulgarity-driven, and culturally divisive.

2008-launched: iHeartMedia owned iHeartRadio (aka "iHeart"), a “freemium broadcast, podcast and radio streaming platform”

2010-launched: Audacy (orig CBS Radio acquired by prev. Entercom 1968–2021, aka Radio.com) owned by Audacy Inc (launched 2010) ownership exceeding 235 local radio stations in the United States

2011: FCC rips the rules from the Federal Register and the decline accelerates with on-air personalities and their promoters’ pledging their allegiance to the recklessness that “anything goes.” 

2015: Conglomerate Clear Channel Communications becomes conglomerate “iHeartMedia”

2017: Entercom merges with CBS Radio.

2018: CBS Radio’s corporate successor Entercom (turned Audacy, Inc.) enters shock jock genre

2019: iHeartRadio national umbrella brand for iHeartMedia’s radio network claims “128 million registered users” in the United States

Concentration corresponds with Decline in Quality Broadcasting

2011: 90 percent of United States media controlled by six companies

In the six is Murdoch’s News Corporation that split (June 28, 2013) into two separate companies: in News Corp publishing assets and Australian media assets; in 21st Century Fox broadcasting and media assets. 

iHeartMedia (formerly Lester Lowry Mays’ Clear Channel Communications) claims ownership of more than 1,200 stations.

BROADCASTER                                                                                NETWORKS

iHeartMedia

Premiere Networks The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Fox News Radio Fox Sports Radio TheBlaze TTWN Media Networks NBC News Radio Black Information Network

 

Cumulus Media

Nash FM Westwood One Dial Global Local NBC Sports Radio Westwood One News

Audacy, Inc.

CBS Sports Radio Sabres Hockey Network New York Yankees Radio

Reference Sources: Encyclopedia last updated February 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_radio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHeartRadio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
https://sports.yahoo.com/shaq-on-the-draymond-green-stomp-i-would-have-done-the-same-thing-155655039.html

All the “freedom” Talk among Americans (Particularly freedom of speech talk) is no more than talk. 

Empty words.

To understand what these talkers mean by “freedom,” one has to look to their actions.  

When Americans mouth (recite, mantra, parrot) “freedom,” they are focusing on themselves, their individual (self-centered) words, ideas, thoughts; that which is “possessed” or is believed to be possessed by them—in whatever situation they find themselves. 

Their actions reveal their true beliefs.

Americans embrace an individual, selfish, notion of “freedom.” The notion of freedom that they subscribe to is a freedom intended exclusively for them and theirs. 

In their minds, the notion of freedom extends only to them; and, contrary to any intelligent reading of the Bill of Rights under the U.S. Constitution (or any universal declaration of human rights), freedom of speech is not the inalienable right of all human beings, a societal right under law. They do not differentiate license and rights. (One can buy a license but should not be able to buy a human or   constitutional right.) 

These Americans do not understand the principle of societal responsibility; or that, by definition and design, a narrow-mindedly drawn or applied freedom of speech robs others of utterance, platform, freedom of expression.

Speech should not be the possession of concentrated wealth or of the loudest speaker.

Freedom of speech should not be a commodity subject to bulldozing by billionaires.

Freedom of speech should not be subject to commercialization or the buying and selling by entities or individuals capable of or interested buying and selling or cornering the market (denying utterance to others).

At the same time, speech should be disciplined. It should be subject to and bound by proper principles and standards, rules and regulations. 

Freedom should not presume, infer or permit anarchy or violence of language or action. The right of free speech should not be the private possession or domain of concentrated wealth or commerce nor of merger, force or belligerence.

Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images

Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com

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Never Trust a Turncoat

Brand USA: Arrogance, Brute Force, Deliberate Ignorance, Dismissive approach to Vital International Treaties, Self-inflicted Isolation

Aside from international treaties of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the US breach or disregard of treaties extends to the eighteen and nineteenth centuries with American Indian Nations (1722-1869). Though more than three hundred treaties were reported to have been signed with Native American Tribes, many were not ratified; and even more were neither respected nor observed.  

B

RAND USA

In the area of international treaties, the US Brand has been described as capricious, unpredictable, partisan, or whimsically schizophrenic. By the summer of 2022, the United States was in the category of countries ratifying the least international treaties concerned with human rights. In an article by Annalisa Merelli at Quartz magazine online is this list of US failures.

The US Congress failed to ratify the 1919 World War I ending Treaty of Versailles; and failed to formally end the war against Germany and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1921.

The US Senate blocked ratification of the 1949 International Labor Convention, “an international recognition of the freedom of association and protection of the right to organize.”

The US refused to sign the agreement (signed by Vietnam, France, China, the USSR, and the UK) resulting from the 1954 Conference of Geneva “called to put a final end to the Korean War and First Indochina War.” The US had participated in the conference.

The US has failed to ratify (though signed) the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that builds on the 1948 Eleanor Roosevelt championed Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The US Senate has failed to ratify the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

The US has failed to ratify the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that established a set of rules and responsibilities governing the way countries and international bodies act in international waters; and details the requirements of search and rescue at sea.

The US (the only country) has failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that incorporates a wide range of rights (education, health, justice) for minors.

The US has failed to ratify (thus blocking it entering into effect) the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty banning nuclear testing. Partners in this failure are China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan.

The US has failed to ratify the 1997 Mine-Ban Treaty (Ottawa Treaty) that aims to eliminate anti-personnel mines, prohibiting their production, stockpiling, or use. In this failure are 33 states.

The US has failed to ratify the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC) ratified by 60 nations.  

The US (one of four UN member states) has failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an agreement limiting carbon emissions.

The US withdrew from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord aimed at mitigating climate change by reducing emissions.

A

mong the international treaties (list not exhaustive) the US has failed to ratify or signed and later withdrew are these listed at Wikipedia. 

• 1930 Forced Labor Convention
• 1948 Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention
• 1949 Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention
• 1950 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others UN Secretary-General
• 1951 Equal Remuneration Convention
• 1958 Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention
• 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education UNESCO
• 1969 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
• 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
• 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Bilateral US–Soviet treaty (ratified 1972, withdrew 2002)
• 1977 American Convention on Human Rights Organization of American States
• 1977 Protocol I (Geneva Conventions amendment)
• 1977 Protocol II (Geneva Conventions amendment)
• 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
• 1981 Occupational Safety and Health Convention
• 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
• 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• 1997 Kyoto Protocol
• 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (signed 1998, withdrew 2002)
• 2002 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) (not signed)
• 2007 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• 2011 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
• 2013 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT)
• 2016 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (signed 2016, withdrew 2017)
  

Sources

Quartz, Annalisa Merelli “BROKEN PROMISES: It’s not just Trump. The US has always broken its treaties, pacts and promises,” May 12, 2018, updated July 20, 2022 https://qz.com/1273510/all-the-international-agreements-the-us-has-broken-before-the-iran-deal/

 “List of treaties unsigned or unratified by the United States,” Wikipedia, latest update March 20, 2022,   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_unratified_by_the_United_States 

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elated News, Commentary, Analysis

 “CrossTalk on Taiwan: Reckless policy” August 5, 2022, Host Peter Lavelle’s CrossTalking with Andy Mok, Angelo Giuliano, and Daniel McAdams https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/560201-reckless-policy-us-china/

“For decades Washington has adhered to the ‘One China’ policy (that) included Taiwan.” However, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei “puts this in question…

 “Is the Biden administration needlessly and recklessly provoking China?”

August 1, 2022 edition of Host Peter Lavelle’s “CrossTalking with Glenn Diesen and Vladimir Golstein” brought this important insight:

  

“Never in the history of corporate media has coverage been so biased and one-sided.” 

WORSE than that: 

“Questioning the standard narrative is akin to treason; and subject to censorship, and cancellation.”

CrossTalk, HOME EDITION: “Phony war,” https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/559894-phony-war-media-coverage/

♦

RICOCHET

Policy of Death and Destruction: Loss of mind, brilliance, honor, loss of basic principles, loss of self-respect and respect for other countries and peoples’ sovereignty and right to self-determination, the United States of America—in the grip of senile, incestuous, deliberately deluded, self-serving powers and self-perpetuating neo-con-NGO-nonprofit profiteering industrial complexes revolving in and out of Washington—is set on a course of dangerous isolation and self-annihilation. Hell-bent on destroying self and the whole world.

First aired in early August, this edition of Host Peter Lavelle’s “CrossTalking with John Varoli, Michael Maloof and Martin Jay” is the illustration of quality, essential-listening broadcast information.

The US-led anachronistic Cold War against Russia, “… using Ukraine as proxy…;” its reckless attempt to weaken and isolate the Russian Federation has backfired, leaving “the ‘collective West’”… “weaker and isolated.”

“CrossTalk: West’s miscalculation,” August 3, 2022, https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/560097-west-miscalculation-ukraine-conflict/

 

World and National Sources
Collage composed of individual Internet images
Composition, Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

 

 

 

 

Shame and Show: Patrick Martin, Joseph Kishore examine

Joseph Biden (Democratic Party) vice presidential choice of Kamala Harris

 

Joseph Biden (Democratic Party) vice presidential choice of Kamala Harris

F

og
Failure of choice:
Failure of even Pretense of Democracy
 

Kishore

“This says everything about the degraded state of American politics.

In the midst of monumental political, economic and social crises, and against the backdrop of so much suffering, the American people are to be offered the ‘choice’ between the fascistic Trump, the conman from New York, and a Democratic Party ticket headed by a corporate shill from Delaware and an ex-prosecutor from California.

 Status Quo now and forever

Martin
The [Biden selection of Harris] decision was entirely predictable and widely expected in its reaffirmation of “the right-wing political orientation of the Democratic Party presidential ticket.

Biden has a 48-year political career in which he has been identified primarily with intensified police repression at home and the ferocious defense of the interests of American imperialism abroad.

The 77-year-old candidate is joined by a 55-year-old running mate with her own right-wing credentials: as a law-and-order prosecutor and attorney general in California, and, since coming to Washington in 2016, an advocate and defender of the military-intelligence apparatus.

Neither Harris nor Biden is associated with any popular social movement or linked to the advocacy of any significant social or political reform.

Biden and Harris have carried out their entire political careers under conditions where the Democratic Party has been moving steadily, and ever more rapidly, to the right. 

S

uperficiality, Ancestral Irrelevancy

Fraud, Show, Insult
Planned Incompetence and Broken Promises
Opportunism
Inevitable Weakness of Mind, Character, Service

Kishore
There is something incredibly degrading and shameful about the whole process, testifying to the intellectual and cultural collapse of American politics.

The ‘historic’ character of the Harris nomination is premised entirely on her race and gender. She would be the “first African-American vice president,” the “first Asian-American vice president” and the “first female vice president.” She already is the “first Black woman on the national ticket of the Democrats or Republicans.” Everything is about the symbolism involved in the choice of Harris, with not a word about the program of a Democratic Party administration.

Those invested in the racialist campaign have jumped on the bandwagon to declare the selection of Harris ‘historic’” However, “despite the hosannas from the advocates of identity politics”; Harris’ ethnicity and gender provide no assurance of a character or commitment to ‘progressive’ politics.

Racialists conveniently forget their messiah, Barack Obama, who, in Martin’s words

“…proved to be a thoroughly reactionary defender of Wall Street and the CIA; bailed out big banks and the stock exchange; forced auto workers to take wage cuts, continued the wars of George W. Bush and added new ones, including Libya, Syria and Yemen.” 

Objectively speaking, there is little to distinguish Harris, with only four years in the US Senate, from other potential alternatives for the vice presidency. She is not notably more qualified than dozens of other senators, governors or representatives.

But in the eyes of the advocates of identity politics, in and out of the corporate media, Harris’s mediocrity and right-wing politics count for nothing compared to her skin color and gender.

“In terms of her politics, there is clearly nothing ‘historic’ about Harris,” Kishore writes.

“In her unbounded opportunism and ruthless pursuit of her own career and economic interests,” Martin writes, Harris personifies both the social psychology and class basis of identity politics…, the politics of privileged layers of the upper-middle class—including but not limited to minorities— 

… that use race, gender and sexual orientation to conceal the fundamental class divisions in capitalist society; channel social opposition behind the Democratic Party; and carve out a greater share of the wealth of the top one percent for themselves. It is organically hostile to the interests of the working class and socialism.

“The selection of [Kamala] Harris,” Kishore says, “exposes the utterly reactionary character of politics that bases itself on race, gender and other forms of identity—anything but class. 

Democrats’ response to protests against police violence obscured class issues; promoted racial divisions, and propagated “the lie that the violence of the police is an expression of the oppression of ‘black America’ by ‘white America.’” 

T

he outcome of this racialist campaign is their vice-presidential candidacy selection “of a right-wing ex-prosecutor who once covered up evidence to keep an innocent man on death row and worked to tear immigrant children from their parents.”

Sources

Martin, Patrick. “Biden picks former law-and-order prosecutor Kamala Harris to be his Democratic running mate”  August 12, 2020 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/12/harr-a12.html

Kishore, Joseph. “The selection of Kamala Harris and the degradation of American politics”  [Joseph Kishore is SEP candidate for US president] August 13, 2020 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/13/pers-a13.html

 

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