perfidy

Persuant to our conversation of earlier this week, may I direct your eyeballs to this article in Wired on the state of commercial radio today. There's lots more to say on this subject, but this piece hits the really important radio-industry points.

(excerpted below the link that says....)

SAN DIEGO -- If you want to hear Aretha Franklin or Lauryn Hill or Metallica on the radio in San Diego, you have no choice but to tune to a Clear Channel station. The same goes for sports talk, local news and Rush Limbaugh.

In the radio world, this pattern is about as unusual as a "first-time caller, longtime-listener."

From Honolulu (seven stations) to Des Moines, Iowa (six), and Ft. Myers, Florida (eight), Clear Channel Communications dominates the dial across the country.

But nowhere is its domination more prevalent than in San Diego. The world's largest radio company controls 14 stations there -- a half-dozen more than anywhere else in the United States -- and it still has room to grow by looking to the south.

Over the past three years, Clear Channel programmers sacked San Diego disc jockeys and replaced them with voices from out of town, hoodwinked listeners by airing national contests as if they were local, and rolled out cookie-cutter radio formats designed elsewhere. Meanwhile, the company sweet-talked Mexican station owners across the border and tore through legal loopholes in order to build its mini-empire.

. . . .

Since the company entered the San Diego market three years ago, a few successful stations retained their management and most of their staffs. But others have lost their local flavor and their local disc jockeys. Some of the stations are little more than clones of sister operations elsewhere.

For instance, a new Clear Channel country station called "Bob 99.3" -- "Turn your knob to Bob" -- ripped off the name and motto of a defunct Minneapolis station. Dimick said it appears to be a twin of a country station in Phoenix.

And when a San Diego rock station called "Mix" debuted in 1999, it was one of more than a dozen Clear Channel stations nationwide with identical nicknames, identical logos and similar playlists. While the San Diego station folded, the number of "Mix" stations nationwide has grown to 25.

Meanwhile, local contests have largely vanished from the San Diego airwaves.

In 1999, Clear Channel began running national contests without making it clear that local callers competed against listeners from dozens of other stations. The public didn't blink, and the media barely noticed. (After it was fined in Florida, the company now runs explicit disclaimers about the contests.)

. . . .

Even some competitors admit that Clear Channel isn't always the Radio Company of Doom. By consolidating stations into one group, Clear Channel contributes to making San Diego a more stable radio market, said Bob Hughes, co-owner of KPRI-FM, the only locally owned commercial station left in the region.

"You've gone from 20-25 owners with wildly different needs and pressures to just a handful," Hughes said. "In a lot of ways, it has made radio a better business."

Indeed, Clear Channel's growth may actually help adventurous stations like KPRI, which broadcasts an eclectic mix of classic and alternative rock, blues and reggae. By contrast, Clear Channel deploys its San Diego stations to reach specific demographics -- men 18-34, for example, or women 25-54 -- and never blends different genres of music.

But listeners don’t necessarily want distinctive radio. KPRI placed 21st in the latest San Diego ratings, lagging behind 12 stations run by -- you guessed it -- Clear Channel.

President Bush, on the Great Gay Marriage Flapdoodle:

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Today's decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violates this important principle. I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

Against... what? A state-level initiative?

And don't give me that "full faith and credit" hooey.

You always wanted to know, and now here's your answer.

Vance at Begging To Differ explains a little about the scandal plaguing the mutual fund industry and asks what is to be done, conceding that what will probably happen is the establishment of an industry watchdog composed of industry players. Not incredibly encouraging.

When the Massachusetts District Attorney announced the names of Boston money managers accused of market timing, my heart skipped a beat. I know a couple of those names, because their offices handle my retirement savings. I'm currently in the market for a new home for my Roth IRA. All of this got me thinking.

I'm going to pull Buckethead's chain a little by posing a question. I know B is an advocate of rolling Social Security over to privately-held accounts. I'm also cautiously in favor of such a plan, and have more faith in the viability of my own modest TDA than I have in the chance of my ever seeing a Social Security check. However, scandals like this one worry me. Why is it better to trade a plan like Social Security which is poorly run and plagued with problems, for a private investment plan that also promises to be poorly run and plagued with problems, and offers a potential downside (negative returns) to boot?

Remember, mutual funds have been a fairly sleepy sector of the investment world since the Depression. Their security and the probity of fund managers have been articles of faith with many investors, especially newer and smaller ones. Of course we're all supposed to remember that "past returns are no indicator of future performance," but are we headed toward a scenario where investors cannot trust anybody with their money? That seems like a piss-poor bargain.

The arrogance of money managers, CEO/CFOs, and large investors is boundless, especially when profits are rolling in like crazy. The past few years have seen scandal after scandal after scandal from big business, banking, investment houses, and fund management firms. Each revelation further erodes the faith of the public.

I'm afraid that the net effect of these years of bad news will be to make small investors disillusioned with the market, causing them to either stop saving altogether (especially when times are lean), or to sock their money away in savings accounts, low-risk bonds, T-Bills and other low-return accounts where it really isn't doing that much work.

Of course, if the market rallies like it did in the late '90s all the ugliness of Enron, Fidelity, and Global Crossing will be forgiven, but will that really be much better? For the current scandals to bite hard at the people that caused them, some companies will have to go down in flames. If that happens, we can expect further economic chaos as the market realigns itself. That's probably a bad thing, from an investor-return and economic stability point of view. But if no investment houses learn hard lessons, no big swingers go to jail, and everything remains lovely in happy-puppy land, we're only setting ourselves up for a worse, bigger, more devastating scandal the next time.

Am I being to pessimistic in my cafeteria ramblings? Or am I just being rational and cautious like a good investor should?

[wik] Economist Alex Tabarrok posts an answer at Marginal Revolution: I'm being too pessimistic, but also not pessimistic enough.

No wonder they call it the dismal science.

[alsø wik] Alex Tabarrok's analysis gets a sound and genial fisking from ProfessorBainbridge.

Today is economic arcana day! In't the inter-web grand??

Not satisfied with taxing you until you bleed, and not returning any noticeably improved service for said tax, the Bay State has engineered the following scam. Here's how it works:

When it's time to renew your registration, you decide to do so online. It's faster, easier, you don't have to deal with surly registry people, and they don't have to deal with the surly public. Everybody wins.

And after a few weeks, then 2 months, pass without a new sticker in the mail, you might begin to wonder what's up. After you get pulled over for having an expired sticker on your plate, you start making some calls.

The registry demands $15 for a new sticker. You explain you've already paid $40-odd online. You show the receipt. The registry will not accept the credit card statement or website receipt as proof of payment. More specifically, they won't accept it as current, because what you are REALLY doing is saying you lost your replacement and are trying to scam a new one on the cheap by saying you never got it. I am not making this up. The registry can do no wrong, only fend off the cheating masses always trying to get over. Then say it's the Postal Service's fault for losing your replacement.

So if you like driving a legal car, you have to pony up the extra $15, in essence to replace the replacement you already paid for online. Renewing online, so quickly and easily, actually costs more in the long run as you ultimately have to pay twice.

The woman this happened to, who I know well, knows other people to whom this has happened. When she asked about it at a registry office, the workerwoman said there are
M A N Y people in the same boat, just within the reach of that little branch alone.

What the Commonwealth is doing is charging people twice for the same service, then blaming the taxpayer or the USPS for it. And that, my friends, is poop.

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy is google's top two results for a search on the word "perfidy." That's much better than the stupid Beatles, who got beat out for #2 by the stupid Beach Boys*.

In other news, the search string "buckethead kneebiter" is a googlewhack.

[wik] *The Beach Boys are not stupid, Pet Sounds least of all.

This article at footballoutsiders.com argues that, statistically speaking, football teams should be going for the two-point conversion after almost every touchdown.

Interesting. The basic finding is that, over the last three years, the number of 2-point conversion attempts has risen, as has the success rate of said conversions. Also, winning teams tend to go for the conversion more often, and are more successful at it. Although the sample size for individual teams is relatively small, the aggregate numbers across the league bear this observation out.

Put another way, the numbers show that the more a team goes for two, the more often they succeed, and this probably correlates to how often they win.

I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion that every team should be going for a two-point conversion on every touchdown, but the numbers do suggest that there is a clear marginal benefit from doing it more often. Furthermore, that one point can be a huge advantage late in games as well as being a strategic monkey-wrench for the opposing team.

Cool!

The Spoons Experience uncover a nasty bit of disinformation in Fox News' coverage of the Great Gay Flapdoodle of 2003. To wit, Fox is claiming that all states will now have to honor gay marriages performed in Massachusetts as of today. From everything I've read, that's not only wrong but mendaciously false.

In a decision that will be sure to arouse jubilation among some and existential loathing among others, the Massachusetts Supreme court found today that the state has no grounds for banning gay marriage, but also did not order marriage certificates be given to the seven couples that brought the original suit.

The Massachusetts legislature has been given 180 days to come up with a solution that is in keeping with the decision.

Paranoid frothing from the Moral Majority and paranoid right-wingers begins.... nnnnnnow.

[wik] .... and keeps on rollin'. These people all sound like the nutty neighbor in the Dead Milkmen's immortal "Stuart": "Do you know what the queers are doing to our soil? Building huge underground landing strips for gay martians."

[alsø wik] Post edited for kicks and giggles, 11:54 AM

[alsø alsø wik] My favorite is when anti-gay-rights activists compare letting gay couples get some civil rights to stuff like pigf*cking or NAMBLA, as if they were equivalent. If I could, I'd buy futures today in outrageously bigoted rhetoric.

[starring] Naturally, Eugene Volokh has some insight into the case. He observes that-- get this-- the Massachusetts state ERA paved the way for today's decision on gay marriage. It's true! Go read! Quoth the Volokh, "[T]his decision -- and the Hawaii decision cited by the concurrence, which has since been reversed by the Hawaii voters -- shows us that we shouldn't lightly dismiss plausible, facially valid textual arguments (the text bars discrimination based on sex, and the marriage laws do treat people differently based on their sex) as "canards," "scare tactics," or "hysteric[s]." The anti-ERA forces, much as I probably disagree with most of them on many things, have proved prescient." [emphasis in original.]

It's been weeks since I took a swipe at the PATRIOT Act, the RAVE Act, etc., so here goes. Volokh's observation cuts both ways. Just as bigots (and I use that term knowing full well it's sometimes inaccurate and incendiary-- it's my petard, and I shall hoist myself upon it!) maybe DID have something to fear from the implications of the ERA, likewise good patriots have something to fear from creative readings of recent Federal legislation ostensibly aimed at terrorism.

Chalk one up for us loony "moral-issues liberals!"

This is an ongoing irritation, like that weird rash you can't seem to shake.

Radio, to put it simply, sucks. Tiresome jocks with the same banal schtick (crank calls; ass jokes; "I got so trashed last night"- dialogue; porn). The same IDs that all say "We rock!" or "We kick your ass!" (like that's a good thing?!) and "The only station that rocks your world!!", each time invariably followed by "Ramble On" or some other light rock that hasn't been played for at least 2 hours.

So-called "classic" rock stations are especially onerous- why can "classic" mean Hootie but not old Iron Maiden? Counting Crows and not MC5? Why do they only have about 50 records they can play, most of them seemingly including at least one Beatle? Why can they only play about 2 approved songs off each of those records?

At least....at the VERY least.... "modern" rock stations get new stuff to spin. Most of it is entirely average, but at least it's new. If you didn't know better though you would easily mistake the "classic" format for the "modern" one- a terrific irony given the amount of Zeppelin and Sabbath the latter stations play. Why can't Led Zeppelin go the f--k away forever?

Weekends are the worst, when all stations pull out the most tiresome, overplayed tracks they
can muster. In the middle of the night on Saturdays you might- might- hear something both new AND good, but you can't plan for it.

So why don't I just shut the stupid thing off? Why the temper tantrum over lame radio? Because I just don't GET it, and would really appreciate someone explaining it to me. This technology, coupled with the proper power, can reach so many people simultaneously: in their homes, at work, driving to one or the other, in the store, through those CIA-implanted fillings; and over a huge area. Why not make a GOOD station? Is there any business reason to allow a station to suck?