Big Ed's show probably enjoys the controversy...look at owner's technique. [View All]

[madfloridian]

Randy Michaels owns Big Eddie's show now. He was the one who started Clear Channel, known for it's outrageous tactics. So I don't listen to Big Eddie now, because I think they enjoy making us angry.

Remember when he ignored the fact that Dean was traveling all over the South, drawing crowds, raising money? He kept attacking him. We would send him info, he would ignore it. His wife, Wendy, said he never apologized, his producer, James said he was just trying to keep Howard Dean on the ball. James was a former Deaniac, so that was kind of sad.

Then he said Howard Dean should get his head out of his ass, and I have not listened since.

Want to know about Randy Michael's view of fun and controversy. Here is one article from 2001 at Salon. There are lots more. He enjoys this stuff. They are probably thinking, wow, what a huge audience we will have today. Laughing at all of you that still listen.

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/04/30/clear_channel/

In the late 1990s, while no one was looking, a corporate behemoth became the largest owner and biggest force in America's most venerable mass medium: commercial radio.

Radio stations that once were proudly local are now being programmed from hundreds of miles away. Increasingly, the very DJs are in a different city as well. Want your record played on one of those stations? Be prepared to pay -- dearly -- for the privilege. Want your band's concert to be sponsored by a radio station? Be careful: If you pick a competitor, the behemoth might pull your songs off its playlists overnight -- from two, 10, 100 stations.

Looking for classy radio programming? Don't look here. The company is known for allowing animals to be killed live on the air, severing long-standing ties with community and charity events, laying off thousands of workers, homogenizing playlists and a corporate culture in which dirty tricks are a way of life.

Welcome to the world of Clear Channel -- radio's big bully.

And a comment about Michael's personality:

Michaels moved into management in the 1990s. Today, as Clear Channel's guardian of the airwaves, the bombastic exec is among the most powerful, not to mention colorful, men running the music business.

"Everything's a food fight with him," says one radio executive, who says Michaels is still a morning man at heart. "He's paranoid, disingenuous, pathological. That's what makes him so lovable."

And firing people by taping conversations privately...a very long article, 5 pages long, so I am just putting some snips.

..."Indeed, that same night at Spago, Clear Channel's radio chief, Randy Michaels, just happened to be holding court along with half a dozen minions of his own. A true radio original, Michaels had achieved legendary status inside the business as a shock jock (before there was a Howard Stern), and an effective but often tasteless programmer."
....

.."Within days, AMFM Network president David Kantor heard from Kitchin. Kantor was told that once the merger was through, the two producers who'd spoken so bluntly would be let go. Michaels, Kitchin said, was not happy. Kantor was even given proof of the producers' bad-mouthing; the conversation at Spago had been surreptitiously recorded by a cellphone on the table. Kantor had been played parts of it.

"These guys didn't even work for Clear Channel yet and they were set up," says a former AMFM employee. "They used that conversation to fire them. Here's the head of Clear Channel and he's taping conversations? It's insane. It was a classic Randy Michaels dirty trick. He was just fucking with their heads; that's what they do."

Read the article, and get a feel for how some work. It is very long, and I can't snip any more within guidelines.