If you get in the back seat of a cab, you may already be faced
with Clear Channel's televised commercials, or wind up riding
underneath one of their taxi-top posters, all approved by the city's
Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Or, if you enter a subway station, you'll pass their
billboards—soon to be changeable digital ads—on the way down the
steps, awarded by the MTA.
If you catch a flight out of Newark Airport, it's their ads that
work on your subconscious while you wait, courtesy of the Port
Authority.
If you're taking a walk in Times Square, you'll be surrounded by
their towering, city-authorized, street signage, even while you're
buying a ticket to any of the five Broadway shows they produced.
If you've paid a fortune to see a concert at either of the two
publicly owned amphitheaters in the area—Jones Beach or the PNC Arts
Center in Holmdel, New Jersey—it was Clear Channel that sold you the
ticket.
And if you turn on a radio in New York, it's hard to miss their
five stations (WHTZ, WKTU, WAXQ, WWPR, WLTW), which combine to make
them number one in this market .
What's good for business in cowboy country, however, could hurt
them on old Broadway. Paul Krugman, the best reason to read the
Times, revealed last week that Clear Channel is the sponsor,
albeit indirectly, of the carefully synchronized pro-war rallies
taking place all over Bush country. Their stations have sponsored at
least 13 of these "Rally for America" events, including one in
Atlanta that drew 25,000 people, with future "outpourings of
support" scheduled for Tampa, Florida; Lubbock, Texas; and Dothan,
Alabama. One of their radio superstars, Glenn Beck, joined by
advertisers, has hosted another five. The company has tried to draw
a flimsy line of distinction between itself and the rallies that its
wholly-owned stations host, but anyone can see that's just one more
lie out of Texas about this war.
Times business reporters also reported that Clear Channel
stations "stopped playing the Dixie Chicks (news
- web
sites) after the group's lead singer, Natalie Maines, told fans
during a London concert, 'We're ashamed the president is from
Texas.'" And when activist-singer Ani DiFranco recently appeared at
a Clear Channel-sponsored concert in Newark, New Jersey, efforts
were made to kill any anti-war protests. Amy Goodman, the
prizewinning WBAI reporter who introduced DiFranco, told the
Voice that "the security guards took anti-war leaflets out of
my bag," confiscating them from others as well, and that the
operators "were constantly threatening to cut off the mic."
The company claims that facility staff, not Clear Channel's,
muzzled the DiFranco show (the facility manager agrees), and that
the stations that silenced the Chicks did so on their own. Clear
Channel offered the same station-to-station explanation for its
temporary ban, after 9-11, of 158 offensive songs, including "Walk
Like an Egyptian" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Its top talk
stars are Rush Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger (news
- web
sites).
Leapfrogging from 43 stations to 1,220 since the passage of the
deregulating Telecommunications Act of 1996, Clear Channel hired the
congressional aide who drafted the act, and is represented by the
former law firm of the head of the Justice Department (news
- web
sites)'s antitrust division. Clear Channel's vice chair, Tom
Hicks, made George W. Bush a multimillionaire by buying the Texas
Rangers from him, and chaired a state university board that steered
most of its endowment to firms with Bush and GOP ties.
Clear Channel's strongest local interest now is its attempt to
win a contract with the Bloomberg administration for a concert
facility at Randalls Island that its counsel, Peter Strauss, says
will be for far less than the 19,500 seats permitted under the
city's bid process. The company successfully sued the city at the
end of 2001 to block the award of the nine-acre amphitheater site,
just off the Triborough Bridge, forcing a re-bid. Only the original
winner—Quincunx LLC—and Clear Channel are seeking to build what
would become the largest outdoor concert venue in the city.
The company retained Sheinkopf to represent it on the deal last
fall, and he has lined up meetings with Manhattan Borough President
Virginia Fields, Assemblyman Keith Wright, City Council Finance
Committee chair David Weprin,, and Comptroller William Thompson.
Fields and Thompson, whose 2001 campaign was managed by Sheinkopf,
are members of the city's Franchise and Concession Review Board,
which will vote on the contract after the Parks Department picks a
winner.
Usually a campaign consultant and usually associated with liberal
Democrats like Mark Green, Sheinkopf has registered for only one
other lobbying client. John Siegel, the Proskauer Rose partner who
chaired Green's campaign, also represents Clear Channel,
spearheading the lawsuit that re-opened the bid. The company
recently contributed $5,000 to Council Speaker Gifford Miller and
Queens councilwoman Melinda Katz, who chairs the land use committee.
Accompanying Sheinkopf on at least one of his half-dozen lobbying
meetings was Chris D'Amato, son of the former senator and his
partner in Park Strategies LLC, a lobbying and public relations
firm. Clear Channel attorney Strauss, who attended the same meeting
with Comptroller Thompson, says that D'Amato said nothing during the
meeting and attended it as an attorney, not a lobbyist. The D'Amato
firm, which has represented Clear Channel and its predecessor, SFX,
since the fall of 1999, has never registered as a lobbyist for
either company.
Strauss says that D'Amato was retained "as a consultant weeks
before" SFX submitted a bid to renew its Jones Beach amphitheater
contract to State Parks Commissioner Bernadette Castro. It was able
to win a 20-year extension, twice the length of the former deal. A
Newsday investigation in 2001 revealed that SFX won the
contract despite the fact that another major concert promoter, House
of Blues, offered the state $3.6 million more in revenue. Strauss
says that D'Amato "made no appearances" on behalf of the company
with officials, though he said he did not know if the wheeler-dealer
former senator from Island Park, near Jones Beach, ever made a phone
call or whispered in a friendly Pataki ear.
The company also retains legendary lobbyist Sid Davidoff, who's
pushed Bloomberg deputy mayor Mark Shaw and Buildings Commissioner
Patricia Lancaster on billboard regulations. Claudia Wagner
represents it on the potentially multibillion-dollar street
furniture franchise, which the Bloomberg administration is
considering putting out to bid. That would seek to secure a city
commission on all sidewalk advertising—on bus shelters, pay phones,
rebuilt newsstands, pay toilets, information kiosks, etc.
Its most recent city deal was a memo of understanding with the
city's taxi commission allowing it to put advertising screens in cab
backseats, a privilege granted to several competitors as well. While
Clear Channel has so far installed only two monitors in cabs, it has
rapidly become, with commission approval, the biggest taxi-top
advertiser, acquiring rights to the roofs of 2,668 cabs.
In December, the company also won a three-year extension of its
contract with the MTA for the billboard space on subway entrances.
It got the extension, according to MTA spokesman Tom Kelly, because
it proposed converting the outdoor space to digital panels, which
would permit additional advertisers on screens at high-traffic
stations, increasing the commission paid to the MTA. Authority
officials did not answer questions about whether D'Amato, whose
lobbying activities at the MTA are notorious, had anything to do
with the lucrative, no-bid contract.
Research assistance: Cathy Bussewitz, Alexa Hinton, Felicia
Mello, Solana Pyne,E.B. Solomont, and Steven I. Weiss
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