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"SON" OF BAGHDAD BOB -
Clear Channel's evil pantomime -

Something happened at 3pm this afternoon that completely ruined my day, leaving me in a bad mood thereafter. Until the almost-daily thunderstorm blew through between 2pm-3pm, I was happily surfing the net, then logged off to have a bite to eat during the storm.

At 3pm, I turned on the radio to hear Todd Schnitt, looking forward to some lively and informative entertainment, but this was not to be, because Schnitt who is in Tampa (not Broward) turned the microphone over to a sockpuppet of the Clear Channel Corporation which owns and controls most of the radio stations in this area. I became angrier and angrier until I couldn't take it anymore and turned off the radio about 3:10-3:12pm.

Clear Channel targets its radio stations for various market niches; one of them is oriented to youngish men and talks about subjects which appeal to them. Two of their stations are somewhat politicized: WIOD carries some hosts who are Republican-oriented and WINZ carries some hosts which are Democrat-oriented.

Yesterday a controversy broke out because the mostly Democratic Broward County FL elected officials didn't want to renew their hurricane weather coverage arrangement with WIOD. It would have been a simple matter for Clear Channel to mollify them and respect their preference by switching the coverage to the other frequency, but instead of simply switching the frequency, they made the elected county representatives the targets of ridicule and scorn.

And then Clear Channel, this 500-pound gorilla corporation, conducted an evil pantomime under the pretense that the two radio stations, both of which they own and control, were locked in a bitter dispute which put the public's hurricane emergency information at risk. They orchestrated this airquotes-controversy while blaming the county's elected officials for "politicizing" hurricane emergency information.

I didn't care yesterday which frequency Clear Channel wanted to broadcast the weather reports on. By this afternoon, however, I became very angry about the matter, partly because, I felt, that the local news media was pandering to the Clear Channel Corp in the worst
possible way.

Local news coverage of this issue has been of such spectacularly poor quality that you would have thought Florida is a Third World Dictatorship.

:: The Clear Channel Corporation owes us a public apology for conducting this evil pantomime to deliberately disinform, panic, alarm and distress the public unnecessarily.

:: The FCC should publicly reprimand CC for this disgusting stunt which was somewhat similar to the Orson Welles Martian invasion. CC has grossly abused their power.

:: Both the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspapers owe the public an apology for knowingly spreading disinformation that could have come straight out of Baghdad Bob.

All the time this was going on at 3pm today, I believe, Gaza was completely imploding, Sunni mosques were being bombed in Iraq, and a key politician was assassinated in Lebanon. Thanks to Clear Channel for wasting our time with their nonsense. I was not amused. And I'm still frosted about it.

[ /rant ] Don't blog angry, right? If you read Drudge, you have been following the story via Drudge. But I'm not going to link to that drek.

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