Blog
Mar 18, 2021
Casey Rae is the CEO of the Future of Music Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy nonprofit. (He’s also the former music editor of this paper.) One of the coalition’s most successful projects is the 2006 report “False Premises, False Promises,” which traces the effects of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on the radio industry.
“Entire genres became invisible,” says Rae. “DJs lost all their autonomy. Many lost their jobs. Almost overnight, commercial FM radio went from a diverse universe of mom-and-pop stations to something more like a national jukebox, where a handful of programming directors working for companies like Clear Channel make decisions about what gets played across the country.”