CURRENTS: RADIO
Static from Clear Channel

BY CHRIS NOLTER

Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio company (1,200 stations, more than $3.5 billion a year in advertising revenues) has adopted an unorthodox p.r. strategy in a dispute with the small but influential trade publication Inside Radio. Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, operates a parody Web site that makes scathing personal allegations about Inside Radio's owner and publisher, Jerry Del Colliano.

At first glance, the site, insideinsideradio.com, could be mistaken for Inside Radio's own home page, insideradio.com -- except, that is, for a doctored photograph of a man with his head buried in his own posterior, captioned "Jerry checks with an inside source."

Del Colliano filed suit in New York federal court in July seeking $115 million in damages. "They've made a mockery of me," he says. His "couple-of-million-dollar company," he contends, has never "spent a dime" on legal defense in twenty-seven years.

The earliest version of Inside Inside Radio was distributed to the radio industry via fax in 1998, and the parody soon moved online. Articles on the site cast Del Colliano as a "shakedown artist," and a "malicious terrorist." Another story urges readers to switch to other publications, including Clear Channel's own M Street Radio. A highlighted blurb offers $100 for "dirt on Del Corleone."
More seriously, the site alleges that Del Colliano has used the threat of unfavorable press coverage to "extort" advertising or $425-per-year subscriptions from radio executives.

And in Clear Channel's case, the site claims that Del Colliano used such threats to try to pressure Clear Channel into buying his company for a vastly inflated, eight-figure sum. (Both sides agree there were buyout talks at some point, but disagree about who ultimately rejected whom.)

A spokesperson for Clear Channel declined to comment on the dispute, saying the company does not discuss pending litigation. Court filings show that the mock Web site is largely the work of Randy Michaels, a former shock jock who is c.e.o. of Clear Channel's radio group. Michaels's on- and off-air antics (pretending to liquefy a frog in a blender on air; dropping his pants at a convention) are the stuff of legend -- and the occasional lawsuit -- in the radio industry. He once told a Wall Street Journal reporter, "I've never grown up. It gets me in trouble, but it's the key to my success."

Michaels has taken his complaints beyond the Web site. Back in November 2000, Clear Channel filed a $10 million suit in federal court in New York against Del Colliano. Before the trial could begin, however, Clear Channel terminated the case and re-filed in a state court in Texas for, as the Web site explains, "strategic reasons." Del Colliano's attorneys then got it moved into federal court and are petitioning to bring it back to New York. Clear Channel's new suit makes the same basic arguments as before, but omits several earlier charges, including libel.

Del Colliano contends that the real reason for Clear Channel's lawsuit is to litigate him out of business, and thus suppress critical coverage of the company.
"What radio people want from their trades is for everything to be sweet and nice," says Del Colliano. "That's not what Inside Radio is."