"Clear Channel comes into markets and says to record companies, 'Don't give that station a concert or band promotion or there will be no business with us across our platform of stations,'" reports Hal Fish, program director at WBZX and WEGE in Columbus, Ohio.

Representatives from two platinum-selling rock bands confirm that their acts were pulled from Clear Channel stations over concert-promotion disputes, and not just pulled locally. The bands were yanked off playlists from a coalition of aligned Clear Channel stations stretching over several states. "It did happen; it was real," reports one label executive.

The groups' representatives spoke on condition the artists' names not be used, for fear of further irritating Clear Channel.

"Clearly the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] and the Department of Justice do not understand the connection and the power [Clear Channel] has" from owning so many radio stations and concert outlets, complains one concert promoter.

That controversy, though, pales in comparison to the one that's brewing over Clear Channel's second major power grab.

Pressured by Wall Street to find new streams of nontraditional revenue, Clear Channel, as Salon reported several weeks ago, is busy forging an exclusive alliance with a radio promotion company called Tri State Promotion & Marketing. The unprecedented deal could reap Clear Channel tens of millions of dollars.

	Radio's big bully A complete guide to Salon's stories on Clear Channel and the new payola Print story E-mail story

Radio promotion firms -- or "indies" -- serve as well-paid middlemen or lobbyists, paid by record companies to get their songs played on radio stations. (The middlemen are necessary as "cut-outs": If labels paid directly for the airplay and stations didn't notify listeners, both would be in violation of payola laws.) The indies pay radio stations amounts in the six figures in return for an exclusive relationship -- and invoice record companies thousands of dollars every time a station adds a new song to its playlist.

This multimillion-dollar promotions game has of late become less about salesmanship and more about market control. Now, say industry sources, Clear Channel, through Tri State, wants a piece of that lucrative pie.

By gaining exclusive access to Clear Channel's roster of playlists, Tri State, run by Michaels' old Cincinnati friend Bill Scull, could create steep new tolls for record companies wanting to get songs on the air on the nation's biggest broadcaster. And a part of those tolls will presumably find their way back to Clear Channel's corporate bottom line.

"They're going to gouge us," fears a record label rep.

The exclusive alliance would come at the expense of other indies who would likely lose their Clear Channel stations as clients. "For guys who are basically in the underbelly of consolidation, who probably got more than they should have, and are right on the cusp of anti-competition, I wouldn't be quite so aggressive. They're going to get their tit caught in the wringer."

"They're starting to rain all over everybody's parade and take food off people's tables, and that's when you get in trouble," says one radio veteran who has dealt with both Michaels and Clear Channel for years.

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Michaels' career has been remarkable. Born as Benjamin Homel, he's a broadcasting enthusiast who has been known to rebuild old radios in his spare time. Fellow programmers credit him for helping create modern country radio back in the 1970s with WDAF in Kansas City, Mo., where he spun country songs at a Top 40 pace. And he's given credit for bringing legendary AM stations back to life, like WLW in Cincinnati, by reinvesting in news departments.

Behind the mike he made a name for himself back in the '70s and '80s farting on the air, cracking jokes about gays and tantalizing listeners with descriptions of "incredibly horny, wet and ready" naked in-studio guests. Along with getting hit with a sexual harassment suit, Michael pulled in big ratings wherever he went.

Ten years ago, he was an officer of a Cincinnati company called Jacor, which was founded in 1981 when Terry Jacobs bought up three religious radio stations. By 1990 it was a little-known radio outfit teetering on bankruptcy whose shares were trading for 75 cents.

But in 1993, Michaels made a key move. He persuaded self-described "vulture capitalist" Sam Zell to invest $70 million in the ailing Jacor. The swashbuckling investor, once described by Fortune as an "elfin billionaire who tools around Chicago on a motorcycle the size of an armored car," quickly bonded with the freewheeling Michaels. Soon Jacobs announced he was "retiring"; Michaels was given the Jacor reins and the OK to start buying stations.

"We're big. We're bad. We're back. We're rich," he bragged to the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1994.

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