"They're just obnoxious and badger you to death," says Bruni. "They try to sell you absolutely the wrong [radio] format for your demographic and they won't let it die. It's fine up to a point; that's sales. But they cross the line to where it just becomes harassment. It's gotten to the point with Clear Channel where I try my best not to deal with them."

Because of consolidation though, "that's almost impossible," she says. "They literally own so many markets it's ridiculous."

Bruni, a 33-year veteran of the business, resents the take-it-or-leave-it nastiness unique to Clear Channel sales teams. "I've had Clear Channel people tell me I don't know what I'm doing. I've had Clear Channel people call clients direct, to try to undermine the agency, and tell them we're not doing the best job. I just think they are cutthroat. Their philosophy is pure unadulterated greed. And I think everybody has just had it with them."

Earnest James managed Clear Channel stations in New Orleans for six years before leaving voluntarily this spring to run four Infinity Broadcasting stations in San Francisco. "When I started at Clear Channel it was great, a great place to work," he says. "What happened was the culture changed when the company grew. Management became Randy-ized, which is much more contentious. The culture changed to the point of making me uncomfortable going to work every day."

In what employees suggest was a typically heavy-handed Clear Channel move, the company's Indianapolis stations recently pulled out of a fundraising dinner for the Indiana Children's Wish Fund, after management learned that a radio competitor, the CEO of Emmis Communications, would be honored at the dinner. According to the Indianapolis Star, the local Clear Channel GM even asked for his $5,000 charity donation back; Emmis made up the difference to the Children's Wish Fund.

	Radio's big bully A complete guide to Salon's reporting on Clear Channel Print story E-mail story

- - - - - - - - - - - -

For jocks and programmers, recent Clear Channel changes have meant doing more with much less -- smaller budgets and fewer employees. One key way Clear Channel has saved money is to eliminate hundreds of on-air personality positions by simply having one company jock send out his or her shows to dozens of sister stations. The practice is known as "voice tracking," and thanks to clever editing, the shows still often sound local in various markets.

But for the company jocks doing the voice tracking and saving Clear Channel millions in announcer fees, "you get maybe $3,000 a year," says a former company jock. "That's forced labor because you don't really have a choice of doing it, and they're not paying a fair rate."

Another point of contention for some Clear Channel programmers has been the company's national contests, in which listeners can win big prizes, such as $10,000, if they're the pre-selected caller dialing into a 1-888 number. The catch is that listeners are simultaneously competing with Clear Channel listeners in dozens of other markets, making the odds of winning tiny.

Worse, jocks at each of the stations have to make it seem like the winners are local listeners. They do that by downloading interviews with the winners recorded by Clear Channel corporate. Then engineers at the various stations dub in the voice of local jocks "interviewing" the winners to make it seem as if that station's personality is giving away the big prize.

"It was the most distasteful thing I ever did in broadcasting," says one jock who played along and "interviewed" contest winners. "You're deceiving the audience."

Florida's attorney general's office agreed. Last year it fined Clear Channel $80,000 for deceptive trade practices and stipulated that if Clear Channel stations in Florida aired interviews with contest winners they had to make it clear where in the country the winner was from. As a way around that, some Florida Clear Channel stations have simply stopped airing the interviews.

Just this month, broadcasters in Alabama contacted that state's attorney general and asked that Clear Channel's national contests be investigated for deceptive practices.

But in the end, Clear Channel's harshest critiques seem to come from its own employees. "They spent too much money acquiring all these properties and now they can't afford to pay people to run them," says one programmer still with the company. "Is Clear Channel good for the industry, or good for broadcasting? Capital N. Capital O."

Now playing: Read all the recent movie reviews by Salon's critics