Clear Channel refuses new Springsteen due to age?

Fox 411 columnist and Jann Wenner enemy Roger Friedman is alleging that the radio monopolists at Clear Channel have flat-out told the programmers at their rock stations that they can't play tracks from Bruce Springsteen's Magic, despite the album being No. 1 on the charts last week. Songs from the Boss' vault, like "Born To Run" and "Born In The USA," are OK, and that's causing Friedman to cry ageism:

Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour.

Alas, there’s a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."

Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.

Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them."

"Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.

But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout "mellow" tracks — "Magic" and "Devil’s Arcade" — aren’t even on "lite" stations.

The singles-kinda hits, "Radio Nowhere" and "Living in the Future" — which would have been hits no questions asked in the '70s, '80s and maybe even the '90s, also are absent from Top 40.

What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of "The Girls in their Summer Clothes," a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, "Girls" will triumph.

I’m not so sure.

Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It's certainly what's helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.

It's not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana's new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.

Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations -- i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.

While Friedman does raise a good point about the peculiarity of radio shunning the few artists who can actually sell records these days--and there probably is some sort of insidious "ew, they're old" attitude toward even the biggest-selling older artists--there's probably a much more simple explanation for Bruce's absence from these stations' playlists: the only major rock format that even plays artists like Springsteen--i.e., a guy who isn't constantly having tantrums about life/girls/what-have-you sucking over super-compressed tracks--is "classic rock," a format that seemingly adds two or three songs to its playlists a year. Maybe in 2012, "Radio Nowhere" will finally make it to these stations (if they still exist!), but I think the indifference Friedman is speaking to is more the result of scaredy-cat programmers who are afraid to upset the "getting the Led out" apple cart than ageism. Although if Led Zeppelin's new songs are also summarily ignored by these stations, perhaps his argument will have at least a little weight.