PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

My Reply to WYEP's Mike Sauter
by Chris Holm Monday, May. 02, 2005 at 8:36 PM
info@cardinalpoints.net

Sorry, been negotiating my expatriatism, Missed this entirely. It wasn't my intention to ignore Mike Sauter. I simply didn't even know it was posted.

You'll have to excuse me, after about 5 articles and no replies, I stopped checking, and am moving out of Pittsburgh ASAP, so the goings on here don't really interest me anymore, and didn't seem to interest anyone else before reading Manny's Post.

So in reply to Mike, I have several points.

One, if you read the articles, all this could have been avoided by Rosemary accepting an interview for several staff, volunteers and herself. Your side of the story could have been told and your point of view prior to posting this and addressed, as I told Rosemary that it would be. The articles all point to speculation when that's all that was given to go by from your station, and I worded it as such, although they were backed by fact.

Your statement "First of all, let's get something straight. There has NEVER been any money paid to WYEP to play any music. No money, nor gifts, nor goods, nor services--nothing. We select music based solely on artistic criteria and feedback from our audience as to what they want to hear."

Do you consider what your listeners want to hear as that being of the songs you introduce, or are you saying you get requests for artists before you've ever debuted them? In other words, you play something, and they decide what they like out of your selections? I don't mean "has there ever been a band that has got played only because of requests?", there are exceptions to any rule that don't necessarily mean that's policy, rather a fluke or oddity. Citing an example of one band you did this with once doesn't validate your statement. How does your audience know if it likes something if it's never heard it? If you really want give your audience a choice why is there not more variety of new releases that either are green lit or axed by your audience. If your audience started requested Britany Spears would you put her in rotation or would you not because it doesnt' fit the format? If so why do such obviously top 40 artists like Jason Mraz get chosen for airplay? Or is it as I was told by a staffer at your station that it was based on arbitron ratings, which don't tell you what your audience wants to hear, rather how many listeners you have. If you think more listeners is better, than by that reasoning you should be playing top 40, because I'm sure they get far greater numbers than you. Maybe add a shock jock or 2?

Two, "CDs are submitted for airplay consideration, we listen to them, and then we select the best music to add to our music library. This is the process for music whether from major labels, indie labels, or unsigned artists--and no one outside of WYEP's programming staff, our DJs, and our listeners have any say in it. "

In this I must first say that it's not only majors that have been on Michele Clark's list. Not just a few indy labels have appeared on Michele's page, actually it's more like the majority. Currently only Capitol and EMI are listed on her site, out of 28.

Then it's simply a coincidence that your station's main rotation has been nearly identical to WDST's who is under investigation?

It's simply a coincidence that probably half of your "CD of the week" were also Michele Clark.

If your music is so great, why do you have to do marketing for them, and tell the audience how good they are as opposed to letting them decide?

It's simply a coincidence that Pete Buck of REM stated that the AAA stations are playing artists that can't sing and eveyone knows they can't sing, but you claim you pick them based on "artistic criteria". So for the record, you have chosen the most artistic music you could? Are you really saying that. If you don't reply to anything else, please reply to that. Comming from someone who can only describe a band by how much they sound like another band, I'm probably going to find any answer of yours laughable. Perhaps you could tell me how towing the line commercially is artistic?

"But to suggest that we are participating in unethical and possibly illegal practices is so far off the mark, it's hard to know where to begin in responding."

Actually Justin Hopper of the City Paper stated you were "railroaded into a deal" to control your content from external sources.

If it's so far off the mark, why, now that it has come out that these artists may have been played over more legitimate artists based on kick backs, are you continuing to play not only those aritists' work that was in question, but their releases post controversy? You consider that ethical?

"Holm decries WYEP for playing mainstream artists like Sheryl Crow and U2. But our listeners tell us they are fans of these artists. Last fall, for example, "The First Cut Is the Deepest" by Sheryl Crow was among our most requested songs."

Good logical twist. I agree the listeners that you have now would request that. That's the problem. Your station has been alienating older members, and swooning a more pop audience. I don't listen to your station, nor would I request anything to be played on it anymore. The people who now gravitate to your station are those who want to hear the same music that's piped over the MUZAK at home Depot.

"Some artists begin with WYEP as one of the few radio stations playing them, and then later the "Top 40"-type radio stations start playing them. Look at "Heaven" from Los Lonely Boys. We first played that song in June of 2003, and lately, pop music stations have latched onto it as well. This has happened with Coldplay and Norah Jones and David Gray and many other artists."

Again, anyone knowing music would listen to those songs and say "that sounds very top 40" before it ended up on top 40. I'm sure you can move much faster than big bureacratic entities like Clear Channel. Also, larger entities waiting to see if it catches on on your station is a legitimate argument for quality? Just out of curiousity, was the David Grey playing before or after it debuted on Dawson's Creek?

"Well, sorry, we don't allow the radio industry to dictate what music we SHOULDN'T play, just as we don't allow the radio or music industry to tell us what we SHOULD play."

Funny, when Spin Art was still saying that Michele Clark is ruining radio, that's Richard Thompson's label by the way, and Michele Clark being the one who you've had nearly two thirds of your rotation devoted to, you wouldn't play Hank Dogs' Half Smile when it came out, for example. About a year later, I started hearing it get airplay. Why didn't you play it back when it came out if it was good enough for airplay later?

"We don't merely ignore an artist simply because they get popular or another radio station decides to play them as well. If an album has quality music before others jump on the bandwagon, it's still quality music afterwards. Even Mr. Holm agrees above that The Beatles are a great band, and they've had one of the largest bandwagons in music history"

The Beatles made it on the radio when DJs still picked songs that got airplay.

"We work hard, both on our airwaves and within the music industry, to be a model of integrity in our music selection process and a champion of artists who would otherwise be ignored."

"We don't merely ignore an artist simply because they get popular or another radio station decides to play them as well."

Which one is it? Would they otherwise get ignored, or are they getting played on the mainstream stations as well?


Bottom line, the post gazzette itself has commented on your need to homogenize. If the music really matters, where was the big campaign to save the music like you're doing for the building? Where was the homogenization campaign?


P.S.

Was it your listeners that requested a new building?

__________________________________________________________

And to the readers of this article who don't read my webpage and are looking for some answers that make sense here's an interesting article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1391951,00.html






Chris Holm

www.cardinalpoints.net

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P.S.
by Chris Holm Monday, May. 02, 2005 at 9:11 PM

Perhaps you can also shed some light on why WYEP was on Michele Clark's list of radio stations, then taken off, then put back on again?

Or why after I met the owner of Spin Art who told me that he was being extorted by Michele Clark, and posted the article, that Kyle Smith, Rosemary Welsch, Dinah Denmark and Kate Borger all knew I was writing it, and knew they weren't allowed to be interviewed by me, did the station continue to play Michele Clark's offerings even after Salon's story's on the matter as well?

Do you consider that ethical?

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Original Article/ Mike's Comment
by Chris Holm Monday, May. 02, 2005 at 10:08 PM

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/16742_comment.php#16798

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possible end of discussion
by Chris Holm Friday, May. 20, 2005 at 5:51 AM
info@cardinalpoints.net

Well, I emailed Sauter, informing him of my reply,yet no reply to post.

As I stated earlier, I didn't know this was being answered, but he does now.

Here's another article from PBS's Frontline.

"When did you start paying attention, if ever, [to] the business side of the music business? When did it enter your consciousness that this was a serious business, and that there were things happening in the business that were really affecting the quality of the music?

Probably when I became music director over at Woodstock station WDST. In my role as music director, I was the guy who had to deal with record labels on a weekly basis as they were attempting to get us to play the records that they were working particularly.

When you see first-hand how a label prioritizes the artists that they have in order to get them on the radio and to get airplay, you start to get a sense of how difficult it is really for an artist to actually make money as an artist, especially in the major label system, where you could get to realize that there are budgets that are put together by labels for getting airplay and how they go about spending those promotional dollars and marketing dollars. This stuff is all coming out of the artist's pocket at some point. This money doesn't just come from nowhere.

When a record label launches a record, and they put together a marketing budget of a hundred thousand dollars, which is nothing, but just to get a single played on alternative radio, which was happening 10 years ago, then you realize that there's some serious money at play here. And for artists, in particular, this is not really a very fair system, you know. Because it's very rare that they're going to be able to make that money back and pay it back. And you end up having artists who owe their labels for years because of the money that they've spent trying to market and promote something.

So that was maybe the first inkling of how sort of twisted the priorities were in that business, because you get to see first-hand when a promotion first and then a record label is offering you an incentive to play a record. And that incentive is usually some kind of promotional support of the station, which is "Well, if you play this record, then we'll cover your t-shirts for your next outdoor event, and we'll put the name of the artist on the back of them, and the station name on the front" kind of thing. You think well, wait a minute, so the artist is actually going to pay indirectly t-shirts for our radio station? Okay."

So that's the new payola?

Well, according to the law, it's not payola, of course. The law says cash has to exchange hands. But, what actually happened after the big payola scandals of 20 years ago was that they found a way around it, which was to make money available through different avenues.

If you're a small market radio station, a thousand dollars expenditure on t-shirts is a big expenditure. So, if somebody is coming to you and saying, "Well, we will buy those t-shirts for you, if you look favorably at our record," then what are you going to do? It's legal. So, people tend to do it. That's just a small scale.

The bigger scale versions of it, and in fact how it developed over the years, was when independent promoters really came along, people who were hired by the record labels to supplement their own promotion staff, and got paid by the labels every time they got a radio station to add a certain record to their playlist. They began to try to really get into exclusive relationships with radio stations, what they called "owning" that station, where an independent promotion can basically lock in a station and claim that station, so nobody else can get in there. If you need access to that station, then you need to come in through that independent promoter, and how they have done that is by paying large sums of money upfront to the station.

So you've got to remember the money is not coming from the record label, so it's not illegal. It's coming from the independent promoter who is then going to make that money back through the next 12 months every time he gets XYZ label's record on the air at that station, and then that label pays him for that. So that's kind of how it all got out of whack in the last 10 years."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/music/interviews/harcourt.html

Wether WYEP is paying retail for their t-shirts, CD promotions given as member incentives, or for the free concerts for members may not be answered by the station, although Sauer have emphatically denied kickbacks have ever happened.

But as Manny and I have stated previously, the means don't matter when the ends are the same.

It's good to see someone with the courage to speak up in this town, when so few will.

I've spoken to many in the music journalism scene here in Pittsburgh and know their dissatisfaction with WYEP, yet they refuse to voice it.

Further, I believe there are those within the station that would offer contradictory stories.

If this is true please contact me.

I did know about the new studio before the Post Gazzette did afterall.

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