PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

First in potencial line of payola indictments in the bag
by Chris Holm Saturday, Jul. 30, 2005 at 10:16 AM
chris@cardinalpoints.net (email address validated)

The payola cycle is begining to crumble and be exposed.

Sure enough as I was writing my final piece on WYEP and Mike Sauter, the payola court case of formerly mentioned Judge Spitzer,

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/16659.php

closed this week, with Sony owing 10 million dollars in fines.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/0726sonysettlement.html

Spitzer cleverly made this into a civil trial due to the difficult nature of pinning this all down criminally.

Some interesting points,

"The $10 million will be distributed to not-for-profit entities and earmarked for music education programs, Spitzer said."

and to show how seedy and covered up it got...

"He said some payments were concealed by creating fictitious contest winners to award the money to, and that top executives were aware of the transactions, mentioning them in emails. One rather funny example was provided, with an Audioslave promoter writing, "WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET AUDIOSLAVE ON WKSS THIS WEEK?!!? Whatever you can dream up, I can make it happen."

http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2005/07/2506.cfm

I'm sure with a non-profit that recieves donations, grants and annonymous donations, this is far easier.

But the best news,

"Jonathan Adelstein, a Democratic member of the Federal Communications Commission, said Spitzer "appears to have found a whole arsenal of smoking guns."

"We need to investigate each particular instance that Spitzer has uncovered to see if it is a violation of federal law. This is a potentially massive scandal," he said.

The FCC has power over the nation's radio stations, which are licensed to use public airwaves."

which appears to mean this is only the begining, one can only hope.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/0726sonysettlement.html

Stations that participated in payola and payola like stations may be keeping their familiar, tight, payola influenced formats, even after the payola has stopped in order to hold on to their audiences, but maybe some awareness can be generated to the reasons why so many have been pulling their hair out for the last 5-15 years, for me 20, I'd say, as to why radio is sucking.

There are very specific reasons, and they don't include DJs being able to play whatever they want, not musically knowledgeable ones anyway.

I think with WYEP, it's a combination of corporate interests and sell out hacks towing the line for the gravy job, free cds, free food, and rock stars kissing their asses as a thank you for the airplay.

Who wouldn't want that?

A: Someone who actually loves music and not the just the hype.

A:Someone devoted to providing an diversity and an alternative to mainstream, group think lifestyles and culture

Funny when you have a non-profit status that's the same as a church or charity, you'd think that would be a given.

www.cardinalpoints.net