Comments on: Spitzer payola probe effect

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:57:26 +0000

Ummmm, wouldn’t playing a song over and over again be more suspicious than playing many songs?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 07:51:45 +0000

Dude you are so RIGHT in what you said every word !!! I use to be in radio and you hit the nail on the head!!!! Playlists the new payola Yep that’s how they do it now!! Time for Congress to pass new Laws and cover the whole gambet of ways to skrit around the law and give the FCC the power to lift license’s when they catch them dishing out the payola in any form!!!! Then these clowns will have to work for a living for a change!!!!!

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:56:53 +0000

The problem is that owners such as ClearChannel have taken away the individual DJ’s ability to do his own program. Instead, all programming is issued from the top down with little choice at the DJ level what will be played.

ClearChannel did this so they could control the programming and issue future playlists for sale. That’s the new way payolla has been working. They pay for the proposed playlist ahead of time and make suggestions as to what should go in it’s place. Since the cartels are paying for a item as opposed to infulancing the play directly, it looks legit on the surface. Anyone else attempting to buy these play lists will find they are quite expensive and that will keep the average nosey Joe out.

ClearChannel isn’t going to give up on getting back door money. They are in effect saying if you want something different, then come up with a way to pay us. Otherwise things will just stay as they are. Too much money is involved in this and until it is shown that it is going to show up in the form of cash this will stagnate for a while. When the money doesn’t show up, when listenership drops to nothing, and when ad agencies don’t want to pay them more, they will get the message they aren’t a desirable commody because they aren’t meeting the demands.

In the meantime, ClearChannel and the like can go farther down the drain as far as I am concerned. They don’t represent the local culture, no matter how they try to personalize it. Try calling a local station sometime with a news flash, or even better with a bonafide local emergency. I doubt you will get it on the air with anything like meaningful time span.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:47:39 +0000

Perhaps these are the programers who are afraid of loosing their second income from the recording industry.

Rick

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:39:35 +0000

If you do and someone is looking hard enough, they’ll catch you. If you don’t, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

Just do what everyone else does – keep your receipts – and play whatever you damn well want. Where is the problem?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:03:21 +0000

It’s too bad, because this would be a great opportunity for *new* music to start getting some play. There is a huge well of great indie/post rock/alt country of the past couple of years that has been completely ignored by radio stations. It’s a great way to completely bypass the large music labels and the scandal now associated with them and expose people to stuff they probably haven’t heard.

Ironically, our local “modern rock” station has taken a different tack over the past couple of years: go back to playing alt-rock from the 90s, like Nirvana, older NIN, Soundgarden, etc. Is it because mainstream modern rock itself has become stagnant and there is nothing good out there, or is it because commercial radio stations can’t afford to take risks on indie, for fear of alienating their core listeners?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 18:23:39 +0000

A radio programmer with nothing to hide shouldn’t modify his programming based on these investigations. This is odd to say the least…