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FCC is watching Rochester Market for payola!

B

Butters

It turns out that the FCC is going to be launching an investigation in to 103.9 FM WDKX in Rochester for payola! They have received a number of complaints from local artist trying to get air play. From what I was told today from a FCC insider the music dir was charging local artist to play their tracks on the air! I think my source said somewhere along the lines of 50 or more complaints!! So I would tow the line if I was a radio jock in the Rochester market till this blows over! And as for the MD or whoever is charging to play music that is wrong and I hope you get a big fine and jail time!! :p :p :p
 
Could be they told the accusing artist they didn't want to put his music on their playlist, and if he wanted to get on the air he'd have to pay for commercial time, and it'd be labelled on the air AS a commercial. Not pretty, but if that's how it went down, it's within the rules.

One other thing that makes me more than a little skeptical about this report, is that I find myself listening to the station often enough to get a good sense of what they play--and I've yet to hear music that didn't come from a familiar or emerging national artist that you'd find on the AllAccess charts. If you think radio stations should give local artists some exposure, the way people like the late Uncle Roger used to do at WCMF (and which no one has been doing in commercial radio anywhere in upstate NY since Roger's tragic death) that's a legitimate issue. But that's another story completely...
 
@Bob 1370...not so fast....WBEE has had an opportunity for local artists to air their work for years now it's called "Upstate on Stage" every Sunday evening, a live show with Brain Chase, very active in the music scene of many genre's in the area. The Buzz spotlights local artist' weekly, sometimes several times a week on the morning show with Frank DeBlaize, so all is not lost for the local music world. Uncle Rog taught stations how to do it, if they were smart, they followed suit!
 
In terms of toeing the line as a Rochester jock... how much leeway do they get these days on their playlists? I am under the impression that it's "not much."

Maybe it's just my skepticism, and nothing personal here Butters, but when I read "50 complaints" my immediate response is "from how many different people?"
 
"WBEE has had an opportunity for local artists to air their work for years now it's called "Upstate on Stage" every Sunday evening"

Not familiar with it--although I admit I don't sample modern country radio very often (95% of whatever I know about today's country comes from occasionally catching CMT on cable). Given WBEE's success I'm probably in the minority these days. Good for them if they're giving local country artists a chance to reach an audience, they deserve a tip of the hat because it's something hardly any other commercial stations do. Seems like the noncomms carry the load when it comes to on-air live performance these days...
 
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