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Spitzer and radio.

S

slickkicker

Guest
I'm a centrist who leans left. Many in New York felt that Spitzer was the guy to clean up the state government. And now after fourteen months we find that the Governor has habitually co-habitated with corruption. I never would've voted for the guy.

I said this here some time ago that when Attorney General Spitzer targeted small fry Buffalo and Rochester broadcasters he was ignoring the obvious. Payola doesn't originate in upstate. Pay for play happens pretty close to his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York.

My post was dismissed or ignored. How do you feel now?
 
Small Fry?

The record companies and major radio chains - who settled with Spitzer's office when he was AG - are hardly "small fry". Spitzer had examples of payola from all over the state, but it was mostly corporate that paid the price. A few radio people fled the state, but only one that I know of took on the AG's office in the press - Dave Universal. Not a good move in my estimation.
 
Why settle. Why would any marketing and A and R people give a bleep about a few small markets in upstate anyway. The New York City based crowd has other issues to deal with. That's why they settled with Spitzer! The whole issue reeked.

C'mon Rox. If you were Universal you'd speak up too. I know I would. And perhaps I'd lose my career and take my New York State funded degree somewhere else. Actually that's what I did.
 
slickkicker said:
C'mon Rox. If you were Universal you'd speak up too. I know I would. And perhaps I'd lose my career and take my New York State funded degree somewhere else. Actually that's what I did.
Click to expand...

So many have lost there radio career....just because. Might as well go down in a blaze of glory!
 
The power of media. Spitzer had plenty of enemies and quite a few sported a microphone and asked probing questions. New York is better off without this guy.

Payback.
 
What's That Smell?

The whole situation reeked because the radio companies, some programmers, and the recording companies were GUILTY. The corporations settled for millions each because they knew that they'd lose in court.

The real losers were the listeners who had inferior music shoved down their throats by spin programs and artificially inflated statistics that turned stiffs into "hits". Radio people suffered because that inferior product sent a lot of listeners - especially young ones - to other sources of music, cutting ratings and revenue.

If half the stories I've heard about a "wunderkind" programmer from upstate are true, he was not only guilty, he was stupid and greedy as well.
 
Line of the week from a Canadian businessman: "If sympathy for Spitzer was water, you could walk from one end of the NY stock exchange to the other without getting your shoes wet."
 
Re: What's That Smell?

SirRoxalot said:
The whole situation reeked because the radio companies, some programmers, and the recording companies were GUILTY.

(Of what? Doing business? Wouldn't Eliot Ness been more patriotic if he went after the pharmaceutical companies who wine-and-dine-and-golf the doctors that prescribe their $100-a-boner pills?)

The real losers were the listeners who had inferior music shoved down their throats by spin programs and artificially inflated statistics that turned stiffs into "hits". Radio people suffered because that inferior product sent a lot of listeners - especially young ones - to other sources of music, cutting ratings and revenue.

(So, how has the access to a wider variety of music been working for you?)

If half the stories I've heard about a "wunderkind" programmer from upstate are true, he was not only guilty, he was stupid and greedy as well.
Click to expand...

(They aren't)
 
Half BaKed

Joe, the "Spitzer should have gone after somebody else" is a red herring. The record companies and radio stations were doing business ILLEGALLY. They settled because they would have lost in court.

Corporate programming policy hasn't changed much, which is the biggest problem that radio has today. There are still suits who think that they can out-iPod and listener's iPod, and that music is the only product that they have to offer.

As far as your assessment that the "stories" aren't true, I think that I'm a little closer to the situation than you are, and I trust my sources.
 
The record companies do business much like Proctor and Gamble does when they grease grocery execs for shelf space. Payola has its roots dating back to the 1950's when white bread America got riled up about all those "race" records being played on the radio. In order to get the hits of the day spun when Chuck Berry and Little Richard were rocking teens, management had to be bought.

We live in a capitalist society where everything is bought and sold. Why the big deal about Top 40 radio! What is so heinous about a company promoting product.

I've said this here before. The greatest era in contemporary music history was at the height of the payola era in the 60's and 70's. At the time you had music people who lived for the product going all out to promote it by schmoozing with music people in radio. Today everything is controlled by a VP/Programming type on the radio end and almost none of them could give a bleep about record companies and there product.
 
Too Slick

There's nothing wrong with promoting a product. You can do that legally by simply telling the listener that you paid for that spin. People have the expectation that you're playing a song because it has merit, not because you sold your airtime to the highest bidder.

The greatest era in contemporary music came because jocks who lived and breathed music were in charge of playing it. A few of them got greased, but the vast majority did it because they loved the music. When computers made it possible for corporate to generate playlists and ultimately play the music itself, they began treating music as "product", started firing people who broke format, and cut "spin program" deals with record companies. That's when it all went to Hell. VP/Programming types cared only about how much a record company would pay them for putting a record in rotation, not about whether listeners would like it. Listeners were/are "sheep", who'd have to accept what the corporate monopoly - engineered through consolidation - fed them.

Listeners "voted with their feet", and loaded up their MP3 players.
 
Guilty
Click to expand...

Rox- Depends on your definition of guilt.

That's what courts are for.

Why settle? Expediency. Spitzer had them by the balls (which irionically is the weakness that brings him down). Pay for Play, indeed!

He was making a blatant grab for headlines to advance his political career. I think our radio companies were more sloppy than guilty, and that most of what they were doing was legal, but embarrassing. They settled for the same reason they settle indecency complaints with the FCC. They have no stomach for a court fight, even one they'd likely prevail in.
 
He was making a blatant grab for headlines to advance his political career. I think our radio companies were more sloppy than guilty, and that most of what they were doing was legal, but embarrassing. They settled for the same reason they settle indecency complaints with the FCC. They have no stomach for a court fight, even one they'd likely prevail in.
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Not working in the industry anymore, I don't hear all the inside dope. Sounds like the truth depends on who you talk to. I would agree that, while I personally applaud much of what he did(especially his crusade against what many of us consider Wall Street greed), he seemed to be stepping on a lot of toes to advance his own career. Ambitious government crusaders are nothing new in New York - there's Rudy, there was Thomas E. Dewey. But it's still unbelievable this guy did something so stupid and thought he'd never get caught.
 
Re: Half BaKed

SirRoxalot said:
Joe, the "Spitzer should have gone after somebody else" is a red herring. The record companies and radio stations were doing business ILLEGALLY. They settled because they would have lost in court.
Sorry, Rox. It' was a PR stunt. We're in the PR stunt biz and we all saw it. That's why they settled. It was being prsecuted in the court of public opinion and no radio operator want's bad PR.

Corporate programming policy hasn't changed much, which is the biggest problem that radio has today. There are still suits who think that they can out-iPod and listener's iPod, and that music is the only product that they have to offer.

This case actually screwed more little operators than the big corporations. CC and Entercom can pay for their own vans to get painted and their own t-shirts.

As far as your assessment that the "stories" aren't true, I think that I'm a little closer to the situation than you are, and I trust my sources.
Click to expand...

Did any of them actually work with Dave? I did and he didn't do anything wrong.
 
I recall some intriguing intangibles with regards to record promotion. Remember The Gin Blossoms hit "Hey Jealousy"? Catchy song and a sure fire winner for a debut artist. Unfortunatly the guy who wrote it, and penned much of there material at the time, was either kicked out of the band or quit sometime around the release date (I can't really remember the details). This is a nightmare for recording promoters who've ramped up the PR machine, hype, money and contacts with dozens of decision makers.

About a half-dozen times I can recall, personally, of some situation in which a local programmer went out on a limb to add a record, promote a show and crank up the hype only to get burned in the end. Those acts are sometimes called one-hit wonders. Remember the Georgia Satellites? I mention this group because they were promoted by a local guy who worked at Atlantic (I think) back in the day.

In the mid-90's I had the misfortune to get involved with an act that was backed with great promotion, serious major label money and a fantastic debut record. The band disbanded within two weeks after release date. As JohnGault says here that's one area in which radio and record people find themselves in embarrassing, and vulnerable, situations. I can recall a tough minded PD who was only convinced to add a fairly lame record one time when the promo guy guarenteed a quarter page advert in Rolling Stone. The act is long forgotten and the promo guy and programmer remain friends.

I agree that the music and broadcasting industry is easy pickings. Spitzer should've acted more like a watchdog and less like an attack dog. He knew he could make headlines.
 
Spitzer initially went after the recording companies. If you read the e-mail exhibits, you'll see that the radio stations and recording companies handed Spitzer his case on a silver platter. Both were guilty. Both paid.

Maybe if they'd offered him a hooker....
 
I saw the link and thanks for posting it Rox. Viewed almost all of it.

Now I come from an era when grams of coke somehow ended up inside the record jacket. It happened to one guy I know who spent some time in re-hap. Entercom did apparently budget promo dollars. Pretty cheap and very small market. In my day the GM/Decider didn't sign off on all of that stuff. They ignored it and didn't really want to get involved.


Universal shuffled memos and got some extra scratch for promoting festival type events from certain companies and artists. I don't see too much wrong with that and the money wasn't exceptional. Getting artists to make commitments to dozens of radio "special events" is, to put it succinctly, excruciating for all involved. The pay for play involving cash appears to be a corporate issue and it isn't all too alarming. The money isn't that much and it seems Spitzer just targeted the folks within his reach.

Entercom doesn't own a property in NYC. CBS, NBC, FOX, Clear Channel and other big time players, along with all of the labels, do a lot business in Manhattan however. And Entercom had issues regarding something called "CD Preview" which seems to have been largely relegated to overnights! The ex-Attorney General and ex-Governor was concerned about what the computer spit out during the overnights. Are we freakin' kidding here.

Yes there is some sophomoric paper trails. But Universal did charts at CHR, which is very far removed from say running an All News outlet in a top five market. He wasn't totally wrong. He was a name, a stooge and a target.
 
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