Wednesday Minute
Salon has thankfully continued its ongoing investigation into the corrupt pay-for-play record promotion scheme at commercial FM radio stations, but this time the twist is rather unexpected - public radio. If you thought that pay-for-play was strictly a commercial entity, think again. Record promoters have woken up to public radio's massive listener base as a force to help drive obscure albums and artists, like the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which sold millions with virtually no commercial radio airplay. Having worked in public radio myself, and been on the receiving end of many record company phone calls and promotional efforts, I never received anything out of the ordinary (like, oh, weekly FedEx envelopes of cocaine - the thank you card of FM rock radio). But the invasion of pay-for-play in the public radio market is incredibly disheartening. Or, in the words of one anonymous public radio insider...
"You're a fucking non-comm [non-commercial station], you're supposed to play songs that aren't hits. Instead, they're sounding more and more like the shitty commercial station down the block."
Apple's Lenox Square retail store here in Atlanta is opening May 11.
Excellent interview with Mitchell Baker, leader of the Mozilla project, about Mozilla's use and relevance past 1.0.
Comments
PBS and NPR have been getting more and more commercial as time goes on. What used to be text mentioning the names of sponsors has evolved into full-color screens featuring corporate logos and has now become full-fledged commericials. Why wouldn't they hook into the same corruption as the rest of the media?
Posted by: Claire at May 2, 2002 1:54 PM
