Via FoxNews.com (let no one ever say that The Daily Caveat is not "fair and balanced"):

Payola Shocker: J-Lo Hits, Others Were 'Bought' by Sony

Monday, July 25, 2005
By Roger Friedman

... internal memos from Sony Music, revealed today in the New York state attorney general's investigation of payola at the company, will be mind blowing to those who are not so jaded to think records are played on the radio because they're good. We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear "hits" on the radio and wonder, "How can this be?"

Now we know. And memos from both Sony's Columbia and Epic Records senior vice presidents of promotions circa 2002-2003 — whose names are redacted in the reports but are well known in the industry — spell out who to pay and what to pay them in order to get the company's records on the air...

...Announced today: Sony Music — now known as Sony/BMG — has to pony up a $10 million settlement with New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. It should be $100 million. And this won't be the end of the investigation. Spitzer's office is looking into all the record companies. This is just the beginning.

...Who will take the fall at Sony for all this? It's not like payola is new. The government investigated record companies and radio stations in the late 1950s and again in the mid 1970s... Spitzer is said to be close friends with Sony's new CEO, Andrew Lack, who publicly welcomed the new investigations earlier this year when they were announced..

Much more detail on who was paying to get what on the air is available in the full article. Meanwhile, subsequent to Sony's settlement, it appears Mr. Spitzer will be turning the accumulated evidence from his office's investigation over to the FCC:

Via Billboardradiomonitor.com:

Spitzer Evidence To Be Handed Over To FCC

July 25, 2005
By Paul Heine and Bill Holland

..."I would encourage the FCC to take a very hard look at whether something that is this pervasive, something that is so corrosive to the integrity of the market place should not merely be investigated and pursued, but whether some of these stations deserve to have their licenses stripped," said Spitzer at the downtown Manhattan press conference trumpeting the settlement. "They know what the law is and they have been disregarding it willfully and pervasively"...

...[FCC] commissioner Jonathan Adelstein says Spitzer has given the FCC "an arsenal of smoking guns" to ramp up federal payola enforcement. Adelstein says he has asked Spitzer for "everything he’s got" so that evidence uncovered in New York's pay-for-play probe can be evaluated for possible federal violations. An outspoken advocate for heightened payola enforcement, Adelstein says an email trail now exists to justify a full-on federal investigation...

..."These same exact practices are explicitly prohibited by the Communications Act, including criminal violations that would be handled by the Justice Department," Adelstein says. "People haven't been willing to come forward." "It took an attorney general's subpoena power to blow the lid off a potentially far-reaching payola scandal...Now it's incumbent on us to enforce our rules and conduct a thorough investigation of each of the allegations."

FCC protocol calls for the agency to investigate and act upon filed complaints... Although he expects to receive complaints based on the settlement, Adelstein says the magnitude of potential federal violations warrants an immediate investigation and potential enforcement action. "What we have here for the first time are emails documenting the reasoning behind this," Adelstein said, referring too materials uncovered by Spitzer. "We no longer have to guess what was in the mindset of people, we can actually see it."

Full article appears here.

The Daily Caveat is unabashedly pleased with any governmental investigation that results in less J. Lo on his radio.

Viva la Spitzer!

-- MDT

Labels: Eliot Spitzer, New York AG