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Clear Channel Fires Two for Payola Violations

Clear Channel has fired two programming executives and disciplined several others for misconduct after an internal review of “pay for play” allegations, The New York Times reports. Clear Channel says it will provide additional training to station managers and programming personnel on the company’s policies against payola.

The move comes a little over a week after Clear Channel President/CEO Mark Mays said he did not see a “train wreck” coming on the issue of payola. At that time, Mays said that the 4-6 employees investigated in connection with the BMG consent decree were the bad actors, leaving 99.9 percent of its radio programmers doing what they should be doing.

FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein recently said the payola scandal was “the widest and most flagrant abuse of our rules in the history of American broadcasting” and that he planned “to put the fear of God” into broadcasters about obeying the FCC’s payola rules.

 

The payola issue hit front pages in late July when Sony BMG Music Entertainment settled an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer by paying $10 million and saying it would stop paying radio station employees to feature its artists.