How bad is Payola these days?

Factual Questions
1

Disclaimer: if you want to give Clear Channel, Viacom, or the Big Five record labels the pitting they so richly deserve, do so in the Pit. I might even start a thread there after I finish this one.

I heard on NPR this morning that the FCC is investigating certain radio ownership groups to determine if Payola is still occurring, under a different architecture. They contend that the publicly acknowledged practices of the record labels and independent promoters (?) look like, walk like, and stink like Payola, and are responsible for why most FM radio sucks today.

My questions are about the “state of the art” in Payola and its loopholes. I know Payola was a huge scandal when it first happened in the 1970s (?) and I know that that’s when the laws against it were written. What I don’t know is:

  1. What does the current law against Payola (pay for play, kickbacks for airtime) specifically forbid?

  2. How are the record labels getting around the letter of the law (publicly acknowledged facts, please - annotate any “suspicions” as such)?

  3. Do the radio stations and/or record companies have a leg to stand on, or are their current practices illegal?

2

It depends a lot on what you mean by “payola.”

If you mean: a record company weasel handing a wad of cash to a station manager and saying “play this song 10 times a day,” no. There are too many people that have been fired by radio stations over the years that if this was common we would have heard it about it over and over.

If you mean: a bunch of dollars that was in a record company account eventually ends up in a radio chain’s account and the more the chain plays the record company’s songs, the more dollars they get. Yep. That’s the way these businesses operate. They all think they are technically avoiding payola laws. They use third party “promotion” companies, nobody says “if you do this you get $x.” etc. But it is for all practical purposes payola. BTW, these “promotion” companies have extremely serious heavy set people that work for them and will occasionally visit programming execs to remind them of their personal responsibilities in staying with the system. This is a very effective method in ensuring that people keep their mouths closed about what’s going on.