The AP is carrying a story today about how radio companies are settling payola cases with the FCC.  Clear Channel (The River, Kiss-FM, WHP, WLAN, The Ticket, Bob), Citadel (Mix, The X, Red, The Big), Entercom, and CBS Radio (neither of whom own any stations locally) all agreed to pay a combined $12.5 million to the FCC.  Without admitting guilt, of course.  This is coming from the very people who repeatedly accuse Sirius and XM of unethical behavior and unfair practices.

If you’re not familiar with the practice, the term “payola” refers to the barter of goods, services, or money in exchange for radio airplay of a given song.  In other words, it’s bribery.  The way it works is that Record Label Representative A goes to Program Director B and says “You know, this song would sound GREAT every 65 minutes!  Hey, look at this spare car I have just laying around going to waste.”  They’re smart enough to not actually hand a check over, so it’s not exactly easy to track; material goods have a way of just “appearing”.

Another part of the settlement is that the companies will provide 4200 hours of airtime for “independent labels” and “local artists”.  Other than the fact that this will consist entirely of half-hour blocks, little has been said about how this will be divided.  It’s highly unlikely that it will be 4200 hours per station, as this would mean over two hours per day of indie music.  Every day.  For five years.  Perhaps they mean 4200 hours across all four companies?  That would translate to 1050 hours per company, or 21 hours per state; that’s less than an hour a day, Monday through Friday, of airtime, on only one station.  Considering how many stations have 70-minute rotations, that’s far less exposure than a single pop track in heavy rotation will see in one day.  It would, however, get one indie track roughly every two hours.

Yay radio.