{"id":780,"date":"2007-04-14T19:18:51","date_gmt":"2007-04-15T02:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/?p=780"},"modified":"2007-04-14T19:18:51","modified_gmt":"2007-04-15T02:18:51","slug":"the-fccs-new-payola-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/2007\/04\/the-fccs-new-payola-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The FCC&#039;s new &#039;payola&#039; rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four radio giants have agreed to pay the United States government a total $12.5 million dollars to settle an Federal Communications Commission investigation into their &#8220;payola&#8221; practices\u2014the undisclosed play of music in exchange for cash, gifts, or favors.<\/p>\n<p>The FCC says that CBS radio, Entercom Communications, Clear Channel Communications, and Citadel Broadcasting will agree to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>prohibit airplay for cash and goods &#8220;except under specified conditions&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>put limits on gifts from big broadcasters to company stations<\/li>\n<li>appoint officers who will monitor compliance with the agreement<\/li>\n<li>train personnel on how to avoid violations of the new rules<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Consent Agreement, announced on Friday, April 13th, does allow the companies the following leeway:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stations may ask for and receive a wide variety of on air giveaway items of value, such as CDs or airplane tickets, as long as they broadcast the value of the prizes and their donor.<\/li>\n<li>Station personnel can solicit and receive up to 20 copies of a CD &#8220;to familiarize Company employees with recordings,&#8221; as well as various kinds of swag\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom T-shirts to coffee mugs\u00e2\u20ac\u201das long as the value of each item does not go above $25 and the materials are used at company parties.<\/li>\n<li>Companies can ask for a receive up to 20 tickets for a single day concert or industry event &#8220;to be used by Company employees to familiarize them with the performing Artists.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Station personnel can receive &#8220;modest personal gifts for life event, professional achievement and holidays, or gifts commemorating achievement by Company or a Record Label,&#8221; as long as the value of the gift does not exceed $150, as far as the employee can tell.<\/li>\n<li>Station employees can receive meals and entertainment at a single event up to $150 in value &#8220;provided that the event is attended by a Record Label employee and has a legitimate business purpose, and any payment is consistent with the value of the meal or entertainment.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Company stations can receive up to 20 stipends for &#8220;reasonable travel and lodging expenses&#8221; to industry events, as long as the compliance officer approves of the gift.<\/li>\n<li>Companies must maintain a database of gifts and favors received by its stations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>FCC Chair Kevin Martin praised the agreement with CBS, Entercom, Clear Channel, and Citadel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Through this strong enforcement action that we take today, the Commission has provided clear guidance to licensees and sent a strong message that the practice of payola must stop for good,&#8221; Martin said in a public statement.<\/p>\n<p>Martin&#8217;s fellow Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, blamed media consolidation for the recent rise in payola practices.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The top ten radio conglomerates now control 2\/3 of the total U.S. radio audience,&#8221; Copps stated. &#8220;As a result, the payola kingmakers must grease only a relative handful of palms in order to get their anointed commercial artists on the air. This makes an ugly situation uglier.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four radio giants have agreed to pay the United States government a total $12.5 million dollars to settle an Federal Communications Commission investigation into their &#8220;payola&#8221; practices\u2014the undisclosed play of music in exchange for cash, gifts, or favors. The FCC says that CBS radio, Entercom Communications, Clear Channel Communications, and Citadel Broadcasting will agree to: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[489,557,583,892,5047,2082],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fcc","tag-cbs","tag-citadel","tag-clear-channel","tag-entercom","tag-fcc","tag-payola"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}