Sony Agrees to Stop Payola

dsginter writes "Sony BMG Music just reached agreement with New York Attorney General. Sony spokesman John McKay admitted that the practice was 'wrong and improper' but the company engaged in the activity anyway. They were fined $10 million and have agreed to obstain from the practice in the future. Is this the first step toward getting our airwaves back or is this just a slap on the wrist?"

Comments

Meh - American Radio is beyond hope

[sien]

US TV, films etc are pretty good, but other than NPR American free to air Radio is beyond hope. Having one channel own almost all the stations is effective death.

Payola, while unpleasant, is nothing to people who are carefully creating radio to only be sports, 80s hits and right wing shock jocks.

But, fortunately, there is satelite with some variety but above all else the internet.

Australian radio, in contrast to US radio, is vibrant, brilliant and is a good industrial subsidy for the Australian music industry (ever wonder where INXS, Midnight Oil and many others got their start?).

If you want to check it out over the net check out JJJ, RRR, 3PBS and enjoy some streaming quality alternative interesting radio for a change.

Re:Meh - American Radio is beyond hope

[donscarletti]

Yes, Australian radio is absolutely brilliant. We have the always balanced and insightful John Laws and Alan Jones to bring enlightenment to us, we have the infinitely tallented Kyle and Jackie-O bringing us culture over the Austereo network who's stations in every capital city always play an ecclectic and always fresh selection of artistic music written by Australia and the World's most tallented musicians.

Granted, I've never been to North America but I find it a little tricky to swallow that anyone could have music that makes our crappy radio sound "vibrant and brilliant". Sure, JJJ has integrity (as do all the ABC stations) but that's because it's federally funded explicitly to stop kids from becoming as much of idiots as they would have been if they turned on Nova instead. Australian radio sucks, and sucks hard.