RADIO CONTINUES IT'S CRAZY WAYS

For 15 years I was an on-air personality for several radio stations in my home state of Mississippi and here in Polk County. It was a wonderful period, although you don't make much money doing it in a small market, but I continue to keep up with what's happening in the industry even now...over a decade after leaving my last gig (For the record: the station went belly-up; my programme director and his assistant --- yours truly --- were canned in a cost-cutting measure).

It has been a very interesting week in "the biz", and today we learn that former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has been sacked from his morning drive show. Roth claimed he only found out about the move while enroute to the New York station where his syndicated show is based, and according to the story reported on CNN, he responded with an implied threat that his legal advisors would seek full compensation for the $4 million deal. The change comes days before the Roth show's first ratings numbers are released since replacing Howard Stern when the self-proclaimed "King of All Media" jumped to Sirius Satellite Radio.

Replacing Roth will be the shock duo and bitter Stern rivals Opie and Anthony, who will continue their XM Satellite show simulcast for three hours on the network of terrestial stations who aired Roth's programme, then continue for another two hours exclusively for their satellite audience. The odd thing about this move is that the are being hired by the same company (CBS Radio) that fired them nearly four years ago after their aired a live account of a couple having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Inside Radio reported that the duo had some fun at Roth's expense this morning.

On a more serious note, the Federal Communications Commission has sent formal letters of inquiry to several of the nation's largest radio broadcasters in it's investigation into possible play-for-pay. Radio stations and employees are legally prohibited from receiving any consideration or payment for playing songs. The FCC has looked on several occasions at the issue of payola, but not with a great deal of success.

The best known play-for-pay case was back in 1960, when Alan Freed was indicted under commercial bribery laws for accepting $2,500 to play certain songs, a payment which he called "a token of appreciation". While he was only fined, his days as one of America's most influential disc jockeys ended.

This case will be very interesting to follow. The FCC had been in settlement talks with radio giants CBS, Citadel Broadcasting, Clear Channel, and Entercom Communications in which they would pay relatively small fines, but those discussions have broken down. That has led to the harder stance taken by the letters of inquiry. Since deregulation of the radio industry during the Reagan years, it has resulted in consolidation into a handful of very powerful players as the four mentioned above. They now own hundreds of radio stations in markets large and small in almost every state, resulting in an extremely influential position in what gets played.