Payola Probes Make Tight Playlists Tighter

The latest payola probes by NY Attorney General Spitzer and now the FCC have not opened up radio playlists as some had predicted. Instead it has actually made them tighter as many programmers add fewer songs as part of their efforts to prove that no outside sources are influencing their decisions.

"No programmer wants to draw attention by choosing songs too far outside the mainstream,"  Tom Calococci of LA’s KKBT-FM told the LA Times. He went on to say that fear of regulatory scrutiny has made radio less willing to play emerging bands. Calococci still plays new music, he told the Times but "Spitzer has put a chill on everything."

And a careful look at radio nationwide confirms that Calococci is not alone. According to Radio and Records in the first quarter of ’06 active rock stations added 23% fewer new songs than during the same period in 2005 . Pop stations added 14% fewer songs. Adds on urban/hip-hop stations dropped 16% and new songs on "adult contemporary" stations were down 17%. "These are really big drops," Cyndee Maxwell from R&R told the Times after surveying more than 860 radio stations. "I’ve never seen decreases that big."