Unless I'm in a car ... and the CD player is broken ... and I don't have an iTrip on me ... and I'm too embarrassed to sing ""Piano Man"" out loud ... I don't much listen to the radio anymore. I imagine I am not alone in this. Between CDs and iPods and all this new satellite radio stuff, it's got to be tough for the regular, old-fashioned WXYZ or KABC (total FYI tangent: For classification purposes, all radio stations west of the Mississippi start with a K and all radio stations to the east start with a W). However, despite its myriad of competitors, regular old radio isn't dead, although it might be getting a pretty swift kick in the face soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, four large radio-controlling companies (Clear Channel, CBS, et al.) have come to terms with the FCC about—well—bribery, more or less.
There's a great They Might Be Giants song about a struggling band that pays a dishonest DJ to play their record on the radio, and the DJ ends up skipping town with the loot. In real life, though, most DJs do not leave town. It's been a long-standing and not very well-hidden secret that radio stations play certain songs because they receive certain remunerations for doing so—which, obviously, is a crime.
As it so happens, the term for playing records in exchange for cash is called—I swear to God—""payola"" (more tangential FYI: The word's etymology is laughably simple. It goes back to the 1930s and is a combination of ""pay"" and ""ola,"" as in the Victrola, a certain type of gramophone).
Anyhow, as it turns out, these four companies are settling with the FCC for $12.5 million to wash their hands of illegal payola dealings and an agreement not to do it again. Mind you, none of this information is actually corroborated yet—I'm basically reporting a rumor, but because I'm not technically a ""journalist"" in the most strict sense of the word, I get to do stuff like that. However, if this rumor is true, what this means for you, the listener—if you still listen to the radio—is that you might hear less crap than usual. Or maybe you'll just start hearing new and different crap—I don't know.
In related news, these same four companies have also struck an agreement with the American Association of Independent Music to ""set aside 8,400 half-hour blocks of time for independent music"" on their stations. If my math is correct (it's entirely possible—likely, even—that it isn't), that shakes out to about four hours a day of indie music. Like the repeal of payola, it's unclear whether this will result in less crap on the radio or just more sensitive, emotional crap.
Another interesting development in radio news is that country music—the oft-poked-fun-at genre—is starting to show strong ratings in places that aren't the Midwest and the South. Larger urban cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are starting to see a surge in the popularity and ratings of country music stations (yet another unrelated FYI: there are more than 2,000 country stations in the nation, which beats out any other genre by a lot; the next closest is Contemporary Christian at something like 900 stations). The reason for this spike, according to analysts, is most likely the direction the country music genre has been heading over the last decade or so: namely, that country music doesn't often sound like country music anymore. Artists like Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks (post-al-Qaida), Carrie Underwood and Rascal Flatts often sound more like conventional pop with a twinge of twang nowadays, and apparently the new sound is well-liked among Californians.
I personally find this to be comical only in as much as country music tends to foo-foo larger cities in favor of small-town values, but I suppose every country girl has to have her fling with the city slicker.
So if you're an indie fan, a country fan, or just someone who doesn't much like hearing the results of a bribe, I leave you with the words of Van Morrison: ""Radio, turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, so you know, radio. La la la la la. La la la.""
