Surprise, surprise. Clear Channel’s Internal Investigation Finds Payola

And, so what does Cheap Channel management do? They fire two employees–without divulging names or stations–and discipline a few others.

Of course, this action is a typical Clear Channel to distance itself from its stations’ payola ways and try to make it look like pay-for-play is an isolated practice at the nation’s largest radio owner, rather than business as usual.

Although CC management won’t name names, the Times draws an association to two Clear Channel executvies who were named in NY Attorney General Elliot Sptizer’s payola settlement with Sony/BMG released several months ago:

In one case, Mr. Spitzer said that Diana Laird, the program director of the company’s station KHTS in San Diego, received a flat-screen television – which was disguised as a contest giveaway in the record company’s accounting system – in November 2002. …

In another case, Sony BMG label executives had provided Donnie Anderson, now a programmer at WHYI, a Clear Channel station in Miami, with a trip to Las Vegas in July 2003 and, on another occasion, a laptop computer, to secure playing of songs, according to settlement documents.

Just last week, Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays told an anti-regulatory gathering that he doesn’t see a “train wreck” coming on the payola issue for his company. Yeah, that’s because the shredders were already buzzing, and the goats were already being scaped.

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