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Media
Univision fined for payola
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 27 July 2010
American media regulator the FCC and the US Justice Department have fined Univision Media a million dollars after finding the company guilty of participating in payola, the practice whereby radio chiefs accept bribes from record labels to play their music, a big no no under US broadcasting rules.
Univision, which specialises in Latin American content, operates a radio business and used to have a record company too. Both divisions were found guilty of payola – ie the radio bosses were accepting bribes, and label execs were making them – with execs at the Univision record labels mainly bribing programmers at Univision radio stations, which does seem a bit crazy. The actual fine works out at half a million for the radio firm and half a million for the music company. The latter fine will have to be paid even though Univision sold its record labels to Universal in 2008.
Payola traditionally involved labels paying radio station execs cash bribes, though most recent cases have seen radio execs getting extravagant gifts instead. That said, some of the Univision bribery did involve hard cash. Although applying the highest possible fines, the FCC conceded that this latest case of payola activity was undertaken by a small number of individuals within Univision’s music and radio divisions, and was not sanctioned by bosses at a group level.
The Univision radio company also had to agree to sign up to a code of conduct regarding accepting gifts and prizes off music companies, similar to those instigated during the last major American payola crack down, instigated by then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
