Some chatter in the US press about the response, or lack of one, to Eliot Spitzer's payola investigations which led to an admission of guilt by Warner Music this week.
As previously reported, New York Attorney General has been investigating the dodgy music promotion techniques of the major record companies for quite some time now, with both SonyBMG and Warner admitting that techniques use by some of their employees contravened strict payola rules (ie they were essentially bribing radio programmers to get airtime for their music).
Obviously for every major record company offering the bribes there is a radio head of music accepting them. Spitzer seemingly expected US media regulator the FCC to look into the radio station side of the issue but, despite initially saying it would launch its own investigation, reports suggest they've not been doing much looking. In fact the major radio companies have done more themselves, firing a handful of music programmers who were implicated in Spitzer's investigations into SonyBMG's music promotions.
Some US journalists are wondering why the FCC is being so slow to act on this one, and according to the New York Times Sptizer himself is also concerned. They quote the district attorney as saying: "Because the notion of licence revocation is so clearly discounted, nobody is terribly concerned about the consequences of the FCC's involvement. That's too bad, because what's at stake here is the airwaves. Why the FCC is not responding is a little mysterious to me".