There’s a new payola crisis emerging with American radio and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.

Payola, the practice of paying money for radio airplay has been around since at least the 1950s. After things blew up after a notorious DJ conference in Miami in 1959, payola was exposed and was made illegal. (I cover the topic with my podcast, Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.)

But money is a powerful tool. Despite being illegal, it raises its ugly head in America every once in a while including in the 1980s, in the late 90s, and most recently earlier this year.

Before we go any further, I need to be clear about something. I’ve been in the Canadian radio business for 44 years and in all that time, I’ve never seen nor heard about any America-style payola in the country. I also was the program director for two radio stations, including 102.1 The Edge/Toronto, the second-biggest alt-rock station in North America and a highly influential outlet. As PD, I was the point person for all programming, including music and promotions.

I’ve never, ever been offered any kind of bribe or inducement to play a song. No money, no favours, no nada. Not. Once. As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard of any of my programming compatriots being offered anything either by anyone in the recorded music industry, As far as my experience goes. Canadian radio is squeaky clean. America, though, is another story.

The latest payola crisis is emerging with the Trump administration’s cutting of funding to National Public Radio. There are almost 250 such stations across the country, all of which provide news, entertainment, and opinion from a non-commercial standpoint. Many of these stations play music that commercial radio stations do not, including in the realm of alternative and its harder cousin, active rock.

Without government funding, the existence of these stations is in peril. Enhanced donation drives and private sponsorships only go so far when it comes to covering the shortfall. Programs are being canceled, operations are being curtailed, and people are losing their jobs as a result of Trump’s defunding. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funded things ranging from NOVA to Seasame Street, saw the writing on the wall and is now winding down operations, laying off 600 staffers.

Enter an opportunity for payola.

Music promotion–the act of convincing radio stations to add songs to a station’s playlist–is done differently in the US. Labels hired independent music promoters who “claim” radio stations as targets for music promotion. Those indie promoters are then paid by the labels for every playist ad they get. As for how they manage that, the labels don’t want to know. Just. Get. The. Record. Added.

Many indie promoters are clean and refuse to play the bribery game because they have ethics and morals. Many others do not.

Now that NPR stations are starving for money, my sources in the US say that indie promoters are becoming increasingly aggressive when it comes to enticing certain NPR stations. The labels cannot afford to have these stations go dark because they’re so important in getting the word out on new releases that are considered priorities, especially the kind that commercial radio won’t touch.

The indie promoters are finding ways to couch payments to pubic radio and other non-commercial stations in language that makes these payments look entirely legit. If you’re running at one of these stations, what would you do?

This latest twist on payola will only grow. The US Federal Government’s fiscal year ended on September 30, so the US$1.1 billion that would have gone to public broadcasti is gone, clawed back.

The vutures are circling. We’ll see if anyone picks up on this story. Watch this space.