F.T.C. Blogger Crackdown - Payola Flashback

As you many have heard in the mainstream media, because this story has been covered pretty well, the Federal Trade Commission has ruled that, as of December 1, 2009,

bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently. The new rules also take aim at celebrities, who will now need to disclose any ties to companies, should they promote products on a talk show or on Twitter.

(The New York Times, via Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix.)

You may wonder, why the F.T.C. handles this stuff and not the F.C.C., but that is a more arcane discussion best continued in the context of government regulatory oversight.

The F.T.C. is concerned about "payola", the old fashion Alan "Moondog" Freed kind of promotional strong arming by the record companies in the 1950s.  Freed, the reputed originator of the term "Rock n' Roll", got in bed with the industry by taking cash to play the work of certain artists more frequently.  Today, of course, the worry is that popular bloggers on the Internet are doing the same, promoting certain products, artists, or work in return for favors from the companies making money off these things.

You may also wonder about your humble author and possible payola.  Let's make this clear as can be:  I have received nothing, no free products, no cash, nothing, bupkis.  See Carrie Brownstein's blog at the link above for her wish list of things that she would gladly plug in her blog if she were given freebies.  Same here, but it is not going to happen.  (Carrie really has an audience for her blog --- or at least I assume she does, because seemingly real people post comments to her posts and she is connected to NPR, so if she does not get free stuff, I am not going to get free stuff.)

I remember my days with my college radio station (in my day, the station was a carrier current broadcast heard only in the college dormitories and a couple of fraternity houses).  During my shows, I use to ask folks to call in with requests or comments.  No response.  I would put on something like Pink Floyd's "Careful with that Axe Eugene"  and wait for someone to call and ask what I was playing.  No response.  Notwithstanding its meager audience, however, the station was flooded with promotional copies of records.  I heard some of my most long standing favorite bands by way of duplicates that the station let the DJs have.  (Example:  The very first Little Feat album.)

That was then and this is now. Whether on the Internet or on the radio, however, you need an audience before the payola folks will come knocking at your door.  That really has been the case way back in the Alan Freed.  As  blogger, you are unlikely to get free promotional material from companies unless you have some kind of audience.  You also are unlikely to get pressure for some plug  in return for such promotional items unless you have some kind of influence over your audience -- in other words, your audience takes your recommendations to heart and, more importantly, your recommendations may influence your audience's choices in spending its disposable income.

Carrie Brownstein may be closer than I am, but neither of us has yet reached the level of influence that Alan Freed had in the 1950s.  (To understand the power that Alan Freed had in shaping musical taste, find and listen to The Band's tribute to that era, Moondog Matinee.)