No Rock And Roll Fun

CLEARING OUT THE STABLES: While claiming it never made a difference anyway, Clear Channel have just announced they're going to cut the financial ties between their radio stations and music pluggers, which had led to accusations of the station operating a 'payola' style system. Up until now, the companies that wanted to get records onto CC's strangleholding network of US stations had also, mysteriously, shown a great deal of interest in paying Clear for all sorts of "research information"; Now, Clear is going to stop the practice as they think it all looks a bit iffy. We're really worried, though - how will the plugging companies be able to do their job without buying in all that top-notch research data?