The Pandora threat to radio – “they” say any publicity is good publicity. This week is the NAB convention, and apparently Richard Harker thinks he can earn brownie points by calling the head of Pandora a “pathological liar” which has now echoed up to Tom Taylor’s newsletter.
http://harkerresearch.typepad.com/radioinsights/2010/04/is-pandoras-westergren-a-pathological-liar.html
(“Hey, I only said “Is he”, I didn’t say “He is”!)
His “source” for many of the statements is a blogger (not a reporter as he states) and several other blogs that just echoed the same list verbatim who were not even present at the meeting where this supposedly was said. That “blogger” is a college freshman (from Viet Nam) at NYU Arts and Sciences College majoring in International Relations. She claims no radio background and wouldn’t know a cume from TSL or AQH…
The author jumps to lots of conclusions about what Mr Wetergren meant based on third hand information. The “Lies” he quotes do not appear in the sources he links to (how much Pandora paid SoundExchange, the claim that Pandora has more listeners in Philadelphia than WBEB).
This rant may be raw meat to some angry hungry dogs in the radio business, but it is amazingly bad journalism. But that died in 2008, probably earlier in radio.
The newsletter item does not appear on radio-info.com, so I’m thinking they have already pulled it back.