Corruption-buster and future national office holder Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York State, is turning his attention to major record labels, independent song promoters, and radio stations. Those three forces have conspired to implement a quasi-legal form of payola, a practice that bribed radio stations to play certain songs. Since that practice was made illegal, the rich labels have maintained their control of the public airwaves by feeding money and predetermined hits to the radio stations through the conduit of third-party promotional companies that pass on much of the money to the stations. In the last two years, though, as deregulated consolidation has compressed the broadcast industry to a few gigantic holding companies, ties to the independent promoters have weakened, and even been broken outright. Spitzer's crusade is welcome, in my opinion, but possibly too late to uncover large-scale corruption.