Promoter Sponsorship Buys Time With Clinton at Forum

Money talks in the music promotion business, where record labels and independent consultants pony up millions of dollars each year to influence airplay at radio stations across the U.S.

Among the perks being served up by a promoter at this year’s Radio & Records Convention, the broadcast industry’s biggest trade show, is a chance to meet former President Clinton.

Clinton’s keynote address at the Century Plaza Hotel on June 15 will be sponsored by the nation’s biggest independent promoter, Chicago-based Jeff McClusky. For his money, $50,000, McClusky will get his company logo flashed on a screen during Clinton’s speech as well as the opportunity to invite a handful of music clients to a brief handshake and photo session with the former leader of the free world.

McClusky makes millions of dollars each year pitching records to radio stations for the nation’s five biggest record conglomerates. McClusky is on retainer with most record labels and maintains what he calls “influential relationships” with more than 100 individual radio stations to whom he pays annual stipends of as much as $100,000 a year.

McClusky rewrote the rules of the promotion game two years ago when he cut a $1-million pact with Atlanta-based Cumulus Media for exclusive access to their programming decision-makers for a number of their 271 stations. He recently put in a $20-million bid to get into business with Clear Channel Communications, the biggest radio conglomerate in the nation.