Poster Boy for Radio Station Payola

Feb. 16, 2006 — -- Dave Universal always knew he was going to be in radio. When he was 15, he got his first job as an intern at 98.5 WKSE, a Buffalo, N.Y., radio station owned by Entercom Communications. From there, Universal worked his way up to eventually become the station's program director.

Universal says WKSE was very successful and broke ratings records while he was program director. "We did really well and made the company a lot of money," he said.

Last year, Universal was fired in the wake of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's investigation into payola -- a practice many authorities would call bribes -- money and gifts given to radio stations by record companies and middlemen to play songs.

Entercom issued a statement to ABC News that stated that Universal was fired from WKSE "for violation of Entercom's conflict of interest policy, which clearly states that employees are not permitted to accept anything of value from any business that we deal with, including record companies."

Universal says he has now been labeled "the poster boy for payola." But he says he was only building relationships with the record labels to get as much money as he could for the station.

"If I worked for a company who said 'Don't bring in any money,' I wouldn't have brought in any money," he said. "If I worked for a company who said don't go on any trips, I wouldn't have went on any trips. I did what I was doing for my company."

Universal claims that he was actually rewarded for his success and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he brought in from record companies. "I was Entercom's golden boy for a long time," he said.

Internal e-mails obtained by ABC News show Sony executives complaining about Universal's practices. One reads, "It cost us over $4,000 to get Franz on WKSE" -- Universal's station. That e-mail referred to songs by the band Franz Ferdinand. The e-mail goes on to say that by adding two more songs by Good Charlotte and Gretchen Wilson, the total amount paid to Universal increased to "almost $5,000 in two weeks for overnight airplay."