THE WAY THE MUSIC DIED PBS Airdate: Thursday, May 27, at 9 P.M., 60 minutes In the recording studios of Los Angeles and the boardrooms of New York, they say the record business has been hit by a perfect storm: a convergence of industry-wide consolidation, Internet theft, and artistic drought. The effect has been the loss of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and that indefinable quality that once characterized American pop music. “It’s a classic example of art and commerce colliding and nobody wins,” says Nic Harcourt, music director at Los Angeles’s KCRW-FM. “It’s just a train wreck.” In...
