Puttin' On the Hits

In the post-radio, post-CD era, there's no surer way to promote a song than to get Alexandra Patsavas to play it on TV

SCREENBEAT

With CD sales falling and radio formats calcifying, bands are popping up in the most unexpected places—selling iPods in commercials, playing gigs at advertising agencies, and scoring prime-time TV. If closing-credits sequences are the new American Bandstand, then Alexandra Patsavas is the new Dick Clark. A former rock promoter from Champaign, Illinois, Patsavas works with TV producers to score today's biggest shows, from Grey's Anatomy to the recently retired The O.C. Each week, she pores over hundreds of new releases from emerging and often unheard-of artists (she helped break TV on the Radio, Death Cab for Cutie, and Unkle Bob) to create compilations for writers and producers. "We discuss how music should make the audience feel," she says, "what kind of music will best express the characters, the acting, the costume choices, and all the things that make up the feel of a show." A single broadcast can jolt an artist's sales by thousands of units. "It seems a shame to keep returning to songs and bands that are already familiar," says Patsavas. Thanks to her, the music on TV is always fresh. The plots and dialogue are somebody else's problem.

CAROLYN BIELFELDT