Once in a while an actual flash of reality peeks through the networks national evening news broadcasts. Night before last, the estimable Russ Mitchell had this to report on CBS about the music industry:

“There is more bad news for the record industry this week. CD sales are down 20 percent this year. It's one reason why ambitious musicians no longer dream of winning their first deal with a major label. These days, more of them would rather do it all by themselves, as we hear from Anthony Mason.

ANTHONY MASON reporting:

When the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah recently packaged and shipped its new CD, they released it without a record label. Oh, sure, after their first self-financed album sold more than 200,000 copies, they had plenty of offers from the big labels.

And you said no to them?

Mr. SEAN GREENHALGH (Drummer, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah): Yes.

MASON: Why?

Sean Greenhalgh is the band's drummer.

Mr. GREENHALGH: The question that was asked over and over--that we asked record companies was essentially, `What can you do for us that we can't do for ourselves?'”

Obviously this news flash is at best a better-late-than-never for people well acquainted with music distribution. But for network news programs, it is something of a little milestone. Even the name PITCHFORKMEDIA.COM flashed on the screen, briefly, for a tantalizing fraction of a moment.

Admittedly the networks are in a bind. The Do It Yourself music guys are eating the record labels’ lunch. The record labels have a deep interest in national television and vice versa. The companies that own the television networks and the record labels have so much cross-pollination, if you call it that, going on that they might as well all be joined hip to thigh as some of the conglomerates were until recently. So the networks cannot readily give adequate space/time to DIY music publishing or to any particular brand, even the almost revolutionary Pitchforkmedia. On the other hand, had the broadcast flashed the name on the screen any more quickly, it would have violated prohibitions against subliminal advertising.

Anyway, the larger message got across:

“MASON: So Clap Your Hands members hired their own manufacturer, distributor and marketing company, and instead of the $1 an album they'd typically make from a record company, they'll get about $6 for every copy they sell.

Mr. JEFF TWEEDY (Lead Vocalist, Wilco): Technology has evened the playing field. If the artist can gain more power over the situation, over the economic situation, why wouldn't they take it?

MASON: Jeff Tweedy is the lead singer of the Grammy-winning group Wilco, whose new album "Sky Blue Sky" debuted this month on the Nonesuch label. But Tweedy, like many artists, admits asking himself the question.

Mr. TWEEDY: Do they really deserve that kind of--kind of cut?

MASON: And your answer is?

Mr. TWEEDY: The answer is, it's getting to be a really tough call.

MASON: Because the record companies aren't moving albums the way they used to. CD sales plummeted 20 percent the first three months of this year. Empty shelves are all you'll find here at Tower records, what, until December, was one of the most famous music store chains in the country. But Tower went bankrupt. It's now out of business. The abandoned display cases another unsettling symbol of an industry in turmoil.”

Here the broadcast showed graphic footage of rows of empty display cases in the former Tower records brick-and-mortar store. But the point is not just that brick-and-mortar stores get competition from the Internet.

The bigger picture is that the stranglehold of a relatively few big record labels on the music industry has led not to global domination but to – as of now, anyway – some significant decline.

The signs have been there for a while. Remember how well the genuine bluegrass soundtrack of the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou did – after every sizable “country” radio station refused to play it on the air?

As supposedly an old country song has it -- I’ve never heard this song, so it may be apocryphal – “Don’t Give Me No Plastic Saddles, I Want to Feel Real Leather When I Ride.”

Memo to the “music” industry:   actually producing music that people want to hear might conceivably require more than the plastic of economic control, advertising overkill and a steady diet of poptart scandals.

Meanwhile, kudos to Russ Mitchell for allowing a breath of fresh air, newsworthily speaking, on the air.