It was refreshing to read earlier this week that the RECORDING ACADEMY's new chief, DEBORAH DUGAN, had little interest in commandeering a few minutes of stage time in the middle of the GRAMMY AWARDS as her predecessor, NEIL PORTNOW, traditionally did. "I won’t be there unless there’s something important for me to say to the 22 million people watching," she told the LOS ANGELES TIMES. But with the Grammys little more than a week away, it turns out she won't be there for a different reason. The Academy's board placed Dugan on administrative leave Thursday, citing "concerns... including a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team." So much for what had seemed like a smooth transition from the controversial end of Portnow's reign, and so much for a smooth lead-up to a Grammy ceremony where the Academy hoped to bounce back from a couple turbulent years in which it had been accused of repeatedly slighting women. And so much, it would seem, for any chance of the Grammys taking the lead in a wider effort across Hollywood to prove the entertainment industry takes diversity seriously. There is, instead, one more internal mess to clean up. Dugan was the Academy's first female CEO and had sounded all the right notes about the organization's priorities coming out of the "Step Up" era. Is it a positive sign that the board took the allegation of a female staffer seriously and acted decisively, even with the Grammys looming? Or is it a red flag that it acted quickly against its first female boss? Or was it a coup? As of now, we know little about what happened, or what's alleged to have happened, or when. A source told VARIETY that "a lot of the board members couldn't stand her." An LA Times source said she "didn’t fit in, from the get-go." Which, it should be pointed out, has nothing to do with misconduct. The Grammys are in nine days, and it seems safe to say we'll know at least a little more by then. Whether anyone from the Academy will have something to say to 22 million people watching next Sunday is, at this point, anybody's guess... Variety writer CHRIS WILLMAN posted a snarky tweet Tuesday about hearing songs by two women back-to-back on Los Angeles country radio station GO COUNTRY 105 and wondering if the station can get "fined for that." He was referring to a widespread policy at country radio of not playing two women in a row because listeners, apparently, wouldn't stand for it. (Seriously. This has come up a lot in the past few years after and every time it does, I feel compelled to add "seriously." Because, um, seriously.) Willman got a reply from whoever runs the Twitter account of 98 KCQ, a country station in Saginaw, Mich., admitting, "We cannot play two females back to back. Not even LADY ANTEBELLUM or LITTLE BIG TOWN against another female." Needless to say, this then ensued. The KCQ tweet was quickly deleted, and whoever runs the station's Twitter account (or maybe it was now someone else) wrote a bunch of tweets trying to take its cowboy booted foot out of its mouth, without ever quite denying what that mouth had said. This other tweet, amazingly, is still there on KCQ's page. For fun, I listened to KCQ for an hour and a half Thursday night. Twenty-five songs, four women's voices. And no woman within 15 minutes of airtime of another woman. Maybe this isn't any country station's actual policy. Maybe it's just what they do. SAMANTHA BEE, take it away... Congrats to MARIAH CAREY, the NEPTUNES and the rest of this year's inductees in the SONGWRITERS HALL OF FAME. Did you know Carey co-wrote 18 of her 19 chart-topping singles? If not, why not?... And congrats to STEREOGUM founder SCOTT LAPATINE, who, in a grandmaster-level TAYLOR SWIFT chess move, has bought his site back from BILLBOARD parent VALENCE MEDIA. Bloggers can own their masters, too, just like the pop stars they love. Valence also unloaded SPIN, to private equity firm NEXT MANAGAMENT PARTNERS... It's FRIDAY—the first major release day of 2020—and that means new music from the late MAC MILLER, HALSEY, LITTLE BIG TOWN, 070 SHAKE, EMINEM (surprise!), ALGIERS, MARCUS KING, BLUEFACE, ANTI-FLAG, CRITERIA, MURA MASA, DUSTIN LYNCH, AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD, STUNNA 4 VEGAS, YUNG PINCH, PINEGROVE, INNOCENCE MISSION, OF MONTREAL, SONS OF APOLLO, HOLY F***, BLEED THE SKY, COURTEENERS, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN/SHANKAR MAHADEVAN/ZAKIR HUSSAIN, VALERY PONOMAREV, DELLA MAE, G. LOVE, RAEKWON, GABRIELLE APLIN, CHELSEA CUTLER and BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB... RIP LINDA SHAVER-GLEASON, CHRIS DARROW and DICK WHITEHOUSE... MusicREDEF is taking Monday off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. See you Tuesday.