to be successful should keep an eye on his priorities. As far as Im concerned, music is first; but I feel just as strongly that the jock is second. A very strong second (Hall, 122) This illustrates the point of the DJ personality being the main focus of the listeners attentions. As movers and shakers of early rock and roll, disk jockeys choose which records they played, and how many times they played them. The law states that it is a federal crime for any radio or television station to accept or agree to accept money, services, or anything of value for broadcasting any material without disclosing acceptance or agreement to accept (Smith, 54). Over the years, various payola scandals actually helped many artists recording careers; at the same time helped to end the careers of many disk jockeys. Unfortunately, in radio, the guilt of a few reflects on the mass. Throughout the years, even in spite of many Grand Jury investigations, payola has not been abolished. Playlists are extremely tight, and the need to get a record on the playlist is huge (Passman, 87). As long as this keeps going on, record companies are forced to use whatever means possible to break through those barriers. I guess in some ways, this leads to payola. In others, it could lead to psychological warfare between to program directors and record companies. It is normal practice for record companies to hire people into the radio business just to influence the minds of higher management (Passman, 32). It has been debated whether or not payola is even an effective tool to promote records in the first place. Critics of payola claim that considering the total picture of the industry, it has relatively small usage for two major reasons. First, the fact that more program directors are more concerned with playing records. Money cannot influence them to play what might be bad for the ratings. Secondly, most program directors have their professional pride,...
