Abstract

"'Memo to Client Stations:' Radio Consultants, Untrustworthy Labor, and Station Liability in the 1950s Payola Scandals"

Alexander Russo, Catholic University of America (russoa@cua.edu)

The tumult created by the collapse of the radio network system combined with FCC inducements to license more stations resulted in a vacuum of institutional knowledge of successful music programming during the 1950s. While some deejays filled this gap by tapping directly into their audiences’ tastes, this created conflicts of interest with their employers. The cultural conflicts created by the new popularity of rock and roll exacerbated this dynamic because the payola scandals opened stations to legal liability if their staff took bribes. These elements created the opportunity for consultants to attempt to rationalize the daily operations of local stations. Moreover, this was a concerted attempt by a management class to discipline what they perceived as an unruly class of workers, deejays.

Radio historiography has largely examined radio consultants' roles from the 1980s onward but, in fact, they were present from the start of the format era. This approach highlights the ways in which management and labor negotiated cultural, institutional, and financial power. This paper employs archival and trade press materials to trace the everyday practices whereby stations’ outsourced their programming decisions to consultants who themselves deployed informational networks to undergird and justify their decisions. While deejays resisted these efforts, they ultimately proved unsuccessful in the face of the institutional and regulatory forces of the era. Finally, in highlighting the role of consultants, this paper also demonstrates how the “localism” enshrined in radio legislation was undercut through the influence of programmers who operated far from the stations they advised.