Broadcasting Telecasting (Jul-Sep 1959)

should play" and albums "you should play" — not orders, but instructions. There are, at other stations, variations of the "you should play" alternatives. Some stations supply specific lists from which the deejays can make their "free" choices. Deejays' Responsibility • By no means do all stations transfer the selection process to committees. The Storz Stations, one of the most successful independent groups, feels selection is the province of the deejay, and that the management role is to make sure that overall objectives and policies are served intelligently by the music that is chosen. "All Storz stations," says Executive VP George W. Armstrong, "attempt to schedule the deejays on no more than one show per day. Thus they are free to spend the balance of their time auditioning records, selecting what will be aired and preparing the material or chatter best fitted to the music. This also affords the deejay an opportunity to 'balance' his show and takes him out of the 'grab and spin' variety of radio performer." Deejays at the Knorr station group are given similar latitude within the limits of station policy. But at another major independent groups, officials say firmly that "our management picks all the records." Peter Potter, whose Juke Box Jury used to be a network show and now is taped at KTTV (TV) Los Angeles and syndicated nationally by NTA, takes a different tack on how it should be worked. In his book the deejay should heed management's preferences last if at all — because, he says, the chances are that these represent what the manager's wife or kids want to hear. Special precautions • The freedomwithin-reason approach does not necessarily reflect management blindness to the possibilities of pressures being applied to get records played (although some operators say they have had no experience with such a thing). Some, like KFWB, go so far as to write antipayola clauses into their deejays' contracts. More often they recognize some benefits along with the dangers, trust their employes to know the difference — and stand ready to fire if the situation gets out of hand. "With radio so important to the economic success of record companies," says Storz' Mr. Armstrong, "there are naturally going to be some in that industry who will go to great lengths to insure the playing of a record. However, most companies engage only in legitimate public relations with our program directors and personalities. They invite our people to lunch or dinner and in the process sell themselves and their new releases. "We feel this kind of record com 44 (SPECIAL REPORT) pany activity is both acceptable and even desirable. However, if the selling process becomes pressure or bribery, we are most emphatically opposed. Stations who permit their personnel to be bought are courting disaster — to their audience, their integrity and finally to their pocketbooks. Gift of television sets, expense-paid vacations, boats, cars and what-have-you are clearly as much a bribe as outright cash. Storz policy expressly forbids our people from accepting any such gratuities, and we have had virtually no trouble in making it stick." Small-station problem • Even among stations who take the most elaborate precautions against payola there is a feeling that record promoters perform valuable services, aside from the free records they supply. This, of course, does not apply to all stations. Many of the smaller ones don't get even free records, or, as one operator put it, "have to fight like hell to get on the free list." It is hard for these neglected stations, who usually can least afford to buy their own music, to understand why companies that send out 3,000 copies of a single release can be so blind — or deaf — to the needs of smaller outlets. Don't these stations influence record buyers too? Obviously they do. Their problem has been explored by many experts. Howie Leonard of WLOB Portland. Me., who incidentally calls himself a "musicaster" rather than deejay, could be writing the majority opinion for the little stations when he says that, although he's not a victim of the system himself, it probably could be licked in some fashion such as this: "Distributors, record companies and publishers: Bring your mailing lists up to date. At least twice a year, send out questionaires to management for a revision of deejay personnel at the station. . . . Besides, who needs five copies of a record? Why are records sent to every deejay on the staff? Why not send them to the program director only, and thereby service more stations." Other services • Extra records, not only for broadcast use but in greater quantities when needed, represent one of the company "services" that are cited by favored stations and promoters alike. "If we say we like a record and need 10 copies." says a prominent West Coast broadcaster, "they'll get them to us even if it means flying them out from New York." Other testimony indicates that the number could be multiplied and the record companies, if the need and the station were important enough, would still be happy to oblige. Promoters say that sometimes the situation is reversed and deejays perform a service for them by not playing records. "If they don't like them, they won't play them," says Norman Greer, executive director of advertising and sales promotion for Dot Records. "Friendship helps, but very seldom will a deejay play a record out of friendship if he doesn't think his listeners will like it. And we don ,. want them to. If the deejays turn down our records we're happy because this lets us know we're on the wrong track and we can change." One recording company executive, it is said, carries this reasoning to the extreme of advising deejays to steer clear of his own records when he thinks they're bad, on the theory that plays alone won't sell a stiff. Truth is a Virtue • One of the promotor "services" mentioned most frequently by broadcasters is one that many people take for granted in any business. "They don't lie" is the tenor of this tribute. The rationale, hard to dispute, is that record pluggers know they would get caught and forevermore be suspect if they let their enthusiasm bruise the truth in promoting a bad record. Most program men, like the Westinghouse group's Program Manager Bill Kaland, feel that "record people should be welcome at the station. They have ideas on talent and programming, for instance, and when we need an artist for a special appearance they can arrange it or make the introductions for us. They're service people, essentially, and while it's part of their business to get their records played, it's a part of radio's business to play the records it wants to play." On the same theme, Executive VP Herbert Greenspon of Columbia Records (who finds "some good" and "some bad" practices in the broadcasting and recording business relationship but prefers not to discuss the bad) points out the helpfulness of promotion men in keeping jocks abreast of doings in other markets, supplying background on artists and records for on-air chatter purposes, and otherwise helping the discspinners do a better job. To these may be added such diverse and generally undisputed services as contest ideas, promotional material for station use, background reports and personal-appearance arrangements. One Last Service • Buddy Basch, a free-lance promotion man, reviewed these and added a few additional items to the list of promoter services in a speech to the deejay convention in Miami: ". . . Service is our business. . . . We don't want you fellows to play what you don't like — what doesn't fit your BROADCASTING, August 31, 1959