TV Guide (December 10, 1955)

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Tin Pan Alley’s New Juke Box Composers, Record Companies, Singers Hail TV As Potent Maker Of Song Hits Tin Pan Alley has discovered a new juke box. It’s smaller than the old ones, without chrome or bubbling lights or coin slots; but for turning songs into hits and singers into celebrities, there’s nothing like it. Best of all, this juke box—the TV set—is found in millions of American homes. Today this concept of juke-box TV is basic in the music industry. Few songs are written, much less recorded, unless they first satisfy the question, “What can we do with it on TV?” TV’s influence on American songs began in earnest with “Dragnet,” the dum de dum dum theme Walter 4 Schumann wrote for Jack Webb’s 1949 radio program. It tailed Sgt. Friday to TV, burst forth two years ago as a popular song. Since then, things haven’t been the same. Control of TV time to exploit songs has turned sideline publishers like Disney into major music houses. TV has furnished a new source of recording artists (Gale Storm). It has turned comics into best-selling conductors (Jackie Gleason), made songwriters of strange bedfellows (Superman, Bishop Sheen). TV script demands have brought to the fore the “story song,” on which the entire plot turns. Within five days recently, via Judy Garland on CBS and “Our Town” on NBC, TV may have super