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Radio Broadcasting and Its Effect on the Diversity of Music 3


During the 1940s through the 1960s, trade magazines such as Billboard and Radio and Records (both U.S. publications), Music Week (UK), and Music and Media (Europe) published weekly music airplay charts. While some of these charts printed the total number of plays a track received, a complex weighting procedure usually determined the ranking. Airplay on stations with more listeners counted for more. Music tracks broadcasted more times across many stations, large and small, could be beaten to the top of the airplay chart by tracks played less but aired consistently on stations with more listeners. As more stations went on air and the demand for more music remained constant, fees for music use increased.

In the decades after World War II, radio actually grew in popularity due to a number of factors, while, at least initially, the diversity that grew out of local programming waned. There is some debate about who created the format that became known as "Top 40" (the forty favorite hits played over and over), but many media historians credit Todd Storz, then station manager of KOWH in Omaha, Nebraska, with this innovation.

Billboard top ten singles, Jan 24, 1942

Billboard top ten singles, Jan 24, 1942

Sanyo 8S-P3 Transistor Radio

Sanyo 8S-P3 Transistor Radio

As early as 1949, Storz noticed that jukebox users tended to select the same discs again and again. Applying this principle to radio, he developed a format in which the most popular (that is, bestselling) records received more plays. Although the Top 40 radio format predated rock and roll, it came into its own once teenagers' economic power was fully appreciated, as it could deliver teen-targeted commodities to a ready market. Another new invention-the portable transistor radio, which allowed young people to hear their favorite songs wherever they went-also boosted demand for rock and roll music, and vice versa. Rather than dying out, as proponents of television predicted it would, radio became the medium of the youth of the United States. Stations that wanted to remain viable had to abandon the older music that had done so well in the 1940s and change over to the Top 40 format.

The change to the Top 40 format did not sit well with many musicians who had played in big bands or in-house radio orchestras. With the encouragement of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Congress launched hearings in 1959 into whether rock radio stations were guilty of payolaThe illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing this information."-the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing this information. The hearings destroyed the careers of several key DJs, most notably Alan Freed.

 

Take a look at the Documentary videos 1 of 3 on Alan Freed:

Alan Freed

Alan Freed

 Alan Freed Part 1/3

Alan Freed Part 1/3 [ 00:00-00:00 ]

Alan Freed Part 2/3

Alan Freed Part 2/3 [ 00:00-00:00 ]

Alan Freed Part 3/3

Alan Freed Part 3/3 [ 00:00-00:00 ]

FM Transmitter Room

FM Transmitter Room

While the Congressional hearings and the bad publicity did not kill rock and roll, as ASCAP might have hoped, the result was that DJs lost considerable control over music policy that they had had before the hearings. Radio station managers took over, tightening their stations' music policies. Playlists also became tighter, ostensibly to prevent abuse, although some critics observed later that payola had just moved from the individual DJs to the program directors. The principle of "format" radio, or of "narrow (as opposed to broad) casting" to specifically targeted audiences, was extended through the advent of FM radioFrequency Modulation Radio is a type of radio broadcasting using high fidelity sound waves over broadcast radio. to a plethora of new formats, each with a subtly different musical or audience emphasis (Keith 1987; Halper 1991; Scott 1996).

Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog"

The lyrics are about the animal "hound dog" and how it's no friend of Presley's because he's often crying, is not high class, and has never caught a rabbit.

Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog"

The lyrics are metaphorically about a "man," Although she refers to him as a hound dog, with lines such as "Daddy I know, you ain't no real cool cat" and "you ain't lookin' for a woman, all you're lookin' for is a home" she is speaking about a man.