Word: payola
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Such plugs, even when they grow out of genuine comedy, bring payoffs (sometimes known as payola) of varying kinds; the My Sin plug reportedly was worth more than $1,000. Sometimes the payoff goes to the performers, but usually to writers or other employees of a show. Last week the Federal Communications Commission belatedly began to investigate TV's predilection for the plug. The announcement aroused widespread dismay. Moaned Actor Walter Slezak: "Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say 'Oh, my God!' on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy...
...through open windows that were supposedly taken through clear plate glass. There is the blatant, organized sale of plugs, i.e., set under-the-counter fees for mentioning firms or products on the air (the field in which the devious schlockmeister works). There is TV's own form of "payola," which means that relatively few songs are played on the air unless the song publisher is willing to share performance fees with a production official. Not all these practices are confined to TV. But nowhere else have glossy Madison Avenue hucksterism and clamorous carnival showmanship combined with such crass results...
Lest the picture of egocentric, overblown disk jockeys sketched in TIME [June 8] be thought typical by sponsors, neighbors and the Internal Revenue bureau, it should be categorically stated that most of us are (relatively) sober, mildly hard-working types, quite outside the pale of the play-for-payola crown...
...Payola, a way of winning the disk jockeys' favor. See SHOW BUSINESS...
...disk jockeys' convention was not all payola. The sponsoring (Omaha-based ) Storz radio chain had, after all, slipped the word "seminar" into the official title. The jocks heard lectures on such subjects as "News Should Be New," "Do We Live and Die By Ratings?" (answer: yes), "Are Live Radio Commercials Dead?" (no, they just sound that...