Word: payola
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...fractured English of the pop-music world, "payola" is whatever the guy or doll in search of a hit slips to the guy or doll who can make one. Performers, writers and publishers and their song pluggers pass payola to A & R (artists and repertory) chiefs, who decide what the record companies will record; the companies, in turn, spread payola around to selected disk jockeys. If the custom is fully understood in the trade, it is rarely discussed outside it. But last week Singer Frank Sinatra fired a telegram from Hollywood (a town with its own brand of payola...
...Madison Avenue operatives is the custom of the free plug, or "plugola." A TV comic, disk jockey or M.C. slips a brand name into his patter, e.g., "They said I was drunk, but it was all relative-Old Grand-Dad," and he or his gagwriter can count on the "payola"-a case or two of whisky in the next delivery. Offenses have occurred most persistently on the Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Arthur Godfrey, Steve Allen and Robert Q. Lewis shows; yet the networks fear to order their stars to stop the practice...
...Baylos threat may succeed in scaring minor offenders away from free-plugging, but the big-timers will undoubtedly go right on stocking their cellars and larders with the old payola...
...ultimate goal, where clearance (by payment to publishers' societies ASCAP and BMI) was necessary for permission to play a song on the air; a world where cut-ins (giving a performer a share of a song's profits), hot stoves (open bribes) and other forms of payola were standing operating procedure; a world of concern with P.D. (public domain, the graveyard, or seventh heaven, where tunes land when their copyrights run out); of romance (a verb meaning to shower disk jockeys and musicians with attentions in return for performances...
Writer for Free. The radio & TV networks approve the arrangement between Schlockmeisters and giveaways. They are not so sure about another facet of the business known as the "payola." Originally, the payola was a simple expression of gratitude. If a TV comic used a brand name in a joke (e.g., "Your hair looks like you combed it with a Waring mixer"), he would be likely to receive a Waring mixer in the next mail. But Schlockmeisters are not always content to wait until a comic thinks up a joke on his own. To speed matters along, they may write...