THE SHOWBIZ SCANDAL
Welcome to another show which looks into the dark corners where no light shines due to those who wish things to be hidden from public gaze. All too often with the aid of 'gagging' procedures legal or otherwise, certain individuals often supported by others lie, cheat and mislead others into thinking they cannot do any wrong, and we here look into those corners and extract the real truth they don't want revealed.
On this month's show we are looking into the PAYOLA SCANDAL that was thought to have gone away. This involved the terrible and unethical 'paying to play' on the radio playlists, bribing a DJ to play certain record releases involving artistes, which is influencing the programme content and invariably the pop charts.
This was at the time, known as the 'brown envelope in the newspaper' move usually done in a cafe. The Company Agent for the record company would meet in the out-of-town cafe and leave his paper with the DJ or radio rep' and walk out after completing the transaction.
Payola was common in the Big Band era of the 1920's and happened regularly up to the 1960's. Radio stations were eager to get into this.
The bubble did burst and court cases followed.
Another system was the record shops and when a record company knew which shops were sending their sales results to the chart compilers, they targeted them with records so that their artist would fall somewhere in the chart even though they had not really achieved fame at all, not on any level. And how are the big record moguls grabbing the big dividends? are they working the system so as to disadvantage others and keep their so-called celebrities on the 'gravy train'
Is it happening with the digital age? streaming, spotify and online distribution companies etc? go and have a listen to this show and find out.
CLICK HERE www.mixcloud.com/LargeAcresTriangle/to-the-point-show-2/