Radio broadcasting

As highlighted in Chapter 1, radio played the major role in music distribution from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. At the time, the music industry was primarily a broadcasting industry that considered record selling merely as a side business. In the US, the business model was based on advertising income that financed live radio music shows with popular dance music orchestras – think of the infamous Camel Caravan Show with Benny Goodman and His Orchestra sponsored by the tobacco giant Reynolds from 1936‒39 (Tschmuck 2012: 93‒4).

However, radio broadcasting lost its influence on the music industry with the advent of commercial television in the 1950s and 1960s, as a result of which advertising revenue was reallocated from radio to television. Nevertheless, radio became an important platform for record labels to promote their new releases. Indeed, even today radio airplay is still the most important tool to sell music in physical and digital formats.

The introduction in 1953 of the top-40 radio format by radio stations owner Todd Storz inaugurated a new era (see Shaw 1974: 66). Until the early 1950s, AM radio programmes consisted of pre-scheduled and ad-sponsored blocks including radio dramas, shows and music. Storz and his program director Bill Stewart observed that the more people heard a song from the jukebox, the more likely they would buy a record. Thus, Storz programmed his radio stations like jukeboxes, playing all day long the 40 most popular songs of the hit parade, which provided a conducive environment for advertising. The top-40 format was a considerable economic success and became a blueprint for other radio stations within and outside the US. The top-40 format later changed to contemporary hit radio (CHR) and other radio formats such as album oriented radio (AOR), middle-of-the-road radio (MOR), adult contemporary (AC) and eventually format radio emerged even for classical music and oldies.

With the invention of format radio, the decision-making process of music programming shifted from radio DJs to program committees and program directors. Record labels again tried to influence the programming of radio stations by employing independent music promoters.