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In the 1970s, radio as a medium started to undergo a process of
centralization. One major cause of this change was a new set of new
techniques in the advertising industry. Radio stations previously
made most of their money selling advertising time directly to local
businesses. In the ‘70s, large advertising agencies shifted their focus
toward branding of national products and businesses; agencies used
radio as a medium for this branding, brokering time on local stations.
A radio station targeting a specific market – e.g. the African American
community in a big city – was especially useful in branding and pushing
a specific product toward a specific demographic.
In order to work with this new centralized advertising system (and
of course, make much more money than selling cheap ad time to
tiny local businesses), radio centralized control of its own content.
Station ownership and formats changed such that there was reduced
overlap and competition for specific local markets. Within stations
themselves, the role of the Program Director became much more
significant – PDs ended up strictly dictating the content / songs that
got air time. Individual DJs were able to maintain their own personas
but had very little control over which records they played and when
they played them. A station as a whole (especially a dominant one
that reached a specific demographic in a large market) versus an
individual DJ, became much more important in
“breaking”
a record
to a large audience.
The centralization of radio made it extremely difficult for a small
production on a local record label to get any play (and correspon-
dingly to have any sales / commercial success). In the ‘60s, an artist
or label owner could do favors for a DJ in return for play (e.g. do
’record hops’ or engage in some form of payola by giving the DJ
money, alcohol, etc.). It was possible for a small artist on a local label
to have a local hit, selling upwards of 25,000 copies. In the ‘70s,
especially in larger markets, small record labels had little chance of
getting any play without significant financial backing.
All these changes made large record labels much more important –
they became almost the sole providers of content to radio stations.
Large labels had the backing to fund A&R and promotions depart-
ments that could work with these new larger radio entities. Labels
even tightened up their own manufacturing methods– when pro-
moting a song, a label would press mostly promotional copies of
a single with the same track on both sides to send to stations. This
