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The Separation of Church and State?

Advertising and programming get divided

In the '50s, the earlier habit of blurring programming and advertising fades for a number of reasons but we'll cite three:

1. Competition from television. Since TV's visuals make it better for comedy and drama, radio starts relying more on music. To maximize effienciency, radio starts dividing its audience up into targetable chunks. TV, afterall, is the ideal medium for reaching the mass audience. If any advertiser wants to reach both the rural Southern mom and the wealthy urban sophisticate, TV is the way. So, recognizing its strengths, radio goes "niche" rather than mass. For the first time, stations adopt formats. (Top 40 is developed in 1953.) Sponsored programs and bands fade because maintaining a coherent format is nearly impossible when advertisers create the programming. Radio from here on out uses music for target marketing. Like race, gender, and education level, musical taste helps type a buyer. The radio formats such as Modern Rock, AOR, and AA that eventually result cater to single genres of music-despite surveys showing that most people like different styles of music-because its the best way to segment "demos."

2. In the late '50s, TV quiz show scandals rock broadcasting. All three TV networks re-organize. The president of CBS decries that everything on CBS be "what it purports to be," even ordering that canned laughter and applause be identified as such. Although most of the outrage is directed at TV, radio plays defense as well (but don't ask us for proof).

3. Rock and roll ideology.

As late as 1947, ABC's radio network could still boast that its station played a variety of music styles. This changed once TV became competition and radio turned to niche, signle-genre formats.