Turning the Tables

He is friend, companion, confidant. He is teacher, counselor, shopping guide. He is entertainer, public servant. He serves the housewife, the handicapped, those who toil by night. His audiences accept him as one of the family. They write him; they hang on his words. He has great responsibility. He lives up to it.

This was no tribute to the country doctor, but an ode to the disk jockey--the grey-flannelmouth who has all but swallowed up U.S. radio. It was the keynote of the first national convention of pop-music disk jockeys, sponsored in Kansas City, Mo. by young (33) Radio Chain Boss Todd Storz (TIME, June 4, 1956).

But before the 850 jockeys returned last week to jobs that pay them from $2,500 to well over $100,000 a year, they struck some more jarring notes.

Lament. Amid some of their own praise for themselves ("A true disk jockey is a pretty humble man, even though it might not show through"), the spin-and-spielers set up a lament about such bosses as Host Storz, a onetime disk jockey whose four-station chain (Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City, Mo., New Orleans, Miami) makes big profits out of relentless plugging of the "Top 40" pop tunes. They protested that this formula is turning the disk jockey into an automaton, stripping him of the "personality" that is his stock in trade.

But the most jangling discord came from spade-bearded Mitch Miller, director of Columbia Records' popular division and sometime oboist, who usually seeks the disk jockeys' favor. Lectured Miller:

"You caused radio to jump out of bed and click its heels while the public was dressing for the funeral. Then you went and abdicated your programing to the 8-to-14-year-olds, to the pre-shave crowd that makes up 12% of the country's population and zero percent of its buying power--once you eliminate ponytail ribbons, Popsicles and peanut brittle. Youth must be served--but how about some music for the rest of us?"

Ovation. Listeners over 14, said Miller, are rebelling by turning off radios and programing for themselves with phonographs. He snorted at the jockeys' attempt to justify what they play by arguing that they only "give them what they want." Asked he: "Does the demand for a record come because you play it first, or do the kids demand it because they find it in the Top 40? If the Top 40 is an election, will somebody please blow the whistle for the Honest Ballot Association?" Miller's prescription for foresighted station owners: "Guide sub-teen tastes so that youngsters will grow up with a station as its "permanent audience,' instead of outgrowing it altogether. As Miller finished his harangue the disk jockeys bounced up to give him the convention's only standing ovation

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