CONCLUSION

Ultimately, the payola  hearings were only ostensibly about the issue of business ethics the more fundamental concern revolved around the public's trust in its media gatekeepers. the pervasive and quasi-personnel nature of mass media created a bond between the producers and consumers of culture, but few in the latter realized they were in an inferior position in terms of managing content. the disk jockeys claimed they could not afford to let payola rather than the listeners dictate their music choices since playing truly bad music would destroy their popularity. even this defense troubled the industry as it suggested the jocks allegiance to the customers was stronger than to their employers. the very charges against them signaled a dangerous independence from control by program director and station management. this became justification for the top 40 format where records were played in tight rotation leaving little room for disk jockeys to improvise. this was supposed to make payola useless since the disk jockey didn't choose the music played instead this format intensified competition among record companies for airplay making payola even more essential and simplifying the process; instead of paying off five or six disk jockeys at a station label and distributors had to get to the program director

As the scandal unfolded the sense of broken trust centered less on the legalities of commercial bribery and more of the supposed breach of faith by individual disk jockeys pushing bad music on an impressionable audience, the congressional hearings threshed out the practices in the industry which affected the taste and listening habits of all American - particularly teenagers the disk jockeys were fall guys for a system they did not create. Harris admitted as much by saying the broadcasting industry as a whole was not to be condemned "only those acts that are contrary to the public interests and those involved.