RE: payola, 1960

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On Tue, 20 May 1997, Donna Halper wrote:

> I think the stations who didn't cover it were the ones who had a d.j. in
> trouble.  Nobody from WCOP was implicated, as I recall... But it certainly
> became the butt of jokes and a number of TV comedians did skits about it--
> that much I do recall...  But ABC, which was making huge bucks from Dick
> Clark, did not mention (as I recall) his being asked to testify, and the
> entire thing was downplayed greatly... 
 
But who, back then, got their news mainly from ABC News?  The other
networks probably didn't mind talking about Dick Clark.  As I recall, he
had a rather good teenager advice column in This Week magazine, and he
gave it up, supposedly to avoid the appearance of impropriety.  I wondered
at the time what having a newspaper column had to do with anything.  But I
suspect he wanted to give up the column and that was the excuse.  Or
perhaps the magazine wanted to drop him, and that was the story for public
consumption.

I used to like to read Dick Clark's column in the Sunday newspaper ("This
Week" was the magazine section of the Sunday Herald.).  But I was starting
to get tired of the way he never seemed to acknowledge that anyone's
parents could be in the slightest bit wrong, no matter how bad the
situation the letter writer described.  His solution always seemed to be
to talk with your parents and tell them how you feel and reason with them.
Even when it was obvious that the parents in question were thoroughly
unreasonable.

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  A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                          617/367-0468
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