Article June 1, 1968 Issue

Signs of the Times

Gordon B. McLendon

Gordon B. McLendon, President The McLendon Corporation in an address given in New York

Earlier [last] year, our 14 radio and television stations began a vigorous campaign in which we urged record manufacturers to put an end to what we felt had become a growing trend in popular music toward lyrics all too often suggestive, vulgar or downright salacious.... We promptly set forth for our station officials even stricter standards governing the broadcasting of new recordings and, moreover, served written notice upon all record manufacturers, both by letter and in trade publications, that our stations could and would no longer tolerate such smut put to music....

Radio stations which play popular music are often the most important single influence upon the minds of children when they reach the age of nine, ten or eleven. Radio then becomes steadily more influential with these children through each additional year of those hazy, indistinct and difficult conflicts of the young mind struggling through the teens toward young adulthood....

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