ADORNO, LAZARSFELD & THE PRINCETON RADIO PROJECT

by Susan Cavin, Ph.D. (Adjunct) Professor of Sociology New York University

The story of how CBS radio was transformed into network television began with three men in a brewery in Newark, New Jersey in 1937.i Between 1937 and 1939, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant to Princeton University to set up the Office of Radio Research in Newark with psychologist Frank Stantonii and Hadley Cantril iii as coInvestigators; and sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld as Project Director.iv Two of them, Stanton and Lazarsfeld, consulted for the Office of Wartime Information (O.W.I.) during WW II. Frank Stanton got his Masters (1932) and his doctorate (1935) in psychology from Ohio State.v Studying ways to measure radio audiences, he invented a kind of forerunner of the Nielsen audiometer. Dr. Stantons device could be installed inside a radio receiver to register what programs listeners were tuning in. vi By 1937, Frank Stanton was already the right-hand man of William S. Paley, the tycoon who built the Columbia Broadcasting System empire from a handful of struggling radio stations in 1928. From 1946 to 1973, they operated as probably the greatest team in the history of broadcasting vii Stanton and sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld invented the fabled program analyzer while at the Princeton Radio Project: By 1938, Dr. Stanton had become CBSs research director with a staff of 100.With the social scientist Paul F. Lazarsfeld, he invented a device called the program analyzer, which enabled CBS to track the responses of 100 listeners to a radio program, gauging their likes and dislikes. CBS used it for a half-century. Dr. Stanton remained with the network during World War II while serving as a consultant to the Secretary of War, the Office of War Information and the Office of Facts and Figures. viii In 1946, Frank Stanton became president of CBS for the next thirty years. Dr. Stanton reorganized CBS into separate divisions for radio, television and laboratories. ix During the early days of television when Mr. Paley clung to the idea

that network radio would remain CBSs meal ticket, Dr. Stanton realized that the companys prosperity would rest with, television and diversification into areas like the long-playing phonograph, whose growth he guided after its development by Peter Goldmark.x (See the organizational chart of the Princeton Radio Project, next page.)

Diagram VI-1. Princeton Radio Project, 1937-1939.

Princeton Radio Project

Frank Stanton, CBS Radio, O.W.I.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Columbia University BASR

Hadley Cantril, Orson Welles

1938 radio Invasion from Mars

In 1935, Hadley Cantril and social psychologist Gordon Allport wrote The Psychology of Radio.xi In 1939, Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet and Lazarsfelds wife, Herta Herzog, wrote the classic study of Orson Welles 1938 radio broadcast, Invasion from Mars; A Study in the Psychology of Panic. xii In the Fall of 1937, Paul Lazarsfeld offered sociologist Theodor Adorno his first job in the U.S. with the Princeton Radio Project though Adorno wrote: I did not even know what a radio project was. xiii Lazarsfeld told Adornos mentor, Max

Horkheimer, xiv Director of the Frankfurt School in exile xv he was interested in offering the directorship of the musical part of the Princeton Radio Project to Adorno. Adorno accepted the position and came to the U.S. He took the train everyday from New York to The Princeton Radio Project in Newark. Its headquarters were located in a somewhat improvisatory fashion in an unused brewery. Whenever I traveled there, through the tunnel beneath the Hudson, I imagined myself rather as though I was in Kafkas natural theatre in Oklahoma.xvi Adorno later wrote:

At Lazarsfelds suggestion, I went from room to room and spoke to my colleagues, hearing words such as Likes and Dislikes Study,xvii Success or Failure of a Programmealthough to begin with it meant very little to me.xviii The Office of Radio Research wanted its researchers to describe the likes and dislikes of radio listeners.xix Adorno balked: To like it is almost the same thing as to recognize it. xx Instead, Adorno decided that music on the radio became the model for propaganda...
xxi

In 1938, Adorno

wrote a 161 page study called Music in Radio (1938) for the Princeton Radio Project. xxii Between 1938 and 1941, Adorno wrote three other studies for the Princeton Radio Project; they were:

Plugging Studyxxiii (1939) On Popular Music xxiv and The Radio Symphony (1941) which was published in Lazarsfeld and Stantons book Radio Research (1941). xxv

On the Hit Parade: Thinking is reduced to recall of the familiar

On the Hit Parade, Adorno found: When a popular song was plugged over and over again on American radio, a familiar pattern was recalled. The familiar pattern replaced thinking. With just a few musical notes of a jingle, like the sound of dogfood hitting the bowl, advertisers could produce the desired effect: Oh, theres my favorite show, I better stop what Im doing, and come listen to my show. Thinking was reduced to recall! Adorno thought the ad jingles and constant plugging of a few songs on the Hit Parade infantilized the listener with musical stereotypes
xxvi

Ironically, Ernst Kris

and Hans Speiers came to a similar conclusion about Nazi radio: that simplification and repetition were essential to radio propaganda. Adorno thought: totalitarian radio was assigned to the taskof providing good entertainment and diversionxxvii He was surprised that American radio served the same function: to distract listeners from political reality. Adorno thought about American radio differently from his colleagues at the Princeton Radio Project. Musicserves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to be able to hear the music. xxviii He saw how popular songs on the Hit Parade were mysteriously transformed into fetishized commoditiesxxix by the process of climax and repetition.xxx They all obey the absurd slogan Especially for You. xxxi Since by definition, mass art is mass produced, the listener is deceived into thinking the beautiful woman is singing Especially for You when shes singing to everyone in the anonymous mass. Recognition of the familiar was the essence of mass listening, serving more as an end in itself....Once a formula was successful, the industry plugged the same thing over and over again. The result was to make music into a kind of social cement operating through distraction,displaced wishfulfillment, and the intensification of passivity.
xxxii

Adornos analysis of plugging

songs into the radio hits of the forties prophesied what would happen to American commercial television, film, Broadway theatre and book publishing in the twentieth century: endless repetition of successful formulas, sequels. Jingles (music + ads) produced an emotional response in what Adorno called the victim, like the sound of dropping dog food in a bowl, the dog comes running. Adorno thought commercial radio used standardized pop music to turn individuals into Pavlovs consumer dogs! No longer able to recognize real music, listeners accepted what was given to them, a watered down plastic-muzak. Adornos three studies for the Princeton Radio Project were not exactly what Lazarsfeld had in mind! He was under government pressure to produce useful information about radio listening for the war effort. Adornos Marxist critique of American radio went beyond what governmental consulting allowed. xxxiii Adorno was not invited back to do

more studies for the Office of Radio Research. Instead, he went to Hollywood, which was even more surreal. Ironically, Frankfurt School theorists Adorno and Marcuse, Angela Davis professor at Brandeis University, became cult figures in the 1960s, more popular with American students of the New Left than Lazarsfeld, the methodologist. But during World War II, their positions were reversed. xxxiv We will return to Adornos radio sociology later, but now let us follow the fate of the Princeton Radio Project.

Princeton Radio Project became Columbia University: Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR)
Paul Lazarsfeld inherited the Princeton Radio Project and took it with him to Columbia University in 1940.xxxv In 1944, the Office of Radio Research was renamed the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) at Columbia University. xxxvi Lazarsfeld directed the Princeton Radio Project/Columbia University BASR from 1937-1948. In 1943, Sociology Professor Robert K. Merton, Talcott Parsons student at Harvard, joined the Office of Radio Research staff as Associate Director. Together, Robert Mertonxxxvii and Lazarsfeld wrote Studies in Radio and Film Propaganda in 1943 and The Psychological Analysis of Propaganda in 1944. xxxviii Merton and his research team analyzed the Kate Smith War Bond Radiothon. xxxix Merton published a book on Mass Persuasion in 1946. xl Lazarsfeld pioneered sociological research methods in radio communications, or what Merton called mass persuasion, aimed at what Freud and Jung called the unconscious. Robert Merton invented focus groups at BASRxli while Lazarsfeld developed the methodology of voter opinion polls and how to measure consumer buying habits. But his greatest breakthrough came when he discovered that politics and advertising were both influenced by the same thing (opinion leaders such as clergy) in Who Influences Whom--Its the Same for Politics and Advertising! xlii When Lazarsfeld stepped down as Director in 1948, he stayed on as an Associate Director in the early fifties, along with Robert Merton and Kingsley Davis.xliii

RADIO OVERTOOK PRINT MEDIA DURING WW II

Lazarsfelds Bureaus compared the influence of advertising on both voters and consumers in newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, xliv comic books, xlv and radio . BASR found that radio advertising won the advertising contest during WW II. Table VI-1 ( next page) charts the story of how radio overtook print media in the late 1930s and became the hottest new communications technology during WW II. Lazarsfelds Princeton Radio Project-Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research conducted 125 studies of radio between 1939-1954 compared to only 25 studies of newspapers and magazines. They conducted 20 studies of television in one year, 1953-54, as televisions star was rising in the fifties and radio was on the decline.

Mass Media Studies at Princeton Radio Project & Columbia Univeristy Bureau of Applied Social Research, 1939-1954
140

Radio

120

100

80

60

40

Print

Compare Radio- Print

20

Film Cartoon Newsreel

Comic
1 1

Televsion

Radio Newspaper/Magazines Comparing Print to Radio Cartoons/Comics Film/Newsreels TV

Listening to the Listener

In 1941, Lazarsfeld and Edward Suchman wrote the Initial Report on an Exploratory Study of Coverage by Radio Stations; about (the) kind of audiences government agencies may reach by sponsoring radio programs general listening habits, station and program preference. xlvi Three days before Pearl Harbor, Lazarsfeld and Suchman analyzed What America Listened to on Wednesday, December 4, 1941 in Station Coverage Report.xlvii In 1942, Lazarsfelds Office published A Study of Three Radio Broadcasts Intended to Refute Rumors. xlviii Lazarsfeld analyzed Magazine Reading Before and After Pearl Harbor in 1942 especially with regard to the reading of nonfiction articles concerned with the war.xlix Listening to the Listener. li His wife, Herta Herzog, worked for the BASR from 1941 to 1948; pioneering the field of women and children as radio audiences in American radio studies. In 1941, Herzog also wrote A Comparison of News Programs, Educational Programs and Editorial Policy of Associated and Non-Associated Media comparing 50 radio stations with 50 newspapers.lii Herzog was prolific; she wrote reports on everything from: minority groups in New York City mayoralty elections (1941) liii to daytime serial radio audiences buying habits; liv to selling remedies for stomach troubles and dental tooth powder for dentures (1942).lv Lazarsfeld himself also wrote The Daytime Serial as a Social, Commercial and Research Problem in 1942.lvi In 1943, Herta Herzog analyzed U.S. magazine readership, particularly attitudes toward Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.lvii In 1945, Herzog co-authored War Town Series Report.lviii She wrote a post-war report the social psychology of VD in 1948-49. TableVI-2 (next page) reveals that the number of radio research studies conducted at Princeton-Columbia University (BASR) peaked during WW II, from 1939 to 1944, then declined steadily in the post-war period from 1945 to 1949. In 1950-51, during the Cold War, there was a slight uptick in radio research at Columbia when Voice of America (V.O.A.) contracted BASR to study the impact of V.O.A. radio stations on listeners along the Eastern European perimeter bordering the Soviet Union.
l

He called this type of radio research

Chart 2.Studies of Radio at Princeton & Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research, 1939-1954
25

20 Number of Radio Research Studies

15

10

1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954

0 Year Years, 1939-1954

Lazarsfelds BASR & Office of Wartime Information (O.W.I.)/Voice of America (V.O.A.)

BASR historian Judith Barton wrote in the Guide to the Bureau of Applied Social Research : During the war years the Office was active in governmental research, especially on communications, lix but did not say which agency commisioned Adorno (1939-1941), Lazarsfeld (1939-1948) or Herzogs (1940-1949) analyses of American radio. Only three BASR studies expressly state they were for the Office of War Information (O.W.I.), lx O.S.S.s sister organization. Lazarsfeld wrote two O.W.I. unpublished papers himself; and Herta Herzog wrote the other one for O.W.I. :

1942, Paul Lazarsfeld, Magazine Reading Before and After Pearl Harbor, (For O.W.I., Office of War Information) 9 pp.lxi 1944, Paul Lazarsfeld, Memorandum on the Analysis of Repeated Interviews, (For O.W.I., Office of War Information).lxii 1943 - Herta Herzog, The Negro and the War -- A Preliminary Test of an O.W.I. Pamphlet. Herzog tested an O.W.I. pamphlet called The Negro and the War...aimed at Blacks...that they should strongly support the war effort.lxiii

After WWII, when O.W.I. became the Voice of America (V.O.A.), Columbia Universitys Bureau of Applied Social Research publicly acknowledged writing five Voice of America reports between 1948-1952. The Bureau studied Voice of America radio broadcasts for V.O.A. in north Europe.lxiv Three of the nine Cold War reports mention Voice of America in the title; for example:

The Audience for the Voice of America in Norway, lxv Some Observations on the Testing of Voice of America Programs in Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy and France;lxvi Experimental Project on Identification of Voice of America Listenerslxvii in France, Austria and Finland (1952).

Three other BASR- Voice of America studies mention V.O.A. in their abstract; they are: The Snowball Technique as a Device for Studying Foreign Broadcast Listeners: Abstract: Since the proportion of population listening to V.O.A. broadcasts is small, this report discusses the use of the snowball technique in locating a larger portion of the potential V.O.A. audience. (The snowball technique is a research method in which respondents are asked to list other people they feel would make a relevant contribution to the study. These people are then interviewed by the researchers and the cycle is repeated.)lxviii This report discussed a method of identifying opinion leaders, Lazarsfelds signature concept, among north European radio audiences, especially those on the Scandinavian rim of the then Soviet Union during the Cold War. Some Comments on Problems of Content Analysis as Illustrated by Competitive Broadcasting to Germany overtly mentions Voice of America in its abstract:

Abstract: This paper discusses problems encountered by analysts of the study, Competitive Broadcasting to Germany, which was a study of the content of radio programs broadcast to Germany by V.O.A., BBC and Radio Moscow in 1948-49. Specifically considered are how the analysts dealt with problems regarding classificiation of content of programs, presentation of data obtained and interpretation of data. lxix In 1951 Paul Lazarsfeld himself wrote a 181 report summarizing the

Bureau of Applied Social Researchs studies of Voice of America programs in Sweden, Norway and Germany called: Methodological Considerations in International Broadcasting Research, which he summarized in this way: Methodological considerations include: opinion leadership comparison in urban-rural Sweden; the snowball technique; identifying international audience; Voice of America audience in Norway; content analysis and competitive broadcasting to Germany; testing

Voice of America programs; latent content of broadcasts.lxx

Adorno saw Radio Music as a means of social control

Popular music is objectively untrue and helps to maim the consciousness of those exposed to it. Theodor Adorno lxxi Adornos work for The Princeton Radio Project formed the basis of several classics he would later write about American music.lxxii One of his central arguments was that music affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control,lxxiii according to Tia DeNoras After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Adorno accepted Freuds viewpoint that sexuality was socially controlled, and took it to another level. Adorno theorized that music, like sexuality, was both socially controlled and was a means of social control. He argued that standardized pop music is not music, but is mistaken for music.lxxiv Recently, George Ritzers McDonaldization of Society argued that food, which has been McDonaldized, is mistaken for food. Adorno made this point about American radio music around WW II: His idea that ones hearing, if fed on a diet of the predictable, pre-digested material (musical clich), would regress in the same way that taste and smell regress in the face of a diet of soda pop and soft-textured McFood. Musics commodification made individuals vulnerable to capture bywhatever was served up to them by their chefs (masters)as long as it was laced with the appropriate seasoning.Whereas true music taught its listener how to perceive illogiccontradictionthrough its challenge to critical faculties, false music taught the listener how to relax and enjoy, and how to take pleasure in reliability, in repetition of fetishised objects.they taught the skill of how to adapt to (and enjoy) what was given.lxxv

This type of passivity Adorno believed, provided conditions conducive to authoritarian domination
lxxvi

Music was linked to social control in this way:

certain types of music made people passive. Standardized music turned individuals into passive, silent audience, distracted by distractions. In this way, radio music became a weapon of social control. Adorno had seen it all happen before in Germany, and worried that insidious totalitarian radio might defeat U.S. democracy. He used music as a barometer to measure the amount of democratic or totalitarian tendencies in a society. For democracy to work, it required people who think. Totalitarianism required people to forget how to think and for the young never to learn.lxxvii Adorno used music to think with. Music could, for better or worse, transform consciousness.
lxxviii

For Adorno, music was an aid to critical

consciousness, which is the foundation of democracy. He thought music and art taught people to perceive illogic and to spot contradictions, a necessary skill to maintain democracy. Without music education in schools, lxxixa society cannot produce democratic thinkers, he reckoned. Chart VI-4 (next page) illustrates how social control is achieved by controlling sex, work, music and food, according to several theorists. What Freud said about sexuality, Marx said of work; Adorno music; and Ritzer food.

Chart VI- 4. Theories of Means of Social Control.

Theorist
Freud Marx Adorno Ritzer
Used as Means of

Method/Process
Regression Commodification & Reification of human products Standardization, Conformity & Pseudo-Individuality McDonaldization

Social Control
Sexuality Work Music Fast Food

End Result for Individual Infantile State Fetishism of commodities mistakes false music for music Mistakes McFood For food

Adorno applied Marxs idea of commodification and Freuds idea of regression to music. He agued that standardized radio music regressed people into an infantile, passive state. By WW II, radio music had become commodified and fetishized. Adorno argued that standardized pop music was not music, but was mistaken for music. He called it false music.lxxx Chart VI-5, on the next page, describes Adornos dichotomy between true and false music. True music wakes people up and increases consciousness ; while false music puts people to sleep and increases unconsciousness. Adorno did not simplistically call pop music false and classical music, true.lxxxi He thought that some classical had been commodified and turned false, while some pop had not been standardized.

Chart 6-5.

Adornos True Music versus False Music

TRUE MUSIC
Wakes people up & increases consciousness Requires & encourages thinking

FALSE MUSIC
Increases unconsciousness & puts people to sleep Discourages thinking Requires none; thinking reduced to recall of the familiar Increases Totalitarian tendencies Passive audience Produces Psychological Regression Listener = Consumer only Mistaken for music Repetitious Standardized Pseudo-individuality Music is a commodified, fetishized object

Increases Democratic tendencies Active audience Produces Intellectual Progression Listener also a producer Unmistakeable Music Original Every detail is Unique Develops Individuality Music reminds us of what has been lost

Radio Music as Fetishized Commodity

Marx taught that under capitalism the products of human labor were commodified, reified, and fetishized, given mystical powers beyond the parts needed to manufacture them. Marx defined the fetish character of the commodity as the veneration of the thing made by oneself which, simultaneously alienates itself from producer to consumer..lxxxii Adorno applied Marxs idea of the fetishism of commodities to music. The hit song on the radio, although written by a human, takes on a life of its own and becomes bigger than life. The hit song momentarily becomes a fetish, cherished like a religious relic, then discarded by the fickle fan for the next big hit. The fetish character of music produces its own camouflage through the identification of the listener with the fetish. This identification initially gives the hit songs power over their victims. Adorno found it does not matter what the fetish is. The radio listener-consumer can identify with the fetish-hit , whether it is -- Beethovans 7th or a Bikini! lxxxiii Lazarsfeld arrived at the same conclusion via a different route studying advertising and politics. The content of the fetish did not matter. It was the identification with the fetish that mattered. In this way, The listener is convertedinto the acquiescent purchaser lxxxiv or voter. Adorno explained: The consumer is really worshipping the money that he himself has paid for the ticket to the Toscanini concert. lxxxv Adorno found that American radio symphony and popular music reflected the commodity character of modern society, the trend towards monopoly in all sectors of society, including communications; societys reaction to any threats to its preservation by a tightening of its conformist elements... lxxxvi

CONFORMITY IS PRODUCED BY STANDARDIZATION & PSEUDO-INDIVIDUALITY

For Adorno, commondity listening destroyed both the individual and the music. The liquidation of the individual is the real signature ofcommodity listening. lxxxvii The listeners personality is hollowed out and replaced by a pseudoindividuality based on mass consumer habits, which have nothing to do with the individual. For Adorno, standardization of that musicaims at standardized reactionsthe producers and distributors of pop musicset up a system of conditioned reflexes in its victim.lxxxviii The standardized hit song is like a gigalo, only after your money. Especially for You really means Nothing About You. Adorno saw standardization and pseudo-individuality as the essential ingredients of popular radio music shows such as NBCs Music Appreciation Hour. Pseudo-individuality was mass produced identity based on consumerism. The pseudoself was mistaken for true individuality. Adornos identification with the music fetish is similar to Freuds idea that identification with the leader replaced individual narcissism. This means that identification with the fetish replaces individual narcissism (self concept). The boundary between listener and hit song blurs; the listener loses herself to the song (fetish). The false music temporarily fills the hole of the false self of the pseudo-individual. Since nothing can really fill the self, except itself, by being itself, it is only a fleeting solution. LO.S.S. of self ( psychological death) is devastating and can only be healed by being ones self (by being emotionally alive).

Regressive listening: advertising turns into terror

Regressive listening is tied to production by advertising Advertising turns into terror when one must buy the product in order to purchase spiritual peace. lxxxix The listener is compulsively xcmade to feel insecure without the product. They must pO.S.S.ess (buy) the hit song in order to feel more themselves. But they are already themselves. Ads cannot make people into themselves. It is an advertising con game. Adorno thought the regressive radio listener was forcibly retarded,xci arrested at the infantile stage. xcii He had already observed it happen to Germany, and worried it would happen to U.S. democracy. Adornos Princeton Radio studies formed the basis of a typology of listeners he later developed. xciii (See Chart VI-6 on the next page.) He identified three types of regressive listeners produced by totalitarian radio : culture consumers, emotional listeners and entertainment listeners. In his opinion, emotional listeners were the worst: pawns of totalitarianism. The best defense against totalitarian radio was the good listener. Adorno predicted that as expert and good listeners dwindled, the number of culture consumers, emotional listeners and entertainment listeners increased. This trend signalled the increasing totalitarian tendencies in a society.

Adornos Types of Musical Listeners

xciv

1. The Expert -fully conscious, recognizes formal components of music, able to discern the overall architecture of the piece. 2. The Good Listener- makes connections spontaneously but unlike expert, is not fully

conscious of musics structural form understands music like his/her own language but ignorant of its grammar and syntax ENDANGERED SPECIES, being replaced by cultural consumer. 3. The culture consumer- voracious listener, well informed, collector of records, able to name tunes, the tune detective; fetishistic; music appreciation becomes a social strategy. 4. The emotional listener most unconscious of how music works & most susceptible to it. Easily moved to tears. This type found in Anglo-Saxon countries, where the stricter pressures of civilization necessitate evasions into uncontrollably introverted feeling;the tired businessman; use music as a vessel to pour their feelings into it or draw from it the emotions they miss in themselves. 5. The resentment listener opposite of the emotional listenerthey dont allow themselves any emotional experience in music; staunch devotees of Bach who police the performance of works for interpretive infidelities. 6. The jazz listener like the resentment listener; has an aversion to the romantic conception of music as expression. 7. The entertainment listener most frequent type; the type the culture industry is made for; passive and fiercely opposed to the effort which a work of art demands. 8. The musically indifferent, the unmusical & anti-musical - due to early childhood experience, avoids music & dislikes it. 3, 4, 7, =Increased Social Control & Totalitarianism
xcv

Adorno worried that music was increasingly becoming a passive consumer good. The split between music producer and music consumer widened under capitalism and with the continuing lO.S.S. of music education for the general public.xcvi As musical
composition became more specialized, good listeners (Type 2,) dwindled. For Adorno, this was a tragedy. It signaled musics waning capacity as a mental exercise. As reason-instigated by music dwindled, social control increased.

As culture consumers, emotional and entertainment listeners (Type 3,4, & 7) became the norm, music ceased to be a mental exercise. Instead, music became a

passive consumer good. Music became fetish, distraction or stimulation.xcvii For Adorno, emotional listening was the end of reason and paved the way for totalitarianism to rise and democratic participation to fall. xcviii Today, Adornos nightmare has come true: thousands of New Yorkers walk around wired to earphones reciting the lyrics of standardized songs. Regressive listening is based on dissociation and deconcentration. Deconcentrationprepares the way for the forgetting and sudden recognition of mass music. xcix Hit songs work by forgetting and remembering. c

The Star System has become Totalitarian

Adorno was wary of the star system first in Germany, then in the U.S. Around World War II, he concluded: The star principle has become totalitarian.ci The star system, where only stars (Hitler & Goebbels) spoke and the mass audience was silent, was brilliantly manipulated by the Nazis. He wrote: Famous people are not the only stars. Works begin to take on the same role. A pantheon of best sellers builds up. The programmes shrinkin a fatal cycle: the most familiar is the most successful and is therefore played again and again and made still more familiar.cii A favorite subject of Adornos was star conductors, ciii whom he equated with circus ringmasters.
civ

He also thought the conductors and singers selected by advertisers

to be the big radio stars were second rate, over the hill, narcissistic, pompous entertainers. In order for the song/musician/conductor to become a big hit or star, they had to be played repetitiously to the exclusion of all others, not allowed on the air. Therefore, the number of different types of songs shrunk; so did the number and diversity of musicians allowed on the air. The people who dominated air time were not the best, but

rather the least objectionable to the most people. This was originally Frank Stantons idea of what radio and television should be, dictated by the likes of the largest audience. In contrast, Adorno thought true music reminds us of what has been lost.

ii

Lorenz Jager, Adorno A Political Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, p. 102. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank Stanton, (B-0008) (eds.) Radio Research 1941. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce. See also Lazarsfeld and Stantons other book (listed in B-0008), Radio Research 1942-43. iii Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet, and Herta Herzog, ( B-0005) The Invasion from Mars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940. See also Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport, Psychology of Radio, (New York: Harper & Bros., 1935. iv Judith S. Barton, Guide to the Bureau of Applied Social Research (New York: Clearwater Publishing Co., Publications of the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR), p. 1. v Frank Stantons obituary, New York Times.,p. B7: Frank Nicholas Stanton born March 20, 1908 in Muskegon Michigan learned electronics at his fathers woodworking bench. Frank majored in zoology and psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University, graduated in 1930. Paul Kesten, a CBS exec.,offered Mr. Stanton a job in its two-man research dept. for $55 a week. The day after receiving his doctorate, in 1935, Dr. Stantonheaded for New York. vi Ibid.,p. B7. vii Ibid.,p 1.: As a brilliant corporate builder and a technologically minded executive, Dr. Stantoneverybody used the doctor played a pivotal role in CBSs rise. Sally Bedell Smith wrote a 1990 biography of Wm. Paley called In All His Glory. Sally called Stanton the self contained Swiss although he was born in Michigan. Stanton was a central figure in the development of television broadcasting viii Ibid.,B7. ix Ibid.,p. B7. x Ibid.,B7. By 1945 he had become vice president and general manager of CBS. He became president the followi.ng year, at age 38,. Television, like radio, Dr. Stanton said in 1948, should be a medium for the majority of Americans, not for any small or special groups; therefore its programming should be largely patterned for what these majority audiences like and want. Dr. Stanton was responsible for moving CBSs biggest radio star of the 1940s, Arthur Godfrey, into television and Jackie Gleason. One person he could not control was Edward R. Murrow, CBSs most celebrated journalist.Mr. Murrow regarded Dr. Stanton as a numbers-cruncher who knew little about newsMr. Murrows diminishment seemed to elevate Dr. Stantons standing as a force at CBS News. Stanton expanded nightly news to 30 mins. From 15 mins. Stanton had powerful friends, including Harry S. Truman and LyndonB. Johnson. Stanton and Paley did not resist the McCarthy witch hunts, but Stantons news coverage of Vietnam war was good enough to get Nixon mad at him. xi Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport, Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper & Bros., 1935. Gordon Allport, in his presidential address to the American Psychological Assn. source: Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 1, Jan. 1940. Gordon Allport had worked with Henry Murray at the Harvard Psychological Clinic on the O.S.S. study of Hitlers mind. xii Hadley Cantril, Hazel Gaudet and Herta Herzog, Invasion from Mars; A Study in the Psychology of Panic (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, ). xiii Jager, op. cit., p. 102. xiv In 1931Adorno secured an academic position at the University of Frankfurt. Horkheimer, with the Institut of Social Research now attached to Columbia University in New York since 1935, had organized a position for Adorno on a project.Adorno, if he was interested, could work under Paul Lazarsfeld at the Princeton Radio Project. Horkheimer had been Adornos Habilitationsschrift examiner at the University of Frankfurt. xv The Adorno Reader, edited by Brian OConnor, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), p. 7. Horkheimer got Adorno the job with Lazarsfeld. researching the listening habits of Americans in order to discern the effects of radio on the listenserships relation to society. . Through analysis of radio listening, Adorno believed that he could uncover the hidden forces of society, particularly its mechanism of conformity.. p xvi Lorenz Jager, Adorno A Political Biography ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, p. 102. xvii Adorno, Culture Industry, op. cit., p. 45. xviii Jager, op. cit., p. 103. xix Adorno, Fetish, p. 50: In a swipe at Lazarsfelds empirical studies of radio, Adorno wrote: In tests on the receoption of hit songs, people have been found who ask how they should act if a passage simultaneously pleases and displeases them. xx Theodor W. Adorno, On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening, (1938) The Culture Industry (London: Routledge: 1991), p. 30. Did Adornos 1938 article On the Fetish Character of Music grow out of his work for the Princeton Radio Project? Adorno wrote: Aldous Huxley has raised the question of whom, in a place of amusement, is anyone really being amused.it can be asked whom music for entertainment still entertains.the reduction of people to silence, Ibid., p. 30. xxi Jager, op. cit.,p. 104.

Theordore, Wiesengund-Adorno, Memorandum: music in radio, Princeton Radio Research Project, 1938, 161 pages housed at the Columbia University Library Special Collections, microfilm. xxiii T. W. Adorno and Douglas MacDougald ( B-0070), Plugging Study, 60 pp., 1939. Listed in the Guide of the Bureau of Applied Social Research Publications, p. 8 as: A discussion of the total business setting which decides whether or not a song is to become a hit--Tin Pan Alley. A sketch of the life story of a popular song with emphasis on plugging of songs and how it is carried out. xxiv T. W. Adorno ( B-0001) On Popular Music, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, Vol. IX, no. 1, 1941, pp. 17-48 (NY: Institute of Social Research). xxv T.W. Adorno (B-0072) The Radio Symphony:An Experiment in Theory in Radio Research 1941 edited by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Frank F. Stanton (NY: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1941, pp. 110-139). xxvi These ideas came from Adornos On Popular Music cited in Jager , p. 104 Countless h it song texts praise the hit song themselves, repeating their titles in capital letters. (Fetish, op. cit., in Culture Industry, p. 38. xxvii Adorno, Fetish Character, op. cit., p. 34. xxviii Ibid., p. 38: xxix Ibid.,p. 32. xxx Culture Ind., p. 40. xxxi Schema of Mass Culture, in The Culture Industry, p. 80. xxxii See Jay, op. cit.; Dieter Krohn, op. cit. xxxiii Wiggershaus, op. cit., p. 168. xxxiv Lazarsfeld was a grant king, Director of an Institute at Columbia University, while Hannah Arendt was a struggling adjunct at the New School for Social Research, and Adorno was picking up bits and pieces of part-time government research work. xxxv Barton, op. cit., ., pp.1-2. xxxvi August 9, 2007 Robert K. Merton Conference at Columbia University sponsored by ISERP, the new name for the BASR. ISERP gives a different chronology of the Princeton Radio Project from Barton, BASR. See ISERP Newsletter, Vol. 3, Issue 4, Summer 2007, p. 1. Paul Lazarsfelds Office of Radio Research /Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) ISERP from past to present 1937 Paul F. Lazarsfeld leads the Office of Radio Research 1941 Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton join Columbia faculty 1944 Office of Radio Research becomes the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) 1957 BASR publishes Lazarsfelds Latent Structure Analysis 1976 Center for the Social Sciences (CSS) is established 1996 CSS is renamed Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences 1998 Institute for Social and Economic Theory and Research (ISETR) opens and is joined by the Lazarsfeld Center 1999-2000 - Seven new and existing centers join ISETR 2001 ISETR is renamed ISERP 2002 ISERP expands with opening of new research suite (Source: ISERP Newspletter, Vol. 3, Issue 4, Summer 2007). xxxvii Merton later chaired Columbia Universitys Sociology Department for many years. August 9, 2007 Robert K. Merton Conference at Columbia University. xxxviii Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, Studies in Radio and Film Propaganda. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. VI, no. 2, November 22, 1943, pp. 58-79. See also (B-0226) The Psychological Analysis of Propaganda, Proceedings of Writers Congress Conference. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1944, pp. 362-380. xxxix Judith Barton, op. cit. wrote, p. 2: The wartime reports are a mixture of wartime topics (A Study of Three Radio Broadcasts Intended to Refute Rumors, B-0156, 1942) and market research ...They also include work by Merton and his research team on the Kate Smith War Bond Radiothon and on the influence-structure of a small community and Bernard Berelsons preliminary reports on opinionleadership which led to the Decatur study in 1945. See also, Robert K. Merton, Marjorie Fiske, and Alberta Curtis, (B-0200) Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive (New York: Harper & Bros., 1958. xl Ibid., p. 2. xli August 9, 2007 Robert K. Merton Conference at Columbia University. Craig Calhoun on Mertons contributions to Sociology. See also Robert K. Merton, The focused interview (New York: BASR Columbia University, 1952. xlii Paul F. Lazarsfeld, (B-0240) Who Influences Whom--Its the Same for Politics and Advertising, Printers Ink, vol. 211, no. 10, June 8, 1945, pp. 32-36. xliii Barton, op. cit., p. 2.

xxii

Paul F. Lazarsfeld, (B-0284) Audience Research in the Movie Field; see also (B-0332) Motion Pictures, Radio Programs and Youth, Youth Communication and Libraries, American Library Association, 1949, p. 31-45. Also listed by Lazarsfeld at the Bureau under the same B-0332 is Lazarsfeld article, The American Soldier: An Expository Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 3 Fall 1949, pp. 377-404. xlv BASR did a whole series on bigotry in comics. See Barton, op. cit. xlvi Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Edward A. Suchman, 6 pp. plus charts, 1941. Publications of the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) Reports. (B-0061-1) in Barton, op. cit., p. 7. xlvii Ibid.,p. 7. See also B-0061-2. xlviii Ibid., p. 2. xlix Ibid., p. 11. See BASR B-0165. See also Weekly Reports on Shortwave Broadcasts to Germany and Italy by the Listeners (1942). B-0167. l Peter Bearman, Director of ISERP The Institute for Social and Economic Resaearch and Policy at Columbia University is the name in 2007 for Lazarsfelds old BASR Institute at Columbia. On August 9-10, 2007, ISERP sponsored a Robert Merton Conference called Sociological Theory and the Sociology of Science: The Continuing and Future Importance of the Sociology of Robert K. Merton at Columbia University. Cavin attended August 9 and heard Craig Calhoun li Edward Suchman (B-0050) Bureau of Applied Social Research Report, Columbia University. Program Analyzer Studies, see also Listening to the Listener, by Hollonquist and Suchman, pp. 265-334 in Radio Research 1942-43 edited by Paul Lazarsfeld. lii Herzog, BASR B-0150-4 in Barton op. cit.,p. 10. liii Herta Herzog, Feelings Among 4 Minority Groups in New York City--Mayoralty Election as a Test Situation (1941) (B-0125) in Barton, op. cit.,p. 9. liv Herta Herzog, Daytime Serials :Their Audience & Their Effect on Buying , 1942 (B-0131-1, a study of 5000 women and a general picture of their radio listening habits and the effect radio listening has upon actual use of product advertised. in Barton, op. cit.,p. 9 lv Ibid., p. 9 See BASR Reports B-01311 through B-0131-6. Although Herzogs report On Stomach Distress, appears to be grist for capitalist advertising of stomach remedies, earlier work by Franz Alexander preceded her on The influence of psychologic factors upon gastro-intestinal disturbance, Psycholanalytic Quarterly (1934), p. 501-588. lvi Paul Lazarsfeld, in Barton op. cit.,p. 9. B-0130. See also Lazarsfelds study of Joint Ownership of Radio Stations and Newspapers (B-0150-1&2.) lvii Herzog in Barton, op. cit., p. 11. See BASR Reports B-0152-2 &3. lviii Ibid., p. 14, BASR B-0223. lix Barton, op. cit., , p. 1. See also Paul Lazarsfeld & Patricia Kendall, Radio Listening in America-The People Look at Radio-Again (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1948). Report on a survey conducted by The National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago; Clyde Hart, director. lx Ray Cline, op. cit., pp. 43-52. See also Cline, p. 66: A section (of O.S.S.) called Morale Operations (MO) was the residual staff of psychological warriors left over when straight radio news handling went into O.W.I. early in 1942. lxi Paul M. Neurath, The Unpublished Writings of Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1901-1976) housed at the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Archive at the Institut for Soziologie at the University of Vienna, p. 162. lxii Ibid., 162. lxiii Herzog in Barton, op. cit., p. 12. BASR B-0192. lxiv Most of these 9 Voice Of America reports (BASR Report Series B-0361-1 through B-0361-9), done between 1948-1952 list no author, except one by Babette Kass. Ibid., pp. 1-2 Barton writes: During the war years the Office was active in governmental research, especially on communications....Postwar reports continued the communications research tradition, commercial studies mixing with foreign audience analyses for the Voice of America, studies of anti-prejudice propaganda and
public health communications. lxv Ibid., p. 20. The Audience for the Voice of America in Norway, (B-0361-5). Barton describes this research report for V.O.A. as: This report offers an example of a practical solution to some of the problems raised in B-0361-4 (Some Problems in Identifying International Radio Audiences) It analyzes aspects of the V.O.A.s Norwegian audience, based on a sample of 557 V.O.A. listeners and 798 other listeners to U.S. radio broadcasts in 1950. lxvi Ibid., p. 21. Some Observations on the Testing of Voice of America Programs (B-0361-7). lxvii Ibid., p. 21. Experimental Project on Identification of Voice of America Listeners (B-0361-9) by Babette Kass, 43 pp. 1952.

xliv

Barton describes this V.O.A. study by the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia as: Using data obtained in studies conducted in France, Austria and Finland, this experiment was to provide information leading to 1) the ability to arrive at a single estimate of the size of the V.O.A. audience in each country, 2) the use of a minimal number of questions to provide such an absolute figure and 3) the possibility of designing a scale of intensity of listening to the V.O.A.. lxviii Ibid., p. 20. See B-0361-3.

Ibid., pp. 20-21. See B-0361-6. Another study (B-0361-8 in this series titled Some Contributions of a French Study to the Comparative Analysis of Communications is an analysis of organized group radio listening and the structure of French radio at the end of 1949. Also includes a statement outlining a long-range program of international communications research and the kinds of problems which would be met whenever it was undertaken. lxx Ibid., p. 24. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, : Methodological Considerations in International Broadcasting Research, B-0404. lxxi (Adorno, 1976: 37-38),Tia DeNora, p. 118 lxxii on the Fetish lxxiii Tia DeNora. After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology Cambridge University Press, 2003), lxxiv Fetish, Ibid., p. 38: lxxv Ibid., p.20. lxxvi Ibid. , p. 21. lxxvii Adorno had watched this process carefully in Nazi Germany and like Thomas Mann later would fear in the McCarthy 1950s in Hollywood, the totalitarian or fascist tendencies in the U.S. In the same way that Kate Millett used popular literature to analyze the gender relations of a society, Adorno used music to analyze the degree of democracy or totalitarian state of a society. lxxviii DeNora, op. cit., p. 3. lxxix According to __ of the Annenberg Foundation in New York, music and arts education were taken out of most NYC public schools by with the budget constraints,. The Annenberg Foundation has been trying to make up for this sore lack. But this rasises the question of democracy. lxxx Fetish, Ibid., p. 38: lxxxi DeNora,op. cit., p. 118. Adorno argued that in contrast: But in all music that deserves the name of art, every detail, even the simplest, would be itself; none would be arbitararily interchangeable (Adorno 1976: 29 lxxxii Culture Industry, p. p. 45: The consciousness of the mass listeners is adequate to fetishized music. It listens according to formula lxxxiii Ibid., p. 37. lxxxiv Ibid., , p. 48. lxxxv Ibid., p. 38-39: Beforecommodities, the consumers become temple slaves.
lxxxvi lxxxvii

lxix

Adorno, Fetish Character, op. cit., p 35. Adorno thought Toscanini was a 2nd rate conductor who was mistaken for a genius in America. lxxxviii DeNora, op. cit., chapter 5, Music and control, p. 118: lxxxix Culture Industry p. 47 xc Ibid., p. 48: In regressive listening, advertising takes on a compulsive character. xci Ibid., p. 47 they are not childlike listeners; they are childishforcibly retarded. xcii Ibid., p. 46. xciii Adornos radio studies gave him his first opportunity to develop a sociological approach to different types of music. If in his sociology of music he was later able to propose a typology of listeners that allowed for subtle distinctions between them, it was his experiences in New Jersey that laid the foundations for this. . Jager, p. 104: xciv Theodor Adorno, Sociology of Music 1976 as cited in DeNora, op. cit., xcv DeNora p. 85-87 xcvi Ibid., p. 86-87. xcvii Ibid., p. 87 xcviii Ibid., p. 87. xcix Culture Industry,op. cit., p. 49 c Ibid., p. 48 ci Ibid., p. 35 cii Ibid., p. 36: ciii Ibid., p. 36 civ Denora, op. cit., p. 5 The audience associates the conductor with a circus ringmaster (baton/whip) DeNora, p. 51: Adornos essay, Conductor and Orchestra: Aspects of Social Psychology (Adorno 1976) develops the idea that the orchestra is a microcosm in which social tensions recur and can be concretely studied (Adorno 1976:104). The second issue centres on the conductors embodied presence his figure and striking gestures, which embody an imago of power This imago .provides a focal point for the audience, who may identify with it and act out certain fantasies of power. And the audiences indulgence in this fantasy is, ultimately, the means by which the audience is subdued;

the conductor acts as if her were taming the orchestra, but his real target is the audience