ABSTRACT
The central figure in the payola hearings, Dick Clark, the host of ABC’s American Bandstand, bore the most public scrutiny of any of those brought forward to testify. As the Life article intimates, despite the conflict of interests between his corporate holdings and broadcasting practices, Clark’s clean image and fervent fan base virtually guaranteed that he would escape the committee’s wrath. Back in September 1958 a roly-poly Tulsa boy named Billy Jay Killion came home from high school and wanted to watch Dick Clark’s television program, American Bandstand. Millions of American teenagers feel just as strongly about Dick Clark, though no others have vented their feelings so violently. A long succession of disk jockeys admitted taking payments from music companies. But the one man the committee had always been gunning for was Dick Clark, the biggest disk jockey of all and a symbol, in giant screen, of the whole questionable business.
