Golden Anniversary Of Top 40 Radio Format
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
Fifty years this month, May 5, 1965, Boss Radio 93 KHJ in Los Angeles (or as it was referred to at times as "Boss" Angeles) hard launched its Top 40 format on the 930 AM frequency. Little did it know that it would change the face of radio for the next 15 years.
While KHJ had been on the air since 1922 (on a variety of AM frequencies, power and formats), two amazing, brilliant programmers, Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, developed the Boss format in April 1965. Ron Jacobs was hired as the station's program director. The premise of the format was simple: a relatively tight playlist of songs and short, tight commentary by the DJ's, something we refer to today as "Jox Talk." A few announcers were permitted to develop on-air personalities, such as morning man Robert W. Morgan (who could talk to anyone at ease), Charlie Tuna (who is still on the air in LA on CBS Radio's KRTH-FM), Humble Harve, and The Real Don Steele (Steele had a TV show co-owned KHJ-TV Channel 9 which is now KCAL-TV, also owned by CBS).
So many of America's most talented personalities were on KHJ: Roger Christian, Gary Mack, Dave Dimond, Johnny Williams, Charlie Van Dyke, Frank Terry, Scotty Brink, Bobby Tripp, and Bill Wade. The format, coupled with top-notched promotion, was so succesful in Los Angeles that it was instituted at other Drake-Chenault consulted stations such as CKLW/Windsor, Ontario, KFRC/San Francisco, WFIL/Philadelphia, KGB/San Diego, WQXI/Atlanta, and WRKO/Boston. For a 5,000 watt AM station, it was dynamite!
In the summer of 1970, a KHJ contest went astray, led to a fatality and a substantial legal judgement against its parent company, RKO General (part of General Tire & Rubber). The contest, known as the Super Summer Spectacular, had the Real Don Steele driving a red car to a certain area with on-air announcers encouraging listeners to find him with the help of clues. The first person who found Steele and fufilled a condition received a cash prize and was interviewed on the radio by Steele. On July 16, 1970, two teenagers who were following Steele drove at speeds in excess of 70 mph in order to reach him. One innocent motorist was forced off the road and died. The family of the deceased sued the teenagers, the manufacturer of the deceased's car, and RKO General and won a $300,000 judgement.
By the late 1970's, FM radio was beginning to dominate the market and KHJ's ratings began to slip. There were a couple of format changes: one to country, then to oldies, then a traffic format. But the magic was gone. On January 31, 1986, the station had a farewell broadcast to Boss Radio, nearly 21 years after it launched. At midnight, the station became KRTH (matching the call letters of its FM sister, KRTH-FM) and became an oldies stations featuring hits from the early days of rock and roll.
Take a listen to these promos and how smooth these guys were in 1965:
"And the hits just keep on comin'!"
(©2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
