My original website Boss Radio Forever was hacked by spammers in 2011 from outside the United States. The website had to be removed from the hosting service because of the security risks posed to other customers who had accounts on the server. The content has been continuously available online since 1996.

Here are links you can follow to access the original website’s content:

You can explore old versions of Boss Radio Forever that are preserved in an archive by year at these links:

1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. (About the archive.)

Sources, Links, Further Reading

America’s genius of radio programming is celebrated in pictures and digital recordings at The Ron Jacobs Collection site. Ron Jacobs was the program director at 93/KHJ starting with the launch of Boss Radio format and continuing at the helm until 1969. He also was producer and director of the first and original radio documentary The History of Rock & Roll broadcast on 93/KHJ in February 1969.

You can access a wide range of digital recordings of radio programs from airchecks to jingles from KHJ and other stations at Richard W. Irwin’s ReelRadio.com site.

When Bill Drake passed away in 2008, many gathered to remember him by attending a celebration of his life.

Johnny Williams, one of the original Boss Jocks on KHJ, created 440: Satisfaction that answers “where are they now?” questions so you can easily find air personalities and other radio professionals.

Art Vuolo’s Video Air-Chex site has various KHJ-related material.

The RobertWMorgan.com is the essential memorial site for the best morning man on radio.

Visit The Real Don Steele Collection, the memorial site for the don of afternoon drive time in the neon fun jungle that is Los Angeles.

For access to information about what’s happening today on the air in Los Angeles radio, visit Don Barrett’s LARadio.com site.

Remember Drake-Chenault programming on Detroit’s “Big 8” at The Classic CKLW Page.

Drake-Chenault programming in Boston on the 68 WRKO site is still alive and kicking.

Walk down memory lane to remember KFRC, San Francisco.

Another AM powerhouse was KIMN in Denver, which used the name “Boss Radio” to promote the station in the 1960s. Visit the KIMN tribute site for more details.

Classic Top 30 gives you a look at the music charts from several rock and roll radio stations that were crucial to the development of formula radio in the 1960s.

For up-to-the-minute information about the radio industry, visit RadioandRecords.

PRIMARY SOURCES

The information, descriptions, claims, and quotes from people presented on this site can be attributed to a variety of sources.

The primary sources are first-person sources.  These are people who were present at the time of the events they describe took place, and who either participated in the events or observed them from a close vantage point.

Face-to-face interviews recorded on audio tape with a variety of professionals in the radio and music industries of the 1970s were conducted by me for my research during graduate school into the radio programming of Drake-Chenault.

I published the research in my masters thesis, entitled “The Mystique and The Mass Persuasion: A Rhetorical Analysis of The Drake-Chenault Radio Programming 1965 – 1976.”  The document was accepted by the faculty of Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA in June 1976 in partial fulfillment of requirements for my master’s degree in communications.

Below is the complete list of those interviews. The interviews and other primary sources listed on this page are the origins of attributed quotes from people here at this website.

Jan Basham—Hollywood, CA—December 31, 1975
Gene Chenault—Hollywood, CA—January 2, 1976
Roger Christian—Beverly Hills, CA—September 25, 1975
Mark Denis—Anaheim, CA—September 25, 1975
Ken DeVaney—Fresno, CA—December 22, 1975
Bill Drake—Beverly Hills, CA—September 23, 1975
Paul Drew—Hollywood, CA—December 31, 1975
Bill Gavin—San Francisco, CA—December 19, 1975
Claude Hall—Hollywood, CA—December 30, 1975
Irv Ivers—Burbank, CA—September 23, 1975
Ron Jacobs—San Diego, CA—November 8, 1975
Bruce Johnson—Los Angeles, CA—December 26, 1975
Bert Kleiman—Hollywood, CA—December 31, 1975
Annie Van Bebber—Canoga Park, CA—September 26, 1975

For the production of BossRadioForever.com, additional primary research was conducted by me to augment and update the findings from the 1970s. Additional primary sources were attained through communications via electronic mail with these people:

Terry Corbell, 2001
Ron Jacobs, 1997 – 1999
Hank Landsberg, 2001
Ken Levine, 1997
Gary McDowell, 1997 – 1998
Ramona Palmer, 2001

Further primary sources included telephone interviews conducted with these people:

Clancy Imuslind, May 7, 1997
Ron Jacobs, April 3, 1997

A very special thank you to Ron Jacobs for all his help and participation in my research and analysis of radio programming over the years. You taught me many things. I am grateful for all I learned from you, but especially for your help in my bringing this analysis and history of radio programming to others online.

I also want to acknowledge the generous assistance of Ray Randolph, a devoted fan of KHJ, who maintains an extraordinary collection of original material from the station. He provided lists of song titles played on KHJ, and, scans of photographs which date back to the mid-1960s so that this website could present authentic pictures for you to see.

Special thanks to Ramona Palmer for permitting the use of rare photographs at this site. Thanks also to Hank Landsberg for photographs of the Canoga Park facilities of Drake-Chenault Enterprises. Bill Mouzis and Paul Drew both sent me emails in 2011 in which they clarified important historical details for me. The emails from Bill Mouzis helped me understand his key role in the engineering of 93/KHJ to make the sound of the radio station in Los Angeles set new standards of technical excellence. The emails from Paul Drew helped me understand the history of RKO’s ownership of radio and television stations.

Disclaimer: The use of peoples’ names on this site in no way indicates their approval of or agreement with its content or conclusions.

However, despite some grumblings, my work is not an “unauthorized biography” about radio programming people. Nor have I ambushed anybody and used their comments without their knowledge. Every person, living or dead, who participated in the various telephone, in-person, and electronic mail interviews with me did so knowingly and willfully. Most importantly, nobody set any restrictions on my usage of the primary source material that I collected during my interactions with them.

SECONDARY SOURCES

These are reports about the radio programming business and Drake-Chenault in particular that appeared either in the print media or on other websites.

Andrews, Dave and Hagerty, Michael, “K100 100.3 ‘K100 FM,’” http://www.socalradiohistory.com/kiqq.html

“Advisor Becomes Boss: Drake Signs with RKO,” Broadcasting, 16 October 1972, pp. 61 –62.

Billboard, January 1965 – January 1976.

Brown, James, “Chenault-Drake Team to Operate K100-FM,” Los Angeles Times, 5 December 1973, Part IV, p. 34.

__________. “Drake and K100—an Encore in Stereo,” Los Angeles Times Calendar, 17 March 1974, pp. 74 –75.

Denisoff, R. Serge. Solid Gold: The Popular Record Industry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1975.

Donahue, Tom. “A Rotting Corpse Stinking Up the Airwaves,” Rolling Stone, 23 November 1967, pp. 14-15.

“Earlybirds of Modern Radio,” Sponsor, 28 May 1962, pp. 35-59.

“Executioner, The,” Time, 23 august 1973, p. 48.

Gibson, John. “Bill Drake: Radio’s Top 40 Tycoon,” Entertainment World, 17 April 1970, pp. 8-10.

Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1990, Calendar section, page F-1.

“Looking Ahead to Radio in 70’s,” Broadcasting, 13 April 1970, p. 69.

McClay, Bob. “Murray the K on WOR-FM: They Screwed It Up,” Rolling Stone, 9 November 1967, p. 10.

Passman, Arnold. The Deejays. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

“Rock and Roll Muzak,” Newsweek, 9 March 1970, p. 32.

Selvin, Joel. “Donahue: A True Visionary of Rock.” San Francisco Chronicle, 3 May 1975, p. 32.

Sculatti, Gene and Van Bebber, Annie. “Drake Back in LA Radio,” Radio & Records, 7 December 1973, p. 1.

Shearer, Harry. “Captain Pimple Cream’s Fiendish Plot,” in Eisen, Jonathan, ed. The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1969, pp. 357-384.

“Special Report: Radio Programming,” Broadcasting, 14 December 1964, pp. 57-91.

“Topsy-Turvy World of L.A. Radio,” Rolling Stone, 28 February 1974, p. 12.

West, Donald. “Special Report: Radio ’71.” Broadcasting, 21 June 1971, pp. 41-80.

Further Reading

Ben Fong-Torres wrote The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio, published in November 1998. It’s filled with accurate details about KHJ and other top 40 stations you know and love. This book is “as good as it gets” if you’re searching for a source in print with a full and complete account of how top 40 radio came to be.

 

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Internet Archive Wayback Machine

The preservation of old websites is done by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, a nonprofit and independent archive in San Francisco. While the old website images may not be available, you can certainly see all of the original text. That archive is completely separate from me and my work. The storage of website content from the past was done without my consent or involvement.