Bill Drake changed the landscape of Top 40 radio in the 1960s and 1970s. His fast-paced, forward-moving "more hits/ less talk" approach to contemporary music formatting generated attractive ratings, but by 1970 had diminished the traditional influence of loquacious disc jockeys and left dozens of cookie-cutter stations that sounded alike. Drake accomplished this synthesis by compacting hit-music radio into a precise system that could be easily staffed and centrally controlled.

Disc Jockey Years

  It is said that a knee injury nudged Bill Drake into radio programming. The Georgia Teacher's College student had originally hoped that his basketball scholarship would someday net him a contract with a professional team. When that was no longer possible, Drake (who was then known by his given name, Philip Yarbrough) decided to pursue a broadcasting career. The Donal­sonville, Georgia native had started announcing while a teenager at WMGR in nearby Bainbridge. By 1957 he carried that experience to college and was hired by WWNS in Statesboro, Georgia. Four years later, Drake took to the microphone on Atlanta's WAKE. Pronounced "wake," the pioneer Top 40 music station had a manager with a penchant for rhyme; he suggested that Yarbrough go on the air as "Bill Blake on WAKE." Yarbrough countered with "Drake" (his mother's maiden name). That day, listeners to the pint-sized station (1,000 watts during the day and 250 watts at night) heard the name that would eventually be on the lips of radio people worldwide.

     Bartell Broadcasting sold WAKE in 1961. As Drake was showing promise as program director in addition to performing as a disc jockey, Bartell moved him to their San Francisco outlet, KYA. This was another traditional Top 40 music station; programming focused on disc jockeys spinning records between frequent barrages of half-minute weather jingles, chatter, commercials of sundry lengths and tempo, sound effects, and time tones. Drake quickly concluded that listeners considered most of this as noise in the way of hearing more songs. Eliminating unwanted talk could convert the station into a real people-pleaser.

     Armed with notebooks containing short station promotion announcements, as well as a plotted format clock showing precisely where these (and the music) should run, Drake started streamlining KYA. All rearranging was designed to keep listeners from tuning elsewhere. He concluded that few disc jockeys conveyed sufficient personality and charisma to be preferred over music. Although endowed with a resonant "radio voice" himself, Drake used the microphone only long enough to say the minimum about a song or station promotion, being very careful never to give the music short shrift. From his example, his on-air staff got the message not to ad-lib. Contrary to his critics, however, Drake welcomed a DJ air style where a personality could be perceived, as long as it did not noticeably impede the music flow. He found few who could master his ideal combination of great voice, impeccable pacing, friendly and enthusiastic tone, and compact presence.

The Fresno Fight

     KYNO owner Gene Chenault needed programming advice for his Fresno, California station. His spunky Top 40 outlet practically owned the audience, but had started getting heavy local competition during 1962. Chenault's competition was KMAK, which was tightly formatted by Ron Jacobs. By the summer of 1963, Jacobs had conquered San Bernardino with KPEN and was busy toppling Chenault's Fresno station when Drake arrived.

     The resulting radio war was fought with constant format tightening, increasing amounts of hit music, exciting station promotional stunts, and continual "ante upping." Each station monitored the other and had staff enthusiastically dabbling in a fraternal radio version of industrial espionage. When KMAK, for example, offered listeners a $1,000 prize, KYNO people would quickly counter with a $2,000 jackpot. Marathon remote broadcasts, where fans could see their favorite radio personality attempt to transmit solo all weekend, or sweepstakes in which listeners were invited to search for a single (cleverly hidden) "lucky key" to some station treasure, were thwarted by sleeping pills mysteriously ending up in a ​​tired marathon disc jockey's coffee and by the strange appearance of decoy keys throughout Fresno.

Throughout the intrigue, Drake crystallized his belief that a music station should sound like it is always in motion. Every bit of announcing was positioned to scream, "This station has everything you like, and our supply is endless!" By simply blasting a short station identification jingle immediately prior to a hit song, he gave KYNO a bit more edge (by implying, "even our jingles move quickly out of the way to keep your favorite hits coming") than the competition. When the smoke cleared, Chenault's better-funded KYNO nosed past its rival. Drake had defeated Jacobs, but their Fresno clash set the stage for the rise of new radio formatting.

Formation of Drake-Chenault

     KYNO's recaptured dominance gave Chenault the idea of exploring possibilities beyond Fresno. He envisioned a firm from which he could market radio-program doctoring to numerous ailing stations with Drake as the surgeon. The two associates had already achieved victories at KYNO and at the Stockton facility owned by Chenault's acquaintances. By 1964 the partners were ready for their Drake-Chenault Enterprises (also known as American Independent Radio and Drake­ Chenault Productions) to spread the small-city successes into larger media markets. San Diego would serve as their first proving ground.

     Station KGB offered the new consulting firm an opportunity to establish a miracle-worker reputation. The San Diego AM station would have to fight its way past two relatively sophisticated Top 40 adversaries. Drake's installation of his tight, uncluttered, more-music format soon made the competition sound outdated. The tremendous resulting KGB audience jump proved to be Drake-Chenault's ticket to what would be its most memorable radio foray.

     For group-owner RKO-General was searching for ways to shore up its radio division. Although WOR (New York) stayed nicely afloat, other RKO outlets required continuous bailing out. Chief among the problems was KHJ (Los Angeles), a 5,000-watt AM station that seemed hopelessly bypassed in the ratings. Drake-Chenault signed a consulting agreement in 1965 for what they saw as a make-or-break debut. Radio managers would be monitoring their Los Angeles efforts closely as few felt the market needed another rock and roll station. Competitors included KFWB "Color Radio Channel 98," and the 50-kilowatt KRLA. Both used talkative air personalities known by most southern California listeners.

     Drake hoped to use a KHJ win as a door into dozens of wounded stations, but he felt that three active assignments (Fresno, San Diego, and Los Angeles) was, for the time being, a prudent cap. He wanted unfettered time (away from corporate distractions) to ponder how best to keep his format concepts fresh, so he only promised RKO that he would be present in the KHJ offices about one day per week. That necessitated the hiring of a KHJ-based program director who clearly understood how best to achieve Drake-Chenault goals.

"Boss Radio"

     Ron Jacobs, onetime Fresno competitor, filled the bill as program director of the anticipated Los Angeles operation. Chenault was especially pleased to have Jacobs and Drake on the same programming team and was said to have compared the amalgamation to going into battle (against the other area stations) with both Generals Grant and Lee on one side. A "more hit music" format, very similar to Drake's Fresno and San Diego output, was readied for KHJ's conversion. RKO's promotion director, Clancy Imislund, suggested to Drake and Jacobs that KHJ be dubbed "Boss Radio." The programmers judged "boss" (teenage slang for "cool") to be old hat, but reluctantly agreed to adopt it.

     Boss Radio KHJ hit the airwaves early in May 1965. By fall the once-comatose station had rocketed to the top of Los Angeles' radio ratings and was the talk of the business. Its tight playlist (never any dead air), with 30 current hit songs (and with older favorites mixed in) sounded sleeker than rivals still working at getting through their top 40 or more records. Drake reasoned that he would rather have his outlets airing, for example, the 29th most popular tune, as opposed to the 40th or 58th. Also different from the competition was Drake's strictly mandated 12-minutes-per-hour commercial maximum (a third less than the industry standard). This gave KHJ time to air at least two more songs each hour than KFWB or KRLA.

     Formats were typically devised on paper by Drake, then implemented by Jacobs. Though Drake-Chenault was clearly responsible for putting the KHJ conversion in motion, insiders (such as music radio pundit Bill Gavin) credit Jacobs with the milestone contemporary music station's day-to-day success. His connection to what flowed from KHJ kept the talented air staff, cache of station promotions, and every detail of the Boss Radio image highly polished. Not long after the format rollout, Jacobs heard a brief jingle burst, "KHJ-Los Angeles," immediately followed by the disc jockey exclaiming, "It's three o'clock in Los Angeles." Instantly hit with the redundancy (and possible negative effects on listeners), he commanded the air staff to announce Los Angeles as Boss Angeles. The memorable, "classic Drake" nuance serves as one example of how Jacobs constantly honed the programming concepts typically associated with Drake-Chenault. He stayed with KHJ until spring 1969.

National Expansion

     RKO officials now wanted Drake to duplicate the KHJ success elsewhere in their chain. Consequently, in 1966 Boss Radio cloning took place at KFRC (San Francisco), WRKO (Boston, as "Now Radio"), CKLW (Windsor, Ontario/Detroit, Michi­ gan), and WHBQ (Memphis). Each installation worked wonders, solidifying Drake's miracle-worker reputation. His modification of WOR-FM New York (which received a hybrid of oldies, album cuts, and touches of the Top 30) didn't match KHJ's impact. In terms of FM receiver penetration of well under 50 percent in 1968-69, however, it generated respect­ able listenership.

     The Drake-Chenault agreement with RKO allowed the programmers to work with stations in media markets not served by RKO. During the early days of the pact, critics predicted that the Drake format's tightly controlled, high-energy sound was purely a province of the trendy West Coast and would never be accepted outside California. Prior to the Boston assignment, Drake-Chenault had been hired to try out Boss Radio in Oklahoma. Tulsa's mid-American KAKC listeners embraced what was by then (1966) dubbed "The Drake Sound," though it was also the brainchild of others-such as Jacobs.

     Brainstorming kept the format fresh as Drake understood the value of being linked with associates able to translate ideas about mainstream radio listeners into concrete programming policy. In the days before digital satellite transmission or web streaming, Drake monitored client stations via telephone. Any disc jockey not conforming to the spirit of Boss Radio might receive a corrective call from THE boss. Except for fielding those dreaded calls, few directly heard from (or saw) Drake. He seemed to be both everywhere and nowhere. A chain of command-from him to the national program director to the local program director then down to the announcer-seemed to make edicts more powerful and enhanced the Drake mystique.

     In 1970 Newsweek called Drake "the most powerful force in broadcast rock ... with complete control of programming, commercial time, and even the hiring and firing of local disc jockeys." Technically, such a stranglehold was against Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules requiring station licensees to be in total control of their stations, but the magazine had a point to make on behalf of recording companies. They complained that, unless Drake put a particular record on his well-researched 30-song playlist, it had little chance of being spun by other hit music broadcasters. Songs over three minutes (eating up precious airtime in which another tune could be started) had difficulty making the "Boss 30" grade. A promising four-minute song was often abridged in a Drake­ Chenault-sanctioned production room.

     By 1970 the firm had 40 client stations paying upwards of $10,000 monthly for its services. Reportedly, some felt cornered into such an association. Outwardly secure broadcasters, hearing rumors that the station across town was talking to Drake-Chenault, were known to panic, then hire the consultants first as an insurance measure. The term Fake Drake surfaced as a euphemism for outlets, often in smaller markets, choosing to save the consulting fee by imitating the "factory­ authorized" format. The imitation typically involved a set of short Drake-like jingles; a copy of the weekly KHJ, CKLW, or WRKO music survey; cassette aircheck tapes of those stations; and an erstwhile Drake client station's disc jockey bent on becoming a noted programmer.

Changing Opportunities

     The FCC's mid-196os directive that most FM stations could no longer simulcast programming of their commonly owned AM sisters provided a new marketplace for Drake's output. RKO asked him to develop a format that could be inexpensively executed via automation on its FM properties. In late 1968 a middle-of-the-road (softer rock hits) offering, called "Hit Parade," was installed in Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Its tempo soon increased, as did interest in the canned fare on the part of other budget-minded FM operators. By the mid-1970s, "Hit Parade" and several other ready-to-run formats (such as "Solid Gold," "Classic Gold," "XT-40," "Super Soul," and "Great American Country") brought the taped Drake repertoire to about 200 stations in markets of various sizes. Associates tested a progressive rock offering but indicated that Drake never related to (for example) Grateful Dead or Janis Joplin album cuts, and they backed away from the genre.

     The advent of increasing competition through separate FM formats, plus 18- to 34-year-olds' changing taste in music, rendered the original Drake sound somewhat shopworn by 1973. Consequently, the RKO AM stations showed signs of ratings erosion. The hit single, pop music radio's 45-rpm traditional stock in trade, was exhibiting a sales slide. Instead, young people started directing their attention toward the long-playing 33 1/3-rpm albums, which were primarily heard (without frequent jingles, promotion, commercialization, or staged forward momentum) on the emerging FM rock outlets. The 1960s generation, which Drake had cleverly schooled to demand a "more music/less talk" approach, discovered that even the most unsophisticated FM rock station (typically staffed by taciturn announcers who just wanted to let the latest album track all the way through) delivered more music than Boss Radio ever did. RKO officials insisted that Drake personally spent more time immersed in solving its stations' audience exodus. Agreement, however, could not be reached, and RKO ended the relationship in 1973.

     Following the RKO termination, Drake-Chenault sought another Los Angeles programming platform. It came in the form of struggling KIQQ (FM), dubbed K-100 to denote a 100.3-megahertz dial position. The duo was granted stock ownership in the venture and five years to make K-100 a profit center. Also at stake was a chance to sink KHJ and embarrass RKO. Although much effort went into making K-100 into a ratings giant, the operation was filled with tension (compared to the sense of collegial fun that had driven the 1965 KHJ debut), and it never made a similarly significant impact on southern Californians. K-100 was sold in 1978.

     By the late 1970s, the 24-hour syndicated format genre that Drake's firm had helped pioneer found itself swimming in a sea of competitors. Improved automation gear and, eventually, satellite delivery made the program distribution process easier for newcomers to enter. Even though from about 1980 Drake's programming had largely disappeared from major-market stations, his name still commanded respect in broadcasting circles. He and Chenault continued syndicating their turnkey formats through about 1980, when Drake-Chenault Enterprises was quietly sold (and eventually folded into Jones Satellite Radio).

     In 1990 Drake actively reentered programming to help fine­ tune KRTH (FM), KHJ's former sister. To his credit, Bill Drake found contemporary music radio mired in discordant presentation and intuitively built it a concise programming formula followed in principle by scores of broadcasters today.