Gene Chenault's name is less famous than that of his partner, programmer Bill Drake. Yet behind the impact of Drake's contributions to the Top 40 format were Chenault's management skills and his sales and marketing concepts. The two men altered U.S. radio and American popular culture in the 1960s. From a single radio station, Chenault and Drake spread their sales, programming, and promotion philosophies across California to stations in other major U.S. markets. The company they formed together, Drake-Chenault Enterprises, parlayed their success into one of the largest tape syndication services.

Early Years

     Born Lester Eugene Chenault in 1919, Chenault spent his high school days as a radio actor in Los Angeles, including performances on national broadcasts via the Mutual network. He fell in love with radio, he said, when he and his father listened ​​together to the broadcast of the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney prize fight in 1926. It was then that he knew he wanted to pursue radio as a career. After graduation, he landed a job in Fresno at KFRE but interrupted that with service in the army in World War II.

     At the end of the war, Chenault joined an engineer friend who was planning an application for a new station in Fresno. In October 1947 the new station, KYNO at 1300 kHz­ Fresno's fourth signal-was on the air with Chenault as general manager and managing partner. Over time he would acquire sole ownership.

     KYNO was affiliated with the Don Lee/Mutual Network, and into the 1950s the station relied heavily on network programming. When the arrival of television challenged radio, especially network affiliates, Chenault explored his options for KYNO and decided on rock and roll. He phased in the new sound during 1955 and 1956 as Mutual's programs grew fewer. The Top 40 format, coupled with big money giveaways, captured the market: KYNO became dominant, achieving 60 shares in the Hooper Ratings.

     By 1962 KYNO's huge shares had attracted a competitor. Fresno's KMAK was bought by a station group that owned KMEN in San Bernardino and a station in Hawaii, and that company installed a format called "Circus Radio" at KMAK, relying on outrageous disc jockey stunts to get attention.

     Opening the checkbook was Chenault's strategy for defending KYNO. If KMAK staged a contest with a $1,500 prize, KYNO upped the ante to $2,000. The ultimate weapon at Chenault's disposal was programming. After a few short-term program directors at KYNO, Chenault imported the tall, soft­-spoken Drake from San Francisco. Drake had made a name for himself at WAKE in Atlanta and had moved to WAKE's sister station, KYA in San Francisco. Chenault heard Drake's work and set up a meeting through a mutual friend.

     As program director, Drake tightened the music policy to a short playlist with heavy repetition. Talk by disc jockeys was pared to a minimum, and the commercial load was reduced. Within a year KYNO had scored a decisive win in the battle, prompting challenger KMAK to change to country music.

Drake-Chenault

     Chenault and Drake formed American Independent Radio in 1964 to provide consultation to stations that wished to model their success on the Fresno victory at KYNO. Chenault advised on sales and marketing while Drake advised on programming. Their first client was KGB in San Diego, owned by Willet Brown, a founder of the Mutual Broadcasting System. KGB was San Diego's oldest radio station. At the time Brown signed with Drake and Chenault, KGB was also last in the ratings.

     As he had done in Fresno, Drake introduced a tightly formatted fast turnover of hit songs. For their staff Chenault and Drake relied on air talents they knew well: Les Turpin and K.O. Bayley from KYNO and Robert W. Morgan, who had competed with them as KMAK's morning man. Within a year there was another ratings and revenue victory. KGB rose to number one in the city, soundly defeating KCBQ and KDEO, the Top 40 competitors.

     The success in San Diego proved that Chenault's and Drake's policies worked beyond Fresno. They were ready to take the next challenge, and Willet Brown made the introduction that would cause it to happen. Brown knew Thomas F. O'Neil, chairman of General Tire, owner of RKO Radio. That company's KHJ in Los Angeles was faring poorly in the market. O'Neil agreed to sign Chenault and Drake, and they moved the concept-and their team-to Los Angeles in 1965.

     Drake called the approach at KHJ an offshoot of Fresno and San Diego with very few minor adjustments. A key difference in Los Angeles was the introduction of a new name, "Boss Radio." It gave the station an easily remembered verbal reference. It also resonated with the station's potential audience: the word boss came from California surfer slang for good, as in "That's a boss wave."

     KHJ reached number one in the Los Angeles ratings within one year, and the feat provided decisive proof of the Drake and Chenault formula. As a result, RKO hired the team as consultants to KFRC in San Francisco. Further success led to a contract to add Boss Radio to additional RKO stations, including CKLW in Windsor, Ontario (serving Detroit); WRKO in Boston; and WHBQ in Memphis.

     Stations outside the RKO chain sought the ratings and revenue gains they read about in trade publications, and Chenault accommodated them. The first non-RKO client was KAKC in Tulsa, which achieved the same positive results as Drake's and Chenault's first California stations. Not so for WUBE in Cincinnati, an inferior facility with poor coverage of the market. Competitor WSAI defeated WUBE soundly, and Drake and Chenault pulled out within a year. Observers said that Chenault's natural sales ability and his exuberance for making the deal caused him to overlook the station's deficiencies.

     What came to be known as "the Drake format" soon included the number-one radio market in the United States: New York. RKO assigned Drake and Chenault the consulting job at WOR-FM to go against Top 40 powerhouses WABC and WMCA. In 1967 WABC remained the leading New York station and WOR-FM was number two.

     WOR-FM proved that FM was not a secondary medium and that the Drake and Chenault policies could be effective on FM. Capitalizing on this success and on the knowledge that KHJ in Los Angeles was buying taped music services for its FM sister station, Chenault proposed that the consultancy begin creating the taped programming, directed by Drake. The two men created a syndication service called Drake-Chenault Enterprises (DCE).

     Late in 1968 three RKO FM stations-KHJ-FM in Los Angeles, KFRC-FM in San Francisco, and WROR-FM in Boston-were programmed with the automated tape service "Hit Parade '68" from DCE. Tapes were recorded in Fresno at the facilities of KYNO. Robert W. Morgan and other KHJ personalities traveled to Fresno to record voice tracks.

     DCE also debuted a taped service called "Stereo Rock," an attempt to capitalize on the trend to play longer, rock-oriented cuts. In essence, it was a "progressive rock" service, and one of DCE's few failures. "Bill [Drake] was never hot about it," said RKO Radio president Bruce Johnson. The idea was attributed to Chenault, who was looking for a new product to sell.

     Johnson, who became president of RKO Radio in 1972, told an interviewer that he was upset that "some of the work that was being done by the music director [at KHJ] was going to Fresno and other places." He felt that Drake's programming team was working more for DCE than they were for RKO-60 percent DCE, 40 percent RKO, he said. In 1973 Johnson canceled the consultation agreement.

     Later that same year Chenault and Drake entered a five­ year contract to manage and program KIQQ-FM in Los Angeles, known as "K-100." They brought personalities Robert W. Morgan and "The Real" Don Steele from KHJ and attempted to replicate the Boss Radio formula. On the air they promoted the station as "the dawn of a new radio day," but there was lit­tle new about the sound. RKO's Johnson called the move "revenge" against KHJ and RKO. The project never reached the level of success that Drake and Chenault had enjoyed previously. In a 1976 interview Chenault characterized KIQQ as "behind target."

     While KIQQ foundered, Drake-Chenault syndication flourished. Broadcast automation of the late 1960s and early 1970s was typically used by easy-listening formats because the hardware was not capable of the tight-paced cue needed for up­ tempo formats. DCE engineers devised a way to put cue tones on their tapes one second earlier to start the next reel of tape in time for the segue to be tight. With that technology, DCE could supply a variety of contemporary-sounding formats.

     The Fresno syndication operation moved in 1973 to Can­ oga Park, California. At that time DCE had two studios and 15 employees. The following year, the firm grew to more radio station clients. By 1976 clients increased to 350, and DCE's staff was at 50. The company built its own tape duplication facility in Canoga Park to maintain its strict audio standards.

     In 1979 DCE produced The History of Rock n Roll, an ambitious 50-hour radio documentary. The program met with phenomenal success as radio stations clamored to schedule it, first as a blockbuster weekend special, then in repeat broadcasts of shorter segments. The response to the documentary caused Drake and Chenault to create a new division within DCE called "The History of Rock n Roll, Inc.," which produced additional programs for syndication, among them The Motown Story, a long-form history of Detroit's Motown Records.

Later Years

     The introduction of satellite delivery and the compact disc combined to make reel-to-reel automation outmoded. Drake Chenault Enterprises felt the pinch with a gradual loss of radio station clients to services using newer technology. In 1986 DCE was sold to Wagontrain Enterprises. The Canoga Park studios and duplication facilities were dismantled and moved to Wagontrain's Albuquerque headquarters in 1987.

     A year or so before the Wagontrain purchase, Bill Drake elected to retire from DCE. Chenault stayed with DCE until the transfer to Wagontrain was complete. He retired in 1986 to the home he bought in Encino, California, in 1967.

     Wagontrain licensed the name "Drake-Chenault" and continued to produce tapes. It also purchased the reel-to-reel operation of TM Productions in Dallas and added satellite distribution in a partnership with Jones Intercable of Denver. The combined operations were later sold to Broadcast Programming, Inc., of Seattle, which ultimately merged with Jones to form Jones Radio Networks.

     In 1996 both Chenault and Drake were inducted into the California Broadcasters Hall of Fame.