Bill Drake, the legendary radio programmer who revamped Top 40 radio in the 1960s and helped launch highly successful “93/KHJ Boss Radio" in Los Angeles, has died. He was 71. Drake died of lung cancer Saturday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley, said Carole Scott, his domestic partner.
In the '60s, Drake was known as one of the most powerful men in the radio industry. His formula for success was called the Drake format: less talk, fewer commercials and more music.
Drake-Chenault Enterprises, the national radio consulting service that he ran with business partner Gene Chenault, monitored the programming for stations from coast to coast, sweeping “most of the competition away like so much dust," according to a 1974 article in The Times.
“What he did for American radio, particularly the Top 40 format, was to clean up all the clutter, such as disc jockeys rambling on and on forever," said John Long, president of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame, which inducted Drake in 2007.
“He tightened down the format by controlling when they talked and how much they talked and, to some degree, what they said," Long said. “He chose to make the music the star, and selected the most popular music of the day and put it in a rotation so that a listener could hear his or her favorite song more frequently."
In Los Angeles, what Time magazine in 1968 called the “Drake style" was evident on KHJ-AM (930). When the RKO-owned radio station debuted its new format in 1965, according to a Times article, it attracted less than 2% of the Los Angeles radio audience. Five months later, the station was ranked No. 1, with more than 15% of the radio audience.
Boss Radio, he said, had driving personalties such as Robert W. Morgan and the Real Don Steele, who “were able to take this format to new heights that had never been achieved before in the marketplace."
The successful Drake format, said Barrett, “was launched in city after city and became a huge success in Boston, San Francisco and the Detroit market. And there were a lot of copycats where he was not involved."
Bill Drake 'Boss Radio' Inventor Spread Less-Talk Format Across Country
Bill Drakes “Boss Radio" format turned KHJ-AM into Los Angeles top station in the 1960s and had similar success nationwide. He slashed commercial time, picked deejays with strong personalities, aired songs during competing stations news breaks and made sure the hits would keep on coming.
