...except this time it's about the origins of Top 40 Radio, not mankind. Two radio originals square off and it's like a WWE grudge match.
© Mike Anderson, 16 July 2006
I first met Richard Ward Fatherley in September 2001, a week after the terrorist attacks on NYC and Washington DC, at the St. Louis Public Library. He was there as part of Frank Absher's 630KXOK Reunion, along with DJ's, news reporters and office staff, bringing back the memories of the biggest Top 40 success ever in STL radio history.
I was there just to take photos for the website. Toward the end of the meeting, Richard gifted me with a CD he had made, memorializing The Todd Storz Story (which I promptly sent to ReelRadio.com for preservation). It remains there to listen to; a paid subscription is required and it was the genesis of the 630KXOK website I subsequently created.
It has been Fatherley's insistence, supported by journalists who have investigated the issue over the years, that the concept of Top 40 Radio was initiated by Todd Storz at his station in Omaha and further and fully developed into a full-time format with singing jingles, highly produced newscasts and spirited DJ's at WHB in Kansas City; others, including former Billboard Magazine VoxJox editor Claude Hall, feel equally convinced that the format was created by Hall's fellow Texan Gordon McClendon.
This has developed into a history-of-Top 40 Civil War.
Claude Hall has written these pieces, excerpted from his ongoing journal hosted at RDN:
June 23, 2003: Just for the record, this. There may be a copy of a 1957 issue of a magazine called Television in which Todd Storz is quoted as saying, "I became convinced that people demand their favorites over and over while in the Army during the Second World War."
I had that thrown in my face recently to prove a point, i.e., that Top 40 radio evolved in Kansas City instead of at KOWH in Omaha as Bill Stewart and others have told me. Bill Stewart, former national program director for Storz, once showed me that article and laughed about it. Storz, he said, never talked with the press. Thus, the Stewart interview remains the primary source, as well as comments by others supporting Todd Storz, Gordon McLendon, and Bill Stewart.
My son John, an attorney in Los Angeles, asked me just recently: "Why are they trying to do this?" in reference to the article in the Kansas City Star. I told him that I did not know. The person who mentioned the Television article suggested that I'm trying to preserve my book or defend it in some way. This is not true, in my opinion. Though I will defend as hard as I can the people in it. I'm much too old and, by the way, too ornery to attempt to preserve anything but the friends that I have made and the friends that I have left.
I know many of the personal flaws of these friends. None of us are exactly perfect. Those things are not up for popular discussion. But I tell you this: You smear a friend, living or dead, and you smear me.
Claude seems to be taking this competition way too seriously. But a few years later he went on:
June 26, 2006: There's this guy out in the Midwest telling everyone that Top 40 was born in his town and making a lot of hay out of his claim. Literally attempting to rewrite himself into radio history. Didn't matter that Gordon McLendon and Bill Stewart said it happened at KOWH in Omaha, NE, a station owned by Todd Storz and his father, a rather successful beer man.
Rest assured that Top 40 was invented, if you can call it an invention because it happened over time, by Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon with the help of Bill Stewart. I interviewed both Gordon and Bill; you can read the details of format radio in "This Business of Radio Programming." I also heard the Top 40 story from numerous people who were there. I even talked with the guy who was on the air at KLIF in Dallas one day when Gordon McLendon walked in with a stack of 45s and said, "Play these," i.e., the day Gordon decided to go Top 40, following Todd, but adding his own shtick to the format.
The prime facilitator in both situations was Bill Stewart. The National Association of Broadcasters made a mistake when they inducted Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon jointly into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame. It should have been Todd Storz, Gordon McLendon, and Bill Stewart.
Then, more recently, Claude wrote:
10 July, 2006: Todd Storz and Bill Stewart conceived this pattern, jelled it, made it a reality at KOWH. Gordon McLendon and the same Bill Stewart added certain characteristics that improved the Top 40 format concept at KLIF in Dallas. Not quickly and not alone. Many others played roles. Some major, some minor. But the genius of Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon drove the Top 40 concept from the beginning and Bill Stewart is said to have made their genius work.
Countless radio people, people who were there and played roles, have corroborated this. The basics happened, however and without question or confrontation, at KOWH in Omaha. Closed playlist. Music rotation. Record research for the most popular tunes. Hard-driving investigative news. The free-swinging disc jockey to some extent although many others ranging from Joe Smith and Paul Berlin and Bill Randle had paved theway. Jack the Bellboy and Frank Ward and Howard Miller, too. Many others as well.
I find it not only sad, but somewhat despicable that someone is trying to rewrite radio history instead of honoring all that radio, in essence, was. All that it became. Somewhere in this house in a cardboard box are the artifacts--speeches, articles published at the time -- given to me by Gordon McLendon, along with a cassette of a taped interview. Somewhere in this house are the various cassettes I recorded with such as Bill Stewart, Chuck Blore, etc., etc. You cannot imagine the research I conducted to document what was and what happened in radio, the oral history I documented from the role players large and small, the work involved. Yes, even from grandfather Ken Knight, a wonderful gentleman.
I have been a fan of radio from the days when I listened many a night all night long on a one-tube radio on the plains of Texas. Long before my Billboard days, I loved radio. The job with Billboard, thus, was a godsend to me. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being around radio people. I enjoyed talking radio. I have been blessed to know some of the world's most outstanding radio people and they have shared of their fountain of knowledge and experience with me. You cannot imagine all of the role players that I have met. Not only in the United States, but overseas.
Perhaps its rather selfish of me to wish to attempt to preserve the history of radio as it was performed by all of these people that I've known.in essence, to preserve their successes and their failures. Their names and what they did. But my great love for radio and for the people involved is something that I treasure.
That's why, I hate to see anyone muddy the waters of history. It was, in part, my history.
Other documentation seems to back up Claude Hall's story:
In 1949 Todd Storz founded a company in Omaha. While visiting an Omaha bar, he reportedly noticed that jukebox selections would repeatedly be selected again and again. Deciding that since most jukeboxes of that time accommodated 40 single-play records, Storz instituted “Top 40 radio.” The City of New Orleans also was home to an early adopter of this format in the early 1950s, WTIX.
With Storz in that Omaha bar on that fabled night was Bill Stewart, whose recalled how he and Storz both noticed bar patrons kept selecting the same songs over and over on the jukebox. While Storz is credited with being “the father of Top 40 radio,” Gordon McLendon’s chain of radio stations in the early 1950s became nationally prominent because of using a formulated mixture of music, news, and spirited station promotion. In 1953 McLendon’s Dallas, Texas flagship station, KLIF-AM, became the highest rated metropolitan radio station in the United States through the use of McLendon’s radio format. All programming formats since the 1950’s owe a great deal to McLendon, who not only pushed the envelope of formula radio, he went on to pioneer all-news radio, which was the essential first step toward Ted Turner’s all-news television, CNN.
Now, you have to understand that I have involuntarily wound up in the middle of this controversey. I have a huge positive memory of Claude Hall's VoxJox column and the guy who was my first PD in radio (back in 1971), Bruce Miller Earle, is a staunch supporter of this side of the story.
But then I came across this in Chuck Blore's autobiography (excerpted 07-15-06), posted at RDN, and it seemed to prove Fatherley's case:
Gordon McLendons’ KLIF in Dallas was attracting more and more listeners with his ever expanding presentation of local news.
Tod Storz, KOWH playing the same songs, over and over again was attracting more audience than any other station in Omaha.
(Note: This excerpt was added after Blore's article was published and exists in a different font than the rest of the story...it looks like Don Keyes was trying to change the tone of the article...the font may have been changed by the time you read this, though.)
Today’s exciting installment in a moment, but first, a word from Don Keyes, long time National PD for The McLendon stations.
Chuck-o, You are right when you point out the KLIF local news effort but I will always maintain that promotion was the real biggie that KOWH never enjoyed. Just off the top of my head I can cite the $50,000 Treasure Hunt in which the check was, indeed, found before time expired. And a thousand smaller promotions...the Secret Sound, The Mystery Walker, Mystery Street, etc. When I became National PD in the Fall of 1957 the word to all PDs was, keep a minor promotion on at all times and once every quarter, have a major promotion. Thus, while the News effort was certainly important, Promotions turned the station into a flying circus and gave Gordon the moniker of "The P. T.Barnum of Radio". Now back to our regularly scheduled text:
When Gordon became aware of that little daytimer getting those big numbers he sent Bill Stewart, his PD at KLIF, to Omaha to listen to the station and report back to him. Bill listened for a couple of days but couldn’t quite figure our the formula. Actually I would guess it was a simple matter to discover that they were playing the same ten records over and over, but something was missing. The mystery was ... where’s the gimmick? Bill was much too good a radio man to ever believe you could play the same ten records back to back to back without boring people to death ... there had to be something he wasn’t hearing. He called Tod Storz, introduced himself and told him what he was doing. Tod invited him to his office.
Now, obviously I don’t know exactly what went on in that office, I only know the result of the meeting. But, it’s fun to imagine it went something like this:
“I don’t know much about radio.” Tod probably insisted “I just know that all they want to hear is the top ten records.” Bills’ question had to be, “You mean like the Billboard Magazine list of records people are buying?”
“No.” said Tod “We call the juke box company and ask what songs people played most.”
“But you just play ten.”
“Well, if you look at the list, the first thing you’d see is when you get much past ten, there is very little action.”
That’s it? That’s all you do. Ten records. Over and Over. The same records every day.” Bill told me later that he was really having trouble believing that was all there was to it.
“Well, it’s not quite the same every day.” Tod explained, “They change little by little. A month from now, the list will be quite different. Two month months from now it’ll be completely different. And that Billboard list you mentioned, that’ll say pretty much the same thing a couple of weeks later. Not exactly the same maybe, but pretty close.”
“So, the gimmick, “ said Bill, “is the juke box is telling you what records people want to hear right now. You’re letting the people in those bars program your radio station.”
“Not completely. When we first called the juke box company they told us that the play they get in restaurants and almost any place kids hang out was about a month ahead of what they’re playing in the bars.” then he added, “We tried calling the record companies as well, but they all lied.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. They didn’t care too much about the records they’d already shipped, they wanted to plug their new stuff. And we didn’t care about that” Then Tod said, “Tell me about KLIF.. That sounds fascinating.”
It was fascinating enough that Tod hired Bill to help him do local news in Omaha. Tod had already decided what was working in Omaha would work in other cities and he was about to buy more radio stations. He offered Bill the opportunity to be PD of them all.
Bill called Gordon to report on what he had learned about the KOWH programming and, “Oh Gordon, one more thing. I won’t be coming back to KLIF.”
FYI, Bill Stewart ended his life by his own hand a few years later.
Richard W. Fatherley published this open letter on Friday, 14 July, 2006, to Claude Hall:
Dear Mr. Hall:
Like Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Jimmy Fiddler, you
have been a successful name-dropper. Your weekly VOX JOX
column may have spawned countless new subscriptions to
Billboard magazine. You even dropped my air-name, "Dick Ward"
several times back in 1960 and in 1961, while I was working at
Walter Annenberg's WNHC in New Haven; a Top 40 launching
pad for big-time DJs like Dan Ingram, Ralph Chapman, Joel
Sebastian, Bob Lewis, Elliot "Biggie" Nevins and Chuck Brinkman;
and a weekend hangout for other noteworthy voices like WNEW's
Jack Lazar.
As a name-dropping pro, you understand why easily
remembered air-names like "Dick Ward" can be just as easily
forgotten. But, the name Richard Ward Fatherley has found a
place in your brain as a "pain", because I'm writing a book on
the true origins of the Top 40 radio format.
Your dot-com bashing of my research, and ridicule of my
Storz radio colleagues Bud Connell and Ray Otis has caught
up to me. You've even gone so far as to take a swipe at Dr.
Dave MacFarland whose often cited ground-breaking research
on Top 40's early beginnings earned him a Ph. D.
Your latest fumbling and insulting email response was passed
on to me for comment. Here it is: My name isn't "Ray Fatherley"
any more than your name is "Claude Stewart". But, that's simply
one of the risks in being a name-dropper. Try as you may Claude,
sometimes you just won't get it right.
A final thought: You don't hold a proprietary interest in the
Top 40 story, and you sure-as-hell didn't get the story right,
anyway. So, what are you trying to accomplish?
But wait, there's more:
So who really created Top 40 Radio? Here's how I remember it: Todd Storz gave the format music structure and market service, Gordon McClendon developed promotion, Chuck Blore added the "flash" (jingles and promos), Bill Drake provided on-air production and DJ editing to the mix and Paul Drew made radio programming a real business.
Choose your favorite hero.
Comment here.
