Music radio as we have now sprouted in America which alone among nations in the 1920s and 30s allowed independently owned, commercialized radio licenses. Before television, all radio station programming was a mishmash of mostly locally produced programming and syndicated national shows; soap operas, audio plays, daily and weekly comedy and variety series. It was TV without pictures.
From the first station, KDKA/Pittsburgh in 1920, all radio stations broadcast a variety of programs. Stations were required to devote about 20% of the broadcast hours to “news and community affairs”. From the first days, KDKA and all that followed would sometimes plug an Edison phonograph into the control board and play records, but only to fill time until the next program was to start. And when the US government began licensing radio stations in the 1920 and 30s, license applicants were more likely to get approval if they vowed to broadcast only a minimal amount of recorded programming and the rules said if a record was played, the announcers had to inform the audience that it was “a recorded performance.”
The very first DJ was Al Jarvis( Pioneer Disc Jockey ). He read the actual law and found a loop-hole in the wording nobody had noticed before. A radio station didn’t have to identify every record it played as being recorded, a single statement at the end of the program or show was all that was required. His program “The Make-Believe Ballroom” premiered on KFWB, Los Angeles in 1934 and was immediately, hugely popular. It ran for many years and was copied by other stations across the US. Most notably, Martin Block at WNEW in New York. Block (like many others) copied Jarvis and even used his program name. Again, the records show was a huge success. WNEW was in NYC, the center of all media and so Block got a lot of press and ultimately became recognized as the ‘creator’ of a radio show that only played records. The newspaper columnist and radio personality Walter Winchell coined the name “disc jockey” when he applied it to Block in one of his columns. The first DJ was a copy-cat.
The first radio “format” was Top 40 which emerged organically in the early ’50s in response to massive technological and cultural changes. Even with the noted ratings and revenue success of the all-records shows, an all-music-all-the-time radio station had never really been tried before the early 1950’s. After the WWII, television exploded into American homes. Almost overnight, the people who had tuned-in for “Ozzy and Harriet” or “Dragnet” or soap-operas and game shows on the radio switched to the blue tube where they could actually see Ozzy and his family and Detective Sgt. Joe Friday gettin’ the bad guys right there in their living room.
With the audience and advertising revenues dropping, radio owners needed to innovate. The story goes, a young radio station owner named Todd Storz was sitting in a restaurant/bar in Omaha, crying in his beer over cash-flow losses to television when he noticed that the customers kept dropping nickels into the jukebox and playing the same few songs over and over. Even the waitresses were doing it and they were doing it all day. Over and over, again. Bingo! Young Todd thinks, “I could do that with my radio station.” Perhaps part of that is true. The other part is that beginning in 1951 his station, KOWH did have a few “DJ shows” mixed in with the conglomeration of programming that was typical. Radio ratings then were much more accurate than today’s Nielson/Arbitron numbers (True! It’s all in the sample size.) Todd saw that the all-music DJ shows were his highest rated time slots. In 1953, KOWH switched to all-records-all-the-time. The first radio format was born: Top 40. It was an immediate, dramatic success.
Three other culture-shaking things were happening near that time. First, the transistor was invented in 1947. The first transistor radio came in ‘54 and by 1957 they were small enough to carry around in a pocket. Second, the first 45 rpm record was released in ‘48. It had great fidelity, it was small and cheap. Third, all of the early Rocker ‘n Rollers had just been hatched. Oh, and the fourth element: Money and lots of it. American teenagers had more money to spend than any young generation in history. Fun fact: “Teenagers” as a demographic group did not exist until the 1950’s because before then they didn’t have money, they were just kids.
Top 40 Was The First Format and All Formats Evolved From It
It was just that: The forty top-rated records on the weekly Billboard chart played over and over all day. All music radio stations, including KOWH had a lot of service elements to go with it. Five minute newscasts usually came twice an hour and the FCC allowed stations to have up to 18 minutes of commercials each hour. Most of the hit songs were an average 2:30 in length so a Top 40 station could usually fit twelve to fifteen songs into each hour. And think about this: Every song in the library was played again less than three hours later! It became obvious that more format structure was needed.
The basic format grew it’s first appendage: Rotation Categories
The forty records were often divided into three Categories. A-Hot was the week’s Top 10 songs. B-Medium, #11 to 30 and C-Light, #31 to 40. The chart-rule was not firm, of course. Elvis’ first record was released in ‘55 and it was soon clear that listeners wanted to hear a whole lot more of him than they did of, say Jerry Lee Lewis. Elvis was very popular with adults but Jerry Lee scared them. White adults where huge fans of Fats Domino; but Little Richard, not so much. So the smart program director would play Elvis and Fats all day, while Jerry Lee and Little Richard didn’t get spins until late afternoon and evening when school let out and the kids were in control of the radio. That was the second formatting technique: Dayparting certain songs.
The O-Oldies category didn’t come into wide use until the end of the 50’s when rock ‘n roll itself had been around long enough to have Oldies. Each category had its own box 45’s. The DJ’s were to play A-B-C-O and repeat, picking the record from the front each stack and putting it to the back after it played. When a ‘dayparted’ song came to the front of the box in the mid-day shift, the DJ moved it to the back of the box unplayed. That one moved to the front again, probably, after 3pm and school was out and the afternoon guy played it.
Middle of the Road was the first child of the Top 40 format. It was “Top Hits For Adults” and continued to play Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, the “adult” singers. MOR stations would play some selected songs from rock and rollers that the music directors figured adults liked such as the Everly Brothers and Brenda Lee.
Rhythm and blues was Top 40 for a predominantly black audience. Adult contemporary was/is a format that plays up-tempo Pop and a lot of Recurrents (recent hits). News/Talk is a format, too, but that is a different animal. When we talk Format, we mean the type of music the station features. Classical is a format. Easy listening is a format; Disco, Jazz, Country and the many morphed versions of Oldies such as Classic Hits and Classic Rock. (Most Eagles songs could be on either of those stations; Ozzy Osbourne could be on only one of them.)
In short, your format is the music you play; the foundation of the station. Further, it is the manner in which you present and stage the music, the way you surround it with other formatting elements such as Station ID’s, Jingles and promos. As time allows, I will address this subject area more in the future. My next post here will be an answer to the question I hear a few times every month: “How many songs should I be playing on my station?”
