The Radio Book I'm Reading

Sub-title:  American Radio Tales (1946 -1996). I happened across this book on Amazon and have recommended it to many old-hands who remember many of the guys on the pages.  Published in 2009 by radio veteran Bob Shannon, he book contains short profiles of the radio careers of 58 people who participated in the invention and growth of modern music radio.  In the index, I count 17 on the list that I’ve at least spoken with a time or three over the years.  Number 1 was the first young-genius I heard of, met and admired.  Number 7 did the dirtiest thing anyone ever did to me.  Number 17 was the first guy to fire me; he replaced me with #22.  Number 18 became owner of a station I consulted. Number 41 is a station owner and M1/T1 user today.  Number 44 and #50 each offered me jobs that I should have taken at the time.  Now, while I’ve been telling old US radio vets about the book, it occurs to me that a younger radio geek (like yourself?) could maybe get some ideas and inspiration from some of these stories.  These were people involved in creating something entirely new…radio that was all-music, all-the-time. There were no rules, there was no “format” and nobody yet knew nuthin’ about how to do it.  But music radio was there, waiting to be discovered and here are some of the folks who figured out how to do it with intuition, with trial and error and almost everybody was having fun doing it.