The Birth of Top 40 Radio: The Storz Stations' Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s

I lived it. Growing up in SE Kansas, we lived within earshot of WHB in Kansas City. An early memory of mine is standing on the passenger seat (!) while a friend of my mother's drove us home, carpooling from kindergarten. "How Much Is that Doggie in the Window" by Patti Page blared from the radio speaker, which caught the ear of 4-year old me....doggies, you know. Then the station itself she was listening to was energetic, which also caught my attention. I was hooked. Wayne Stitt, Eddie Clark, and other deejays were up, happy, excited and friendly and everything was very "tight" with no gaps between elements broadcast. WHB means "the World's Happiest Broadcasters", they'd say. They had bells and whistles, tones and echo chambers. Other stations were slow, draggy and not playing good music and full of dead-air (empty spaces of silence). Technically, as a 4-year old I was also amazed at how that guy on the 11th floor of that hotel in Kansas City could talk, and we could hear it over 100-miles away. It seemed like magic. Later on I listened a lot to other stations, including Storz station KOMA. Eventually, I became a junior-high-school-aged pest at the studios of WHB, hanging out there on occasion when my parents shopped in downtown KC. Later on I chose radio as my profession, in addition to electrical engineering. Those stations certainly shaped a lot of my life.I can say that from what I know, this book is accurate and contains a lot of information that even I didn't know. It's a great read, and I recommend it highly.

A fascinating and complete story of how Music Radio began, with Todd Storz and his chain of five stations. The transition from network block programming to music radio seems obvious today, but at the time it took some genius and risk-taking.It's all there, the way it was in radio's fun days, when radio brought in enough revenue to afford live and local personalities. It shows how the records were programmed, illustrates promotions, and doesn’t hold back on the competitive and talent issues.The book is thorough and well written, though at times the writing resembles that of a college textbook. The only real annoyances are the constant updated dollar figures to 2012 values. Recommended for all radio and rock aficionados!

The book has a depth of information and the stories from the people who were really there and knew Storz personally, how he put the format together and then made it work in several major broadcast markets. Storz died at only 40 -- so it is fascinating to wonder what might have happened to rock 'n roll radio and the Storz format if he had lived or prepared someone to extend his thinking into the future. Only four stars because when the professor finished the book (thank God he did!) the final product is in an academic format/text book style of reading. Anyone who loves the history of radio, should read this book.Joe H. Vaughan, a commercial broadcast journalist for 22-years.

In general, I really liked the information about the development of top forty radio. More specifically, I really enjoyed the discussions and information shared about the Storz radio stations.

This is a useful but strangely joyless history, informed to an unfortunate degree by the personal biases of the authors. Still, much information on one of the two godfathers of radio in the era of television--the top 40 format which today has led to all other formats including all-news--every format now plays the hits.