Boss Radio - Boss Radio in The United States

Boss Radio in The United States

Although developed earlier at other stations, the U.S. "Boss Radio" format is most closely associated with KHJ, at 930 kHz AM.

KHJ, one of the original radio stations in Los Angeles, was owned by RKO, a legendary U.S. corporation that has produced movies, television and radio programming over its own stations. In May 1965, KHJ was under-performing in the local ratings. The unsuccessful programming on KHJ consisted of block segments of drama, mystery, soap opera, news, and music, both live and recorded.

Block programming gave way to Top 40 formula radio during the 1950s. Two California radio programming pioneers, Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, modified the Top 40 formula and gave their version the brand name "Boss Radio", after then-KHJ promotion director Clancy Imuslind originated the phrase. The word "boss" had come to mean something hip, new, exciting and the top of its class. Drake had tested some of the format elements in 1961 and 1962 while he served as program director and morning man at San Francisco's KYA, a station that promoted itself at the time as "The Boss of the Bay."

Drake and Chenault introduced and further developed this format at KYNO in Fresno, KSTN in Stockton, and KGB AM in San Diego. In April 1965 they brought it to KHJ.

Within a few months the "Boss Radio" format had brought KHJ to the top of the Los Angeles market. It also firmly established the careers of several "boss jocks" such as "The Real Don Steele" and Robert W. Morgan who helped to put "Boss Radio" on the air in Los Angeles, under the guidance of program director Ron Jacobs.

As a result of the station's success several other stations adopted the format, notably KFRC in San Francisco, WFIL in Philadelphia, WRKO in Boston, and eventually reaching as far north as Canadian border blaster CKLW in Windsor, Ontario. As a result of its massive clear channel transmitter and overnight signal propagation, CKLW was able to garner an international audience—even as far as Soviet Russia, making it almost certainly (though unprovably) the biggest of the "Boss Radios."