Boss Radio: Revealed at Last
    Ron Jacobs & Bill Drake
    June 19-20, 1999       home

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Before Boss Radio

Radio Personalities

RON JACOBS: Over you career, you've been on the air, yourself, and you've been a program director. How do you feel about radio personalities?

BILL DRAKE: You know, I’ve always had a problem with people saying that they’re personalities in radio. I’ve known a few. Robert W. Moragan was a personality. The Real Don Steele was a personality; Steele didn't talk too much, but he had a personality. Bob McKee was a personality, a guy on Atlanta radio. The thing is he talked too fucking much.

RON JACOBS: But we didn’t have role models. The radio business, I mean. We were all inventing shit as we went along.

BILL DRAKE: But the thing is of course, personalities, you can look at some of the greatest jocks of all time as far as people remember, they’ll tell you Morgan, Steele, Charlie Tuna. Maybe it’s the name, I don’t know. I can tell you one thing about that. When you think about it, it's interesting. We were involved in a great window of opportunity, a great thing, a combination of me, you, them, the time, everything else. When I used to be on the air, no, I was not a personality. I didn’t tell jokes, I didn’t play wild tracks--.

San Francisco

BILL DRAKE: I got to KYA in San Francisco in 1961 and turned it around [in the radio ratings].

RON JACOBS: Were you on the air and also program director?

BILL DRAKE: Uh huh.

RON JACOBS: So who was doing morning drive?

BILL DRAKE: I was.

RON JACOBS: Really! And being PD.

BILL DRAKE: Yep.

RON JACOBS: Was there a group name for the KYA jocks? I’ve seen pictures of you and those guys wearing coats and stuff.

BILL DRAKE: No. But I think one thing that probably has gone unnoticed is Clancy Imuslind.

RON JACOBS: Clancy was who came up with what?

BILL DRAKE: The phrase. At KYA. "The Boss of the Bay".

RON JACOBS: That wasn't your line?

BILL DRAKE: Clancy's. And in 1965 at KHJ, you didn’t like the phrase “Boss radio”—neither did I. But, I said alright because KYA was “The Boss of the Bay.”

RON JACOBS: It’s just so weird.

BILL DRAKE: All I know is I thought that you came up with it.

RON JACOBS: No! Clancy came up with it. So, the first manifestation of the Drake Format happened at KYA when you got there.

BILL DRAKE: Oh yeah.

RON JACOBS: There are stories people tell of how Clint Churchill was the owner KYA and he comes in and tells you "You're out in one day." But, the fact that you put up with Churchill for a whole year is great.

BILL DRAKE: Clint Churchill could not handle Tom Donahue, who drove him unmercifully. And you know, Clint had it and he wanted me to fire Donahue.

RON JACOBS: Probably one of the three greatest disk jockeys in America at that time.

BILL DRAKE: And I said—obviously I didn’t like the little son of a bitch Churchill anyhow—but I dealt with it. I said “You want him fired, you fire him. I’m not going to do it.” And I said “I’m leaving.”

RON JACOBS: You said “Do it and I’m leaving”?

BILL DRAKE: I said, “You do it, I’m leaving.” I said “I’ll tell you what, Clint. I’ll bet you anything you want to bet that when the new [ratings] book comes out Donahue will have the highest goddamn ratings on the radio station.”

RON JACOBS: So you’re trying to tell me that the guy calls you in to get rid of one of the best jocks in the country and certainly the best that’s maybe ever been seen in San Francisco, and he ends up losing you. And then your prediction comes true about Donahue's ratings being the highest, and then Donahue splits because he can’t take Churchill anymore.

BILL DRAKE: That's a natural fact. That was the reason that I got more joy out of later with programming KFRC. We destroyed KYA in like six months with KFRC.

Fresno

RON JACOBS: When was the first time that you met Gene Chenault?

BILL DRAKE: In Fresno.

RON JACOBS: What I want to know is, since your life had been in San Francisco, what did you know of the scene in Fresno?

BILL DRAKE: I knew nothing.

RON JACOBS: I mean you didn’t know that Chenault had been number one in the ratings with KYNO?

BILL DRAKE: Oh, I knew that, yeah, but I’d never heard the radio station. Chenault told me that he’d gotten his ass kicked.

RON JACOBS: And he says right off, honestly, “I need help”?

BILL DRAKE: Uh huh. I listened to the radio and I looked at him and I said “Gene, you’re in fucking trouble!” (Laughs.)

RON JACOBS: If I were writing this or if we were videoing this, I must make note that in these first references, Mr. Drake has been making horrible facial expressions to go along with what he’s been saying about his opinions of KYNO at the time. But did you line it out to Chenault in order, like too many commercials, not enough this or just said totally just fucked?

BILL DRAKE: I didn’t tell him a whole lot about anything. I told him that he was in trouble and I said this radio station is--.

RON JACOBS: “This” being?

BILL DRAKE:: K-MAK. Where you were PD.



RON JACOBS: When you drove into Fresno, did you think at that time that K-MAK was an LA-level station even at that point? Or not because we didn’t get better until we started competing with you?

BILL DRAKE: I wasn’t thinking about that at the time.

RON JACOBS: Can you remember the first time you and I actually saw each other? ‘Cause I can.

BILL DRAKE: The first time I remember was at the Fresno County Fair.

RON JACOBS: Right, right.

BILL DRAKE:: I remember somebody said “That’s Jacobs over there.” (Laughs.)

RON JACOBS: Right, right, right.

BILL DRAKE: And you were going like “Hmm.”

RON JACOBS: That was really great man, because there was a respect thing, you know.

BILL DRAKE: I said before now, many times before, that either of those radio stations at that time in 1963 could have walked into LA. The thing that really occurred was, as far as a program director, I knew that you were the best I’d ever come up against, and you’re still the best I’ve ever seen.

RON JACOBS: Thanks, man.

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