Boss Radio was created in May 1965 for the RKO General Incorporated radio station KHJ in Los Angeles. Even though the Boss Radio format was show business and meant to please an audience, the fact remains that the format was not implemented for purely entertainment reasons.

Boss Radio was launched as a business tactic to increase the ratings of KHJ and specifically help RKO General make a better return on its investment in the Los Angeles radio market. The corporation and the radio station each had four decades of history before the mid-1960s format change.

RKO started nearly a century ago. In 1925, Joseph P. Kennedy (the father of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy) purchased Film Booking Office (FBO) Studios in Hollywood. The elder Kennedy, who had a deep appreciation for the financial viability of motion picture entertainment, bought into other film companies so that FBO Studios ultimately included companies named Keith, Orpheum, and Pathe. Keith is the “K” and Orpheum is the “O” in RKO. Then, David Sarnoff, the founder and president of Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the parent company of National Broadcasting Company (NBC), pooled his financial resources with Kennedy’s film interests, adding the “R.” The resulting merger created a company named RKO Radio Pictures.

The strongly positive reputation of RKO Radio Pictures was solidified with such classic films as the original King Kong in 1933, numerous Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, and most notably, Citizen Kane by Orson Welles in 1941. Billionaire aviator Howard Hughes bought controlling interest of RKO in 1948, then nearly destroyed the company with his eccentric approaches to the filmmaking business.

Desilu Productions, the pioneering television and movie company owned by the legendary husband-and-wife television comedy duo, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, purchased the RKO studio lot in Hollywood on Melrose Avenue in 1957, and later sold it to Paramount Pictures.

The motion picture side of the original RKO continued to exist in various corporate forms until 1989 when Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley purchased RKO Pictures.

The broadcasting side of RKO developed on both the east and west coasts. In 1943 the General Tire and Rubber Company entered broadcasting with its purchase of The Yankee Network, Incorporated and its stations, including WNAC-AM/FM/TV in Boston. The stations continued to operate under the Yankee Network banner. Then in 1950, the General Tire and Rubber purchased Thomas S. Lee Enterprises Incorporated, doing business as The Don Lee Network, Incorporated named after its founder, Cadillac dealer Don Lee (father of Thomas S. Lee), whose primary stations were KHJ-AM/FM/TV in Los Angeles.

In 1952, General Tire and Rubber purchased Bamberger Broadcasting Company, owner of WOR-AM/FM/TV in New York City and merged the stations into The Don Lee Network. After purchasing the former RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes (minus the motion picture lot that went to Desilu), all of the stations that General Tire owned were merged into General Teleradio Incorporated. Two beneficiaries of the RKO motion picture library were channel 9 in New York, WOR-TV, and channel 9 in Los Angeles, KHJ-TV. General Tire merged its broadcasting and film operations into RKO Teleradio Pictures Incorporated, and ultimately changed the company name to RKO General Incorporated.

Bill Drake and Gene Chenault were programming consultants for the radio side of RKO General starting with Boss Radio at KHJ-AM in 1965. They expanded their programming onto the FM side with KHJ-FM in Los Angeles (later called KRTH or K-Earth 101) and ultimately programmed numerous FM and AM stations owned by RKO General across the United States (such as CKLW and WRKO) until 1973.

The End of RKO

Starting in the 1980s, based on charges that RKO General violated federal laws, the Federal Communications Commission forced the corporation to relinquish all of its radio and television broadcasting licenses and sell the station facilities to the new licensees at equipment value only. WNAC-TV channel 7 in Boston was the first station license of RKO General to be revoked. Channel 7 in Boston became WNEV-TV owned by New England Television on May 1, 1982. The name General Tire and Rubber Company was changed in 1984 to GenCorp, a major technology-based manufacturing company headquartered in Sacramento, California.

The RKO radio network was bought by United Stations, later known as Unistar. Corporate mergers followed and RKO/Unistar was bought by Infinity, ultimately part of CBS Radio, which, in turn, was bought by Viacom. RKO General’s KHJ-TV channel 9 in Los Angeles was the last station license to be pulled. Channel 9 in Los Angeles became KCAL-TV in 1990, originally owned by the Walt Disney company until 1995 when Disney bought Capital Cities/ABC and sold KCAL-TV to Young Broadcasting.