A Personal Journey

Understanding the history of 93/KHJ Boss Radio in Los Angeles is neither nice nor easy. As Tina Turner once said, “We never ever do anything nice and easy!” But, if you explore these pages of my website, you will get as close to understanding the history of Boss Radio as humanly possible. Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be a bumpy ride. You may also be interested in reading my personal memoir: Neon Fun Jungle: Quest for adventure in Hollywood rock and roll radio.

This website chronicles the many adventures that culminated in one of the most unforgettable rock and roll music radio formats ever created. My research into Boss Radio began when I was in graduate school in California.

Boss Radio was born in an era of thin ties, thick-framed glasses, sticky big hairstyles and a new sports car called the Ford Mustang. The phenomenon that was Boss Radio started in Hollywood in a company named RKO Radio, which no longer exists. There were people on the air on rock and roll radio in those days who earned fame the old fashioned way–with their talent and wit. Today, we live in a time when radio programming is dominated by a handful of huge media corporations that have deliberately killed off the profession of on-air radio personalities as a way to cut down on expenses.

 Much of what today’s radio broadcasting business accepts as everyday reality literally was against the law decades ago. Following decades of changes in Federal Communications Commission regulations, gone forever are the days when radio station ownership and programming was characterized by a diverse range of pioneering owners and their comparatively small communication companies. Where radio programming of the past had primarily a social and cultural identity, today radio is primarily a moneymaking machine for major corporations whose thought is on dollar signs, not society or culture.

Boss Radio Forever: Where to Begin

This website named Boss Radio Forever was designed with you in mind. You can choose the order in which you look at what’s available here. You can tailor your own online experience as you wish by clicking on links that catch your attention.

There is no recommended sequence for you to follow as you take your journey into the past. Have a good time!

KHJ Two Minute History

Radio station KHJ at 930 on the AM dial in Los Angeles has been broadcasting since 1922. Using recordings provided for use on this site, I produced a history of the sounds of KHJ for people with short attention spans. You know who you are. In this audio retrospective, you’ll travel very quickly from the earliest days as a Don Lee station to Bill Drake to the rhythm of Southern California to the country music format and finally to the Spanish language programming and the return to the original KHJ call letters in the year 2000:  

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Two-minute KHJ History (2:00) MP3, 947 KB

More classic audio recordings are ready for you here!

Here are links to all the pages on my website about rock and roll radio programming:

• Audio
• Boss Radio Forever Links and Sources
• Business
  • All About The Money
  • Boss Angeles
  • It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll
  • Much More Music
  • Popular Culture Context
  • Radio Station KHJ
  • RKO General
  • Second Chance to Change History
• People
  • Bill Drake
  • Boss Jocks of 93/KHJ
  • Gene Chenault
  • Introduction of the Writer, Woody Goulart
    • My Master’s Thesis
    • My Personal Memoir: Neon Fun Jungle
    • Pimping on La Cienega
    • The Making of Boss Radio Forever
    • Wayback Machine archives back to the 1990s
    • 1996 Boss Radio Information Site
  • Jacobs and Drake On The Record
    • Don’t Know Much About History
    • Jacobs and Drake On The Record, Part Two
    • The Candy Canyon Confab
  • Married to the Boss of Boss Radio
  • Ron Jacobs
  • Use of Alcohol and Tobacco
  • Who Deserves Credit?
• Technology
  • AM and FM Radio
  • Syndicated Radio Programming on Tape
  • Syndicated Radio Programming via Satellite
  • The Signal and The Sound

   

  Why Study Radio?

   
  Radio receives little critical attention. Of the various methods for communicating ideas and emotions—books, newspapers, visual art, music, film, television, the Web—radio may be the least discussed, debated, understood. This is likely because it serves largely as a transmission device, a way to take other art forms (songs, sermons) and spread them out into the world. Its other uses can be fairly pedestrian too: ball games and repetitive, if remarkably effective, right-wing commercial talk radio.

  – Bill McKibben

  Online source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/all-programs-considered/