Signing Off.

I didn't like everything that Bill Drake did with radio formats, but he was one of the wizards behind the curtain.  

From the New York Times:

Bill Drake, who transformed radio programming with a syndicated format that delivered more music, fewer commercials and high-energy “Boss Jocks” — D.J.’s big on personality but economical with words — died Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 71.

In the 1960s, Mr. Drake, an up-and-coming disc jockey and programmer from south Georgia, revolutionized radio when he and his partner, Lester Eugene Chenault (pronounced Sha-NAULT), decided that radio stations could make a lot more money and reach more listeners if they cut back on D.J. chatter, accelerated the pace of their programs and gave audiences more of what they presumably tuned in to hear: hit songs.

He and Mr. Chenault introduced a formula, eventually sold as a syndicated package with prerecorded music, that would revamp — and homogenize — radio stations across the United States.

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