AP Obits--11/30/08
ObitsMan
Obituaries in the news
By The Associated Press
Sun Nov 30, 10:03 pm ET
Bill Drake
LOS ANGELES (AP) ‹ Bill Drake, who set the tone at hundreds of pop
stations with a radio format that placed music ‹ rather than disc
jockeys ‹ at the center of the broadcast, died Saturday. He was 71.
Drake died of cancer at West Hills Hospital in the San Fernando Valley,
his domestic partner Carole Scott said. He was 71.
At the height of his career as a radio programming consultant in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, Drake championed a streamlined format that
came to be known as "Boss Radio," which made announcers' personalities
secondary to the Top 40 hits they were spinning.
Under Drake's guidance, radio stations such as KGB in San Diego, KHJ in
Los Angeles and KFRC in San Francisco shot to the No. 1 slots in their
markets by promising more music and less chatter.
Drake, whose given name was Philip Yarbrough, was born Jan. 14, 1937, in
southwest Georgia and began his professional radio career as a disk
jockey and later program director at WAKE in Atlanta.
His name was changed to Drake because the station wanted a name that
rhymed with the call letters, according to a biography on Drake's Web
site.