Showing posts with label Todd Storz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Todd Storz. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

I . . . I . . . uhhhhh . . . you . . . well . . . HUH???


This may be the single most idiotic thing I have ever seen in print.

This is so factually wrongheaded -- and concerning some pop-culture knowledge so basic -- that I suspect it may have been written and edited by space aliens undercover at
The Gateway, the student newspaper at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

You won't believe it. You won't buy a word of it. You'll go slack-jawed. Unless, of course, you're 5 years old . . . or you're a space alien, too.

OK, here it is:
An interesting thing I've heard is that pop radio is an Omaha invention. When I asked Montez about this historical lore, he had some compelling details to add. He said that during some refurbishing in the Benson area, his father recovered memorabilia from a restaurant called Sandy's Escape.

In 1944, Sandy Jackson, who is considered Omaha's first pop disc jockey, got the chance to do a live one-hour show from 11 p.m. to midnight playing groups like The Hollies, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas on KBON radio.
[Emphasis mine -- R21] Soon, he added "The Rhythm Inn" in the afternoon, and by 1946, he was on the air opposite WOWT (Woodmen of the World-TV) star radio host Johnny Carson.
IN FACT, should you follow the link and read this January article about the Omaha roots of Top-40 radio, be aware that it contains pitifully few facts amid an ocean of inaccuracy and sheer ridiculousness. In fact, had an editor cared to actually edit the story, he or she couldn't have -- the only remedy would be to start from scratch.

And by "scratch," I mean start by
not interviewing Channel 94-1 disc jockey Montez, because the man either is clueless or was pulling the reporter's leg. Then, after not repeating that first fatal error, the writer would have to re-research the article and conduct interviews with people who know what the hell they're talking about.

He could start here. And here.

After, of course, he relived a major portion of his young life --
this time paying attention.

It takes a lot to shock me after 51 years on God's green earth. This newspaper feature did the trick.

Way to go,
Gateway.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

The Mid-Continent formula

For Todd Storz, it all began in 1949 at a little 500-watt daytimer in Omaha, Neb.

He and his brewing-baron dad bought KOWH radio from the Omaha World-Herald, which apparently had run the struggling station as something of an afterthought to printing the day's news on dead trees.


TWO YEARS later, in December 1951, KOWH was the biggest thing in the Big O.

In 1955, Storz' second purchase, WHB in Kansas City, was well on the way to similar success. As was WTIX in New Orleans, the third station in the Mid-Continent Broadcasting Co., chain.

THESE ADS for the Storz chain, found in the 1955 Broadcasting Yearbook and the April 13, 1953 edition of Broadcasting, attribute the stations' speedy rise to "the Mid-Continent formula." Roughly speaking, that formula grew from a skeleton of "spaced repetition" of hit records, hourly newscasts and non-stop fun promotions.

What the trade ads called "the Mid-Continent formula" soon enough swept the radio world and saved a dying industry, one nearly obliterated by the rapid rise of television.

What we came to know it as was much simpler -- Top 40.

Todd Storz died in 1964, of an apparent stroke at just 39. But his radio kingdom survived him and went on for years after.

And his creation lives on in the rock 'n' roll hearts of we who are forever young.

Just like Todd.