[BC] Programmers who understand the audience

[Rich Wood]

------ At 11:49 AM 10/22/2007, Barry Mishkind wrote: -------

>OK ... maybe he is gone long enough that some of you will share the 
>real story.
>Was Rick Sklar a visionary, or someone who was just there at the 
>right time and place?
>I only met him once, and he seemed like a decent fellow. But I never 
>worked with him.
>
>And, what about the folks, like Stortz, who invented Top 40?

I knew him and saw much of his behind the scenes work. I don't know 
that visionary is the word. He had a special sense of what the market 
wanted. He did trip over Disco on WABC. Otherwise everything else 
seemed to work very well. He's one of many very creative people in 
radio at the time. I'm sure many of us could come up with a list of 
people who had very significant impacts on making radio what it used 
to be. I don't think there's a bean counter or Wall Street drone on 
any of those lists.

The difference is that early pioneers put everything they had into 
radio. Today it's a race to see how much you can suck out of it.

Rich