[BC] Programmers who understand the audience

[Robert Meuser]

Visionary or not, WABC could bill over 60 mil in 60s dollars. Today the 
top stations do 40 to 50 in 21st century dollars.




Rich Wood wrote:
> ------ 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