Customer Reviews

Rocking America: How the All-Hit Radio Stations Took Over, An Insider's Story

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Rick Sklar was a pioneering programmer in the evolution of Top 40 radio. He wrote "Rocking America" to describe his experiences at two of the most famous New York City hit music radio stations; WINS and WABC. These stations, particularly WABC, left permanent impressions on millions of people. He goes into significant detail about the workings of these two radio stations and what made them become so popular in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Throughout the book he also includes amusing anecdotes and stories about some of the people he worked with. These include radio disc jockeys Alan Freed, Murray "the K" Kaufman, "Cousin" Bruce Morrow and "Big" Dan Ingram. Anyone growing up along the east coast of the United States during this time certainly is familiar with these names! Rick was a master promoter and one has to keep this in mind when reading the book. At the time of its writing, he was in the process of establishing a radio consultation company and was trying to paint his experiences in the best light possible. As a result, there are times when the emphasis is more on his own promotion rather than the events that were taking place around him. Even so, he paints a picture of an exciting time in radio broadcasting. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any level of interest at all in broadcast radio. This is an insider's story and we don't get too many opportunities to find out what went on "behind the scenes". This is one such opportunity. Unfortunately, Rick Sklar died in 1992. The only link we have to his career is this book.

Rick Skalar was a 'Legend in his own Time', starting from humble beginnings as a 'Gofor' at NY's WINS, where he and Alan Freed (who invented the phrase "ROCK-N-ROLL") shared an office and began developing the 'TOP-40' Radio Format. Rick went on to NY's WABC, and proceeded to turn it into New York's #1 TOP-40 Station... with so many Listeners (over 12-million), that when WABC ran a Contest, the entire NY City PHONE SYSTEM would overload and completely collapse!

Just about every Program Director (or 'wanna-be') has read this book, and so should you. For more about Rick Skalar during his time at WABC, go here: http://www.musicradio77.com/Sklar.html