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, has died.
Drake died of cancer Saturday 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. "He really sort of cleaned Top 40 radio up," said John Long, president of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame, which inducted Drake in 2007. "The music was the star."
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.
Drake later moved to California, where he directed programming at stations in San Francisco, Stockton and Fresno, before launching his radio consulting business with longtime partner Gene Chenault. The two launched numerous high-profile radio careers, including that of Top 40 disc jockeys "The Real" Don Steele and Robert W. Morgan.
"He gave the world so many people that worked together that had egos the size of the Empire State Building," Scott said. "They were all part of the Drake radio empire."
Drake sold his interest in Drake-Chenault Enterprises Inc. in 1983. He was developing a new Top 40 format for satellite radio at the time of his death.
He is survived by his daughter Kristie Philbin.
